Bout Recap - May 30, 2009

Hell's Belles vs Manic Attackers

Hell’s Belles entered the final game of the home season in control of their own destiny and were widely expected to take a 5-1 record into the Ivy King Cup Championship on June 20th. A win against the Manic Attackers would put them alone atop the league standings and position the Double Crossers to jump into the title game with a win over The Fury. The only team never to play for the WCR championship, the Manics, held a 3-14 record over the past three years. History favored the Belles. On this night, however, history took a lesson from Ying O’Fire, who scored 19 points on the twelfth jam of the second half and gave the Manics a lead they would not relinquish in route to a 123-112 victory marked by huge hits and heated tempers.

The bout began the way many might have expected, with the Belles’ Shocka Conduit slicing through the pack to pick up lead jammer before she completed her first lap. She scored nine points on the opening jam and picked up 14 more on the fourth. With the Belles up by 24 going into the fifth jam, it looked like the door might slam shut on the Manics early as it has so often in the past. But Ruth Enasia took advantage of a major penalty on Belles jammer Athena DeCrime and a huge push from Helsa Wayton to cut the lead back to nine, and two jams later Malice with Chains leveled DeCrime to spring Beth Amphetamine past the penalty-troubled Belles. Despite devastating hits on Belles jammers—by Di Richmond, Wreck N' Shrew, and Amy NoNamey on successive jams—the Belles began to pull away again. When Ying O’Fire slid across the line back into play after a hit and was sent off for cutting the track in the sixteenth jam, Conduit poured it on against the jammerless Manics, opening up a 40 point lead that quieted Manic fans just before the half.

The Manics began the second half with the message that they were not going to roll over. Beth Amphetamine quickly got lead and called it before the Belles could score, and Ying O’Fire, at the end of the second jam, pulled up short on Varla Vendetta to play jammer-on-jammer defense. Vendetta crumpled onto the center of the track and left the game with a broken and bloody nose. The Belles pushed their margin back to about 40 points over the next two jams, and when Belles blocker Harmadillo took a run at Ying in turn two, O’Fire gave her the single-finger salute. And while Vendetta was receiving medical attention on the Belles' bench, Momentum slipped into a Manictard. For nine consecutive jams, the Attackers shut down Belles scorers, including the league’s leading point-maker, Athena DeCrime, who struggled for every one of the 20 points she picked up that night.

Down by a dozen at the start of the twelfth jam, Ying O’Fire became Ying on Fire, racking up 19 points against Belles mistakes. On the next jam, with fans of both teams on their feet, Belle jammer Megan Formor was sent to the box and Ruth Enasia racked up 19 points against overmatched Belles blockers May R. Daley and Mona Lott. As the jam ended, Attacker fans—including six bare-chested dudes using their torsos to spell out MANICS—rocked the UIC Pavilion with chants of “RUTH, RUTH, RUTH!”

With Hell’s Belles down 17 points and the game on the line, Varla Vendetta, her nose plugged with gauze, lined up against Malice with Chains for the last jam. Seventeen is a number well within the grasp of Vendetta, the five-year veteran who worked so hard this season to come back from a separated shoulder. But she could cut the lead by only 10 before the final whistle, and as she again took assistance for her bleeding nose on the floor behind the Belles' bench, the Manics flopped around in a roiling dog pile in front of the scorer’s table, finally headed to the Ivy King Cup.

Final score: Manic Attackers 123, Hell's Belles 112

Double-Crossers vs The Fury

Looking loose and confident in their pace line during Introductions, the Double Crossers circled the track while their leading scorer, Peg Legs, out due to illness, cheered them on in street clothes. The Assassins in Black began this game painfully behind in the tie-breaker category—points scored/points allowed—and needed a win to get into the Ivy King Cup Championship game. The Fury, however, not to be denied their first win of the season, took a 24-12 lead in the eighth jam of the game and never gave it up. Drawing on the finesse of Eva Dead, the jaw-dropping agility of Yvette YourMaker, and punishing defense supplied by Tori Adore and Go-Go Hatchet, the Fury prevailed 93-87.

Both teams played solid defense through the first fifteen minutes, The Fury using four jammers and the Crossers using five. Up by three, 24-21, at the start of the eleventh jam, the Women in Orange put YourMaker on the jam line against the Crosser’s Blossom Bruiso. While Fury blocking tied up Blossom and the refs tied up Crosser blockers with penalties, Yvette lapped two Assassin blockers to pick up 14 points. Following a time out, Riley Coyote—who has excelled since moving from the Manics after the end of last season—picked up nine. Both teams fought off penalties with The Fury in front by ten until the seventeenth jam of the half. Crosser’s jammer Nina Millimeter was sent to the box and Sonya Mouthshut fought tough defense by Hoosier Mama, Julia Rosenwinkel, and Sassy Squash to pick up five points.

Two jams later, Sassy went down in heavy traffic just past the jam line, twisting across the inside line while crying out in pain. As skaters knelt and the crowd watched, quiet and intense, Squash’s skates were removed and she was helped off the track. YourMaker, who was as large a force on defense as offense, took the steam out of Blossom on the last jam of the half with an enormous hit, and the period ended with The Fury up 48-41.

Fury jammers widened the lead to 30 points in the first five jams of the second half while Tori Adore and Go-Go Hatchet neutralized Crosser jammers. Nina Millimeter outskated Eva Dead in the sixth jam to pick up nine points, and in the following jam Hoosier Mama scored five when Yvette went down with a skate malfunction. Several Manic Attackers, eager for a Fury win, raced across the track with skates of all sizes; YourMaker finished the game wearing a mismatched pair, continuing to jam in rotation. The two teams battled each other evenly for the next ten minutes. With Peg Legs out, Hoosier Mama jammed more often than she has this year; on three of her shifts in a row, the line that echoed so often through the old Cicero Stadium rang out over the loudspeakers, “Your lead jammer, Hooooosier Mama!” But going into the last five minutes of the half, the Crossers scored just four points in three jams, and The Fury answered with the same, sustaining its 18-point lead.

In the eighteenth jam, Blossom Bruiso picked herself off the floor twice and cut the Fury’s lead to ten, and with 1:29 left, the Crossers put their chips on Riley Coyote; she broke the pack and scored four points, but with 45 seconds left, Go-Go Hatchet sealed the Fury’s first win of the season with a bone-crushing hit. While all four teams shook hands and hugged, the fans filed out, leaving the orange seats of the UIC Pavilion looking brighter than they have all year.

Final score: The Fury 93, Double Crossers 87

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