UPDATED! The two winning teams from Bout 1, the Double Crossers and the Manic Attackers, went head to head in the first game of Bout 2. With the score close for much of the game, the Crossers' solid pack control brought them to victory.

If Round One of the 2010 Windy City Rollers home-league season featured speed on speed when the Manic Attackers lined up against the Fury, this past Sunday night, February 21, 2010, the Double Crossers kept their game against the Manics turning at 33 1/3. In a game with just one jam total over ten points, The Double Crossers  shut down the Manics 105-84 and blocker Sassy Squash grabbed Player of the Game.
The Double Crossers, who now at 2-0 sit atop the standings, took a page from the Denver playbook and slowed down the Manic attack. Able to sustain a thick, deliberate pack for much of the first half and the game’s last ten minutes, the Crossers repeatedly left the Manics looking flat. In the seventh jam, a low-block major on Beth Amphetamine created a power jam situation for the XXer’s IndyCent, who finished with 26 points.  The Black and Silver trapped Wreck N Shrew and added to the lead that they would maintain through most of the first 30 minutes.

With seven minutes left in the half, Zoe Trocious ignited the Manics with a pretty jam during which she burst past game MVP Sassy Squash and made Nina Millimeter whiff. The precocious Trocious led five of her eight jams. Amphetamine fought off wicked defense by Georgia on Yer Behind and Norma Lee Wright to pick up five on the next jam, and the Manics were within 4.  Di Richmond laid a trio of big hits on XXer captain Julia Rosenwinkel in the next jam, and with help from Rose Feratu, Ruth Enasia put the Manics ahead going into the last jam of the half, with the score 38-36 at halftime.

Enasia started the second half where she left off, putting up ten on the first jam. Wreck and pivot Ada Hatelace bottled up Indycent and forced a backblock major, setting up a Trocius power jam and five more points. With Indycent in the box, Amphetamine racked up two grand slams in the third; just three jams into the second half, up 63-46, the Manics looked like they’d figured out the Crossers. On the fifth and seventh jams, however, Manic penalties revealed the potential of the slow-down game. With just two Manic blockers on the track, XXer jammer Donna Party cut their lead to eight points.  When Enasia was sent off a few minutes later, Millimeter ran up a 20-point jam while her blockers rode the brakes. The Manics would briefly pull within five at the 12-minute mark, but Squash and Donna Party rolled wide and slow from there, creating a wall of black that Manic jammers couldn’t bust.

Squash, the big and increasingly nimble third-year veteran, wore the Denver boot well. Playing opposite a trio of the best defensive blockers in the league—Wreck, Di Richmond, and Amy Nonamey—Squash loomed large, both plugging holes and blowing them open. She registered 15 defensive and nine offensive actions, including seven jammer force-outs.

The March 27th bout shapes up like a Spring Halloween—Black on Orange. The Crossers-Fury match-up will pit the two deepest, if not best, teams in the league. In its two games so far, the Crossers have used six different jammers, and mostly sat their rookies; Riley Coyote, who added both muscle and speed last year, has yet to skate this season.  The Fury will blow in with a roster packed with travel-team aces, A-List transfers, and home-league veterans. Scary!