Once again the Derby Helper staff was unable to travel to a WFTDA Regional thanks to one silly joke about a "skate bomb" and the terrorist No-Fly list. Fortunately for us, Le CorBoozyay of the Bay Area Derby Girls hadn't ticked off the Homeland Security Office and was gracious enough to cover Derby On The Rocks for us. She might not quite have the whole "journalistic impartiality" thing down but she did meet our most important criteria in that she was willing to work for free. Enjoy!
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DAY I
When I got off the plane, I immediately felt woozy from the mile-high Denver altitude. Or was it the bloody mary? So I got a little lost and a little more tipsy. By the time I made it to Bladium, B.A.D. was about to engage in a vicious battle for the ability to battle –again- to go to Nationals. With a 69-54 B.A.D. at the half, I thought they’d pull out of fifth to beat Rat City. A valiant struggle, Jane Hammer took a couple of gnarly spills thanks to a double-pulled muscle injury, and the B.A.D. Golden Girls’ jammers all taking enough trips to the box to allow Wile E. Peyote, Meg My Day and Anya Heels to knock around B.A.D blockers like pinballs. Still, B.A.D. maintained their lead until the very last jam, proving how tenacious a grasp on the lead in this sport can be—Astronaughty and Juliet Bravo toed the back line, and the Rat took the lead and Astro took the box. Bravo got three points to stay ahead and it was over.
The next bout was the Mile High Club against the ACDG Scarlets. Ow, ow, o wow. MHC annihilated ACDG, who didn’t score until MHC already hit almost 120 points, when Go Go Gidget finally Got Got through the pack. Diesel was the first ACDG player to get booted from the game because of low blows. A triple pirouette and she was outta there. ACDG kept up their sassy flashy attitude the whole bout, dancing and smiling and still putting in their best shot, even though they consistently played at less than a 1/10th of the Mile High’s score.
Rocky Mountain Roller Girls played against the purple Portland princesses, the Wheels of Justice, and RMRG rocked the scary. They sported several sets of painted faces, with Psycho Babble’s creepy Joker mug constantly grinning when she’d trample several Rose City blockers as RMRG slowly began to eliminate the unicorns from play. At the last jam, it looked close, but Frida Beater got the lead jammer call and the Denver home crew nearly lost their minds with joy.
You can look the scores up on DNN if it’s really that important. I figure, why be redundant? I’d also like to briefly rant about the $6 tall boys of PBR I had to buy that night, and the crappiest after party I’ve ever been to, replete with sticky floors and maybe five people who were actually even AT the bout. Luckily the seedy hotel housing the Rockbar is on the same street as my buddy’s house who I was crashing at, so we just went back to the kitchen and drank Budweiser for free.
DAY II
Because of all the beers and whiskey to drown my sorrows of the B.A.D., (and the $7 bottomless mimosas at the Irish Snug), we didn’t roll into Bladium until 1 the next day, where B.A.D. was pretty much warming the penalty box and Pikes Peak was slowly roaming the rink in acid trip pink and green uniforms. Nock Nock ruled it through the pack consistently, scoring 20 points in an early jam. After the half, B.A.D. realized was a horrendous strategy box-warming is (box-stomping, on the other hand…) and Burly Bot and Nock Nock began racking up the points, double-tripling Pikes Peak’s score. It was total domination in a consolation bout, kind of like winning the Special Olympics but less retarded and more drunk and disorderly.
Then, the unicorns and the Pegasus’s battled on the rink. The unicorns trampled the flying ponies, Cadillac ruling it with like five million points in the first half. ACDG put up another valiant fight and didn’t get ejected from the game – and they boosted their incoming ranking from #10 to #8. They are slowly evolving from a dance team on rollerskates into some real scary players. I like them because California’s rockin’ at goin’ gold, and they basically ruled the Red Lion that night – don’t challenge ACDG to a wrestling match, because those bitches will strangle you.
Oly vs. Rat City was pretty awesome. The Rat City chicks got the brains beat out of them but put up a good fight, staying 30 points close by in almost every jam. The jams were vicious, the blockers so effective the first 3 jams got called off at 0-0 because there were solid walls up ahead. X-Khan made some gallant attempts with a 15-0 jam at one point, but by the end of the game, Rat City had to keep fighting for Nationals, and Oly got their spot guaranteed by this bout.
Denver vs. Denver! Holy moly. What a grudge match – this is a match with sisters switching teams and the MHC pretending to be the WNBA with their birth names on their jerseys. DNN has like, the longest review of this bout – it was ping ponging back and forth and it was total chaos. DeRanged basically does not subscribe to the laws of physics, which should be totally against the rules, in fact, after I write this up I’m going to write to the WFTDA and suggest they add The Laws of Gravity to the rule book. At the very end of the bout, the clocks (which never seemed to synch up) ruined something. There was a minute left on the jam clock, but as the period clock expired, the bleachers and the floor around the track rushed the track, fans eager to slap some hands. Then the refs did their zebra dance in the center for awhile, trying to figure out how to call this in an Official way—I guess the best they came up with was “unsafe condition on the track,” and RMRG pulled their butts up from 8th place into 2nd. Though it’s sort of bunk, because I think the Denver teams invited everyone up to the mountains so they’d have the high altitude advantage.
The Doubletree Hotel smells like tuna, according to Rose City, so instead we hit the whiskey, and then hit the showers and got some well-needed zzzz’s so we could make it in time to see our B.A.D. Golden Girls whomp some Duke City booty.
DAY III
Bacon and beer for breakfast, hopped on the shuttle and watched B.A.D. roll out to Ms. Behavin’s “Hit That B%^&h with a Bottle,” dancing and booty bumping instead of the typical rollergirl “roll call with stunts.” On the very first jam, the B.A.D. pack gets held up in the middle, and Astro returns to her day job in the penalty box. She gets back in, starts racking up points and Kamikaze Kim, true to her name, tries to hit Astronaughty but slams to the ground. A couple of jams go by with the most ferocious B.A.D. jammers not scoring a single point on Duke’s lead. After a T.O. Hammer finally picks up a point for B.A.D., closing the gap. Muffin keeps bumping B.A.D. jammers out the track, making them ineligible for lead. Belle Right Hooks basically can block an entire pack on her own, but with the help of Taxi Scab, B.A.D. starts to throw those Duke jammers to the ground. It sort of keeps going with this back and forth –everyone’s playing yet another fierce game. Demanda basically can control an entire Duke pack on her own, and B.A.D. basically shuts the gap at the half with some serious power jam play. B.A.D. squeaks at the half with a 3 point lead. In the second half, B.A.D. blockers suddenly start getting yanked out for hitting Kamikaze Kim waaay off the pack – 20 calls abound. More strategic play, then Lusty and Friskie get sent to the box for some out of play action. And Taxi tries to take Muffin out, and is sent to hang out with Lusty and Friskie. Demanda is alone in the pack, but manages to keep it from coming to a total grinding halt, though Kamikaze Kim just starts spinning around the track, racking up those Duke points. Liza Machete starts up alone in the next jam and holds Tronsexual back for a while, throwing her to the ground as Burly Bot whizzes by. B.A.D. is nearly 30 points behind Duke with 2:10 on the clock. Meep Meep has left the game. Nock Nock scores 15 points and there is a T.O. and one last jam. Muffin is boxed and Burly Bot begins a grand slam jam. She pulls in the critical last two points in the last 30 seconds and B.A.D. keeps its standing at #5.
Rat City, struggling now not to drown, puts up a decently valiant fight against Denver for third place. Denver basically doubled their score and Rat City, being the poopy pantsed derby players they are, kept getting their powerjammers put in the box. Heather Juska held strong for the first three jams (her extension due to ending the first two in the penalty box). Whatever, I think Denver couldn’t lose any games this tournament because they seriously had a mile-high home advantage. Rat City will be stuck at home for the first time ever during Nationals. Nee ner nee ner.
The last game of the night was a savage battle between the RMRG Fight Club and the Costra Nostra Oly Rollers. DeRanged, as usual, killed it on her jams, but RMRG didn’t have enough power to overcome the mighty Oly, who play without penalties but didn’t have the offensive power to really crush RMRG’s defensive stance, which kept them back at 4, maybe 5 points a jam. Oly wins and gets to skip the opening credits of Nationals to get crushed by Gotham in the second round, while RMRG gets to play Houston in the first.
Though I was birthed in the Middle West, I will heretoforth put in that the West Coast is probably the Best Coast, because that tourney was off the wall and it’s taken me half a day to muster up the courage to look over my drunken phone notes & notes written hastily on the back of Hella Rad with a Pikes Peak pen. If anyone knows what a Rollercrawl is, please let me know, because I underlined it three times and drew a star next to it on the cover of Hellarad and I have no idea why and it seems like it could be a total lark.
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Thanks Le CorBoozyay! Derby Helper appreciates your insight into what was overall the most competitive and surprising regional tournament of the four. Also, we suggest that you not go to Seattle without an armed posse.
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