As a preview for the WCR All-Stars' second home bout on August 29 (vs Baltimore’s Charm City All-Stars), I talked to some of the skaters on both teams about their thoughts on the big game. Get your tickets at http://windycityrollers.com/tickets/default.aspx and come early to see the Chicago debut of Windy City’s Second Wind (whistle at 5:40pm)

Loco Chanel: How did you get involved in derby?

Flo Shizzle: I heard about derby in my biostats class back in 2005. We were talking about skating and head injuries and someone mentioned that his wife played. I was so thrilled to hear derby was back, as I used to watch it when I was younger. I went directly to the website and to my dismay discovered that I had just missed tryouts, but they were looking for announcers. So I became an announcer for CCRG’s first season. Midway through, I tried out and have been skating ever since! This is my second season with the All-Stars. I just can't get enough of the game-- I love this sport!

The last time our teams met was at last year's Eastern Regionals, and that was Charm's first tournament appearance. Since then, y'all have shot up in your regional ranks, and have become a top national contender. What are the top things that you credit to your team's development?

We have had a very challenging season and as a result our team has bonded and grown which has improved our play. Joy Collision and Dolly Rocket have been our main training and strategy masterminds, which has helped our team immensely.

We have a strong group of women who are now more seasoned players and we’ve gotten very good at utilizing the particular strengths of our various players. Lastly, our team has done more cross training with one another so in addition to skating our ladies have been cycling together or going to the gym which has improved our overall fitness too!

Charm City has had, probably the most aggressive interleague schedule this year with 15 interleague bouts before your Regional tournament, and WCR will be your 6th match-up against a 2008 Nationals team. How do you make this work?

Has it been that many?! [Yes! WCR will be the 15th. They’re very busy ladies.] Wow! I think I lost track somewhere around mid June! Hahaha! Seriously though, Joy and I planned our schedule this way with the goal of making it to Nationals this year. We knew that in order to do that we would have to become more conditioned and bonded as a team and the best way to do that was to play more.

It has been challenging, especially for our moms on the team, but like I said before we are very supportive of one another. If you keep it as fun as possible it doesn't seem as difficult. I would guess most of our girls would say that they don't have a “non-derby life” at the moment, but we all love the game so much that it is hard to walk away even at the most trying moments. We make it work!

Any additional thoughts on next Saturday’s game that you want to share?

I think if you asked any of the girls on the team who played against WCR last year they would say it was one of their favorite games. I think our styles of play are so different that it produced a fast, hard-hitting, high-quality derby match that was fun for the players and the fans. Despite our loss, we felt really good about that game.

We all have a lot of respect for the WCR team and really look forward to having another exciting match with them. Of course we would like to see the tables turned this time in terms of the W and L column! Let's get it on!