I had a tremendous amount of fun attending the Assault City bout on Saturday night. It was a really nice way to get me back out of the Summer Off frame of mind and back into the gearing-up-for-another-season frame of mind, so thank you to everyone involved: it was a great time and I, at least, needed it badly. I only hope it was half as rewarding for everyone else involved. Syracuse, you have a good thing.

I wasn't eligible to skate-- only our 2008-season rookies were, since Assault City is a newer league; we'd agreed not to send our two-plus-season veterans up against them, in the interests of leveling the field. Since Queen City's travel team hasn't fully formed yet, or hadn't at the time the bout was agreed to, it seemed to make sense all around.
We ended up fielding a small but excellent squad. Now that we're starting up our 2009-season boot camp, we can't call these girls rookies anymore, and they certainly aren't; of the ten skaters, eight had participated in the entire 2008 season, skating at least two bouts each.
Two of the girls on the squad, however, were skating in their first bout. 360, Lip Service, was one of the virgins, but was no stranger to competition, or to roller derby. She has been our announcer for two years, is an employee of the rink where we skate, and as a young girl was an intense competitor in speed-skating and figure-skating, attending meets across the country. Her agility and sheer skating ability are only surpassed by her white-hot hatred of losing. She jammed and pivoted for the Queen City squad, and not only put up a lot of points on the board, but made some impressively strategic plays.
26, GunnHerDown, was also a bout virgin. I know very little about her, since I was out of town for most of the time she has been here; I didn't even know she was skating. Apparently she used to roll with the D.C. Rollergirls, and was drafted to a team, but never bouted, which I assume may be related to the fact that she lives in Buffalo now instead of D.C.? At any rate, she was an impressive skater, specializing in punishing jammer takedowns, and with an aggressively focused style of play that served to shred the opposing pack on several occasions. She certainly scared the hell out of me, and I didn't even have skates on.

The rest of the squad were girls I know and love already. Captain Tuesday Hula proved to be an able leader; I admit to jealousy of the girls who got to be on this squad because their communication and technique were so good, they've obviously had some very rewarding practice sessions over this summer. My Knockouts, who I know and love so well, all excelled themselves, demonstrating impressive growth in skills and confidence in the couple of months since I last skated alongside them. Hyper Bean had some wonderful moments of positional mastery, including one unbroken three-lap stretch where, single-assedly, she kept the opposing jammer behind her without ever actually needing to hit her. She also had some holding-the-inside-line heroics which were pretty notable on their own. Her specialty seemed to be in forcing opposing skaters to be where she wanted, rather than where they wanted.
NoTorious V.A.G., voted the Most Improved Skater of 2008 in our end-of-season awards, continued that trend. She finally seemed able, despite her difficulties with the slick skating surface, to realize her potential at controlling the middle of the pack. It's a far cry from a year ago, when she couldn't even stand on her skates. She has worked so hard that it was a real treat to see her making plays like that, owning her space-- and the spaces of those around her.
Ruby Revenge seemed to have no problem with the slick skating surface; she was flying. She doesn't have an aggressive jamming style, but prefers to intersperse her speed with steady patience, biding her time and waiting for her chance to break out of the pack. That too paid off, and she was rewarded with a whole lot of points up on the board.
Sour Grapes really seemed to live up to her potential as well; for the KOs over the regular season, she had a few great moments but struggled with speed and timing issues. Finally she clicked, and in Syracuse, lived up to her Tower of Sour aspirations, with a lot of neat positional work punctuated with occasional huge Slamazon takedowns. She had some equipment problems, and skating back-to-back jams took its toll on her, but she stuck it out to the end and made some great plays.
The Dollies impressed the hell out of me, too. Tuesday won the most accolades from the skaters in other towns, because she is such an incredible skater and the simple miracle of her balance and obvious comfort on her skates turns heads, but I had actually wondered at her performance: normally, she is a one-woman show, but in Syracuse she seemed more focused on pack work, and she had relatively few stints as a jammer. She even fell a few times, which normally requires an act of God. I found out afterwards that she had been injured in nearly her first jam, and had spent the rest of the bout with ice in her kneepads fighting through pain. So her performance, though not as spectacular as I have seen from her before, remains a real standout: to be captain, to play hurt and do what is needed, deserves special recognition.
Lethal Lorelei also stood out, as a jammer and as a blocker. She has never lacked for spirit or for heart, but in the past has been hampered by a special affinity for the penalty box, and sometimes her heart writes checks her body does not quite have the funds to cover. She had neither problem in Syracuse, and made amazing plays both with the star and without it. (I especially loved the jam where, denied lead jammer by a stumble, she passed the other jammer on the first turn after the pack, and raised her skirt and wiggled her posterior without breaking stride or losing ground, keeping her lead all the way into the pack again.)
My love for Lorelei knows no bounds.
Bump-Her Kar didn't give up her well-known love for the box this game, but she was an animal, and every penalty was put to good use. She has always been ferocious and tenacious; in Syracuse she also seems to have upgraded for laser-sights, adding a certain tactical precision to her attacks.
And Eva! Resident Eva. I love Eva. She was shaping up to be a great player early this last season, but was derailed by injuries. She had caught up by the end of the season, and was making plays, but wasn't as intimidating as she could've been. In Syracuse she came out with a sudden ability to always see the gaps in her line and fill them. She was always where she needed to be.

But what, you ask, of their opponents?
I only know a little about Syracuse. I know this was their first home game. I know their first bout ever was only in February of this year. Most of the skaters Queen City sent skated in their first bout in January of this year, but they did so alongside girls who have been training since 2006 (and led by a skater who was a rookie in... 2004?). As leagues go, Queen City is not terribly experienced, but every single practice counts, every bout counts, every hour on your skates counts, no matter how long you've been doing it-- and it counts collectively, because when you train with people who have done it before, they pull you up to a higher level by example and expectation. Our 2008 rookies worked faster and more intensely than we had the first year (what with having to learn it all from scratch, it took us longer), so the veterans had to step up to them; our 2009 rookies will work harder still, and pull the rest of us along with them. Every practice counts, every bout builds on the previous one.

The Syracuse skaters did not look inexperienced. They all were solid and confident on their skates, if just as unused to the slick surface as we were. (We skate on a very grippy hardwood floor; I don't know what they skate on, but it's very hard to adjust, and most of our girls had the wrong wheels for concrete.) They had good skating technique. None of the individual skaters looked uncertain or unskilled. They looked as good as or better than we did a year ago, for sure.
Where the relative inexperience showed was in their body-to-body contact and in their overall strategy. Too often, laying a solid block caused the instigating blocker to fall as hard as her target. The hits were not always strategically timed; blockers would take themselves out along with their opponents while the jammer was still much too far away to be benefited by it. Blockers did not always know where their jammer was, even getting in her way at times. And while they had mastered the idea of setting two blockers as an immovable wall at the front of the pack, they had not mastered the corresponding skill of making the rest of the blockers remember to cycle forward up through the pack to replace those two blockers should they fall, should they have to deliver a hit that slowed them down, or should they get hung up assisting or hindering one of the jammers.
The other place the inexperience showed was that as their skaters grew more and more tired, they committed more and more fouls. Elbows and hands are always the worst with tired skaters, but being sent to the box tires out your teammates while you're sitting there not actually really resting. (Who can rest up in the box? Nobody, that's who.)
I say this with the bitter knowledge of experience: these are pretty much exactly the problems that plagued the Knockouts during our March bout. We were so focused on hitting hard that we'd take ourselves out, and so our jammers would come up to a sparse pack with no one to help them. And so on, and so forth. I know of what I speak. These are not unusual issues.

So it was the little things that added up. Syracuse showed some great skill and a ton of potential, laying down a few solid jams here and there and making a lot of good plays. They had some really impressively bulletproof jammers. There was one in particular, I think 22 maybe, though I admit I'm not familiar enough with the squad to ID her for sure, who was taken out in an absolutely brutal hit by... I think it was Lip Service, and I was pretty sure it was legal, though she was sent to the box for it-- but all that aside, it was a hard, messy hit and 22 went up into the air before going back down, landing hard, and was obviously hurt but got up and kept skating, and that, right there, is roller derby. That is what you need. The rest is just practice.

There were a few administrative hitches and glitches, too-- the track, for one thing, was laid out subtly wrong, and the referees and skaters were both confused about the brand-spanking-new WFTDA 3.1 rules. But given that it was the first ever home bout for Syracuse, it went amazingly well.

And so the final score, Queen City 83 to Assault City's 39, stands as a testament not only to the hard work, good communication, and impressive skills of the Queen City squad, but also to the dogged perserverence of the Syracuse squad, who played well, took all that they could get, and ran a hell of a show.

I made a point of befriending the Syracuse roller derby virgin spectators behind me, and not only explained the game, but explained how the league works, and told them they had a good thing here and had better come back for the next one. A league doesn't get that good in a year by accident. Syracuse has a good thing in Assault City.


I also would like to thank Pita El Saha, or whatever the name precisely was, for being open, because I was really hungry after all that shrieking and cowbell-ringing. (I felt I had to make noise for a thousand; our girls had never skated away from home before and I didn't want them to feel lonely!)

I hope this kicks off a good network of in-state rivalry, cooperation, and general good derby all around. The Thruway is long but it's easy to drive. Let's not be strangers. Let's do this again. Come see us at Boot Camp; we have two weeks left.


And oh yes-- there are photos posted of the bout, taken by the supremely awesome Frizenfrat, who has more names than you can shake a stick at and has taken more pictures of derby than one can easily count.