Last weekend was Sick Town’s last bout of the season, Monster S*M*A*S*H! We played the Cherry City Derby Girls (CCDG), of Salem, OR. Earlier this season, we played CCDG and lost by a fair margin. This time, we couldn’t lose! We knew they’d been to our most recent bout, watching our strategy, analyzing our skaters, trying to figure out how to beat us. They even had it all on video! As for us, we hadn’t really seen them play since our last bout together. We didn’t really know what to expect. So our plan – go out HARD!
My captain put me in for the first line-up of the night. It was amazing! My team helped me to score 30 points in the first jam – that’s a great score for one jam. Early in the jam, the opposing jammer got sent to the penalty box. So my blockers slowed the pack down to a crawl, making it easy for me to lap the track over and over again. The other team was so distracted trying to get out of our traps and trying to get to the front, they didn’t have much time to keep an eye on me. It was really fabulous teamwork. I don’t smile much while playing, but I had a grin from ear to ear for the whole two minutes!
My coach, Izabell Ringer, recently told me to drop my shoulder when a blocker is coming in for a hit. If done correctly, this a) makes you more stable by getting low, b) presents an illegal target zone for the blocker, and c) allows you to push off the blocker, giving yourself a boost forward! I kept this in mind during the bout, and as you can see in the montage above, it worked! Beautifully!
The S*M*A*S*H Unit really codified our teamwork for this bout. You can see our team captain, Back Alley Bruiser, working with D-Train in unison to push the opposing jammer, Sybil Riot, to the inside. We really made each other proud at this bout, proving that we are, in fact, a team – not just 13 women skating together.
So the final outcome? TOTAL VICTORY!!! Sick Town won the bout 208-94. Cherry City, however, won the after-party, hands down! Those ladies were so awesome, I can’t wait to skate with them again.