Chicago Reader

Game Changer

Ironically, coming off all this success, the All-Stars are at a transitional moment. The average career of a derby skater is three to four years; many talented old-timers have left. And the emergence of the western style has thrown the All-Stars, as well as many other teams, for a loop. To win at nationals, Windy City will have to step back into the role of the scrappy upstart: pissed off, hungry, and batshit-desperate to win.

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Chicago Sun Times

Derby days are coming to Pavilion

Roller derby, anyone? The Windy City Rollers will host the top 12 teams in women's flat-track roller derby in the ''Uproar on the Lakeshore'' WFTDA 2010 championship tournament on Nov. 5-7 at the UIC Pavilion. Tickets ($30 for one-day pass, $75 for weekend pass) are available at www.windycityrollers.com, Ticketmaster and the UIC box office.

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Chicago 3 Media

Windy City Rollers, Uproar on the Lakeshore

The Windy City Rollers will be hosting this year’s top twelve teams in women’s flat track roller derby for “Uproar on the Lakeshore,” the WFTDA 2010 Championship Tournament, Nov. 5-7 at UIC Pavilion, located at 525 S. Racine Ave. Doors open Friday Nov. 5 at 1:30 PM and the first whistle blows at 2:00 PM to start three days of top-shelf roller derby action.

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Examiner

Windy City Rollers to host 2010 Championship: Uproar on the Lakeshore

The Windy City Rollers All-Stars are gearing up and working hard in preparation for facing the top teams in the WFTDA community. When asked about the main focal points of training, [WCR's Jackie Daniels] says "The All-Stars have definitely ramped up their training schedule, including adding practices, adding additional speed and off-skates workouts and practicing on different surfaces/venues. Skaters have been running races, adding gym time and doing 60+ mile charity bike races!"

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Medill Reports

Windy City Rolling to Victory

This ain't your mama's roller derby.  The Windy City Rollers are out to win it all.  Players spill on how the sport evolved from a backroom hobby and what bringing home the national championship would mean for their team.

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Time Out Chicago

Five Things to Do Today: August 21

The Second Wind and the Windy City Rollers All-Stars skaters have been selected from the four home teams to compete during travel season. Squads are a little different. Butt-kicking remains the same.

Chicago Now

In the second match of the night, the Windy City Rollers All Stars took on the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls 5280 Fight Club.  It was an incredibly physical match but it was never close with the Roller Girls dishing out a 151-56 defeat.

Shocka Conduit gave the Belles a 14-0 cushion on her first jam, and Pominatrix scored nine in the eighth. In the ninth, Manic sophomore Zoe Trocious cut the lead to 28-19 by taking advantage of two Belles in the penalty box. With a 5-3 advantage at the start of the tenth, Amphetamine seized lead jam and just as quickly cut the track, handing a powerjam to Conduit, who circled for 14.

For the second time in two bouts Hell’s Belles sharply limited playing time for many of their rookies and sold out to a punishing two-jammer rotation. Missing co-captain Hermione Danger, still out with an injury, Conduit and Deb Autry wore the star for 36 of the game’s 44 jams. Key to the strategy, however, was Pominatrix, who jammed tentatively earlier in the year but spelled Conduit and Autry with aggression, speed, and agility. Pominatrix put on a remarkable show of legerdemain in the 12th jam.  She hopped through blocking to take lead, and then executed a deft inside-outside move to register two grand slams with Ruth Enasia in the penalty box. Enasia stormed back on the track with determination, and despite solid blocking by Autry and Mya Ssault—who played 35 solid jams and led both teams with 26 defensive actions—managed to pick up four. Pominatrix finished with 26 points after not jamming at all in the last bout, and led the Belles with 3.71 points-per-jam.

Up by 24 at the start of the 14th jam, the Belles had roused the crowd to synchronized cheers they’d not heard since retirement cut through the team like a killer virus last June. But with four minutes left in the half, the Manics started leaning forward off their heels. A 13-point jam by Amphetamine cut the Belles’ lead to 14 with four minutes left, Enasia added three more in the 19th, and the half ended with Belles up 63-52.

The two teams scored just six points total through the first four jams of the second half before Conduit, in a display of sheer will, racked up nine in the fifth. Di Richmond trapped a rookie Belle blocker in the seventh and Conduit was sent to the box, setting up Amphetamine for a ten-point jam. The Blue Blur was back in this one, averaging 5.0 points-per-jam, leading Manic scorers with 45 points, and hauling in Player-of-the-Game honors.

Smart jamming by Enasia and Trocious allowed the Manics to inch back into the game, and the two teams battled for three consecutive jams with the Belles clinging to a two-point lead. The Belles were gassed, and penalties mounted; Team Red, with 65% of the game’s majors at the end, couldn’t match the clean play that kept them in it late against the Fury earlier in the month.

When Conduit managed to break through the pack in the 22nd jam with two teammates in the box, it looked like the Belles just might pull it off.  With 3:45 left, however, Conduit was sent off for cutting the track, giving Amphetamine a power jam and a 94-91 lead—the Manics first of the game. An official time out ended with Ssault heading to the dressing room on penalties with under two minutes to play and two more Belles in the box. Trocious grabbed four points and called it, and with 35 seconds to go, down by five, Deb Autry lined up against Ruth Enasia for the season’s last jam.

Seconds later, Autry was heading to the box with a fourth minor, and for the second straight bout, the Belle’s bench watched the final second tick off with the opposition on a powerjam. With the game clock at :00, Enasia rang up ten points as the Manic bench encouraged her to pour it on, a decision that will no doubt leave the Belles simmering until the 2011 season begins.

The Manic Attackers finished the season at 3-3 while the Belles cash out at 0-6. Members of both teams will play in the annual Black/White contest, guest-coached by a couple of happy auction winners who will draft players from each team. That game, on June 5^th, will heat up the Pavilion Skatecourt for the showdown between The Fury and the Double Crossers in the Ivy King Cup Championship.

photo by Gil Leora

The Windy City Rollers All-Stars kicked off their 2010 season on Sunday morning in a closed bout against the North Star Roller Girls’ Supernovas. Windy City shut out North Star 15-0 in the first 5 jams, but the window of opportunity opened for the Supernovas with a 9-0 power jam for Jawbreaker in the sixth jam. WCR’s Varla Vendetta jammed next, putting 14 points unanswered on the board as her pack (All-Star rookies Di Richmond and Sargentina, along with vet Hoosier Mama) kept Supernova jammer Katarina Hit tied up for two minutes, taking Windy City to 29-9 10 minutes in.

North Star and Windy City would trade lead jammer status for the next nine jams, with Windy City only growing their lead a point to 48-27. A 7-0 run by Katarina Hit in jam 17 put the Supernovas in striking distance at 48-34. However, 14 points would be the closest North Star would get for the rest of the game, as WCR put 20 more on the board in the next three jams to close the half 68-37.

The Supernovas started off the second half strong, with Medusa and Jawbreaker getting lead jam back-to-back. Windy City transfer Jackie Daniels changed the momentum in jam 3, securing lead and a quick 5-0. WCR would get lead in the next 8 jams, shutting out NSRG in the process.

During that 44-0 run, WCR rookie Ska Face jammed for the first time against veteran Jawbreaker. Jawbreaker’s aggressive defense racked up enough minors to earn her a trip to the box and Ska got 9-0 on that power jam. Varla Vendetta had the game’s biggest score in the next jam at 18-0.

North Star ended WCR’s run in jam 12 with a quick 4-0 by Roller Vixen, but that still left North Star on the wrong side of 114-47 with under 15 minutes to go. At that point, the Supernova jammers shifted their focus to play defense outside the engagement zone to prevent multiple Windy City passes. Even with this more defensive play, in the last 4 jams of the game, WCR was able to go 27-3 (17 of those points by Shocka Conduit) to a score of 159-59 as time expired.

The WCR All-Stars are in action next weekend, as they face regional rival Madison’s Dairyland Dolls at the BrewHaha. North Star’s Supernovas will be in action next against Carolina and Nashville at June’s ECE.

photo by Gil Leora

UPDATED! When the last drop of sweat had been dropped Saturday night at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago, the Double Crossers had earned a spot in the Windy City Rollers Ivy King Cup Championship game on June 5th. With several key veterans off skates and three blockers playing over 85% of the jams, the Crossers thumped the defending champion Manic Attackers, 121-91. 

 The Double Crossers showed up intending to finish off the Manics and avoid a second-place bottle-neck heading into the last game of the season on May 22nd. With a win, the Manics' route to the championship game would be blocked only the winless Hell’s Belles. The Manics jumped out to an 8-0 lead on slick-looking jams by Beth Amphetamine and Ruth Enasia, but the Crossers crept back to tie the score at 8 in the eighth. In the tenth, Manic jammer Wreck N Shrew was playing tight defense on her Crosser counterpart, Julia Rosenwinkel, when first one and then two Manics were sent to the box. Rosenwinkel cut loose for a grand slam and 4 more before calling it. The Crossers went on a 19-5 run over the next four jams despite some stalwart penalty-killing effort by Amphetamine in the fourteenth.  Di Richmond, in her third season as a Windy City Roller, had more than double the number of offensive and defensive actions, 38, than the second most effective Manic blocker. Increasingly agile in traffic, Richmond shows an ability to move from offense to defense and back again on consecutive strides.  Manic fans have not forgotten Malice in Chains just yet, but Richmond has become the Manic to watch in the pack.

 With the Crossers up 38-13 going into the fifteenth and the crowd growing quiet, Richmond clamped down Crosser jammer Donna Party, allowing Wreck to register a grand slam; Party joined two Crosser blockers in the box and Wreck put up 15 more before the whistle blew four times. Wreck scored 38 points on thirteen jams to lead all Manic scorers, picking up the slack for Zoe Trocious, who was ill over the past couple of weeks and played only sparingly as a blocker in the second half. The Manics cut the Crosser lead to 38-37 in the sixteenth on an athletic jam by Amphetamine, but clogged the penalty box on the next jam, handing Rosenwinkel, the league’s leading scorer, a free pass. The six-year veteran put up 19 before calling it off, and the Crossers went to halftime up 57-39.    

 While the Manics seemed to lose this one in the penalty box, racking up 62% of the bout’s majors and 42 team minutes, the Crossers played with typically astute pack awareness, anchored by three players who never seemed to leave the track--Georgia on Yer Behind, Karmageddon, and Norma Lee Wright. It was Reina Chaos, however, who had a career game, with a remarkable +71 points on 31 jams as a blocker. Rosenwinkel exploited Manic penalties when she could, but she was consistently strong against full-strength blocking as well. She scored  67 total points, taking lead on thirteen of seventeen jams and giving up just 15 points to the opposing jammer. 

 The Manics held the Crossers scoreless for five consecutive jams early in the second half, but they couldn’t make a significant dent in the lead. Playing short-handed much of the second half, the Manics gave up ghost points in 17 jams. Ruth Enasia milked the most out of a power jam in the fifteenth, pulling the Manics to within 10. The Manics filled the box again in the nineteenth, however, and Indy Cent iced the win with a fifteen-point jam.

 In the last regular-season game of 2010 on May 22nd, the Manic Attackers will face a Hell’s Belles team that appears to be catching fire just as the season flames out. The Manics will be looking to avoid following a championship season with a losing record, while the Belles hope to dodge a winless season. The Double Crossers look forward to meeting the Fury, pitting Rosenwinkel against Super Freak Kola Loka. Less than 10 points separate these two jammers at the top of the league scoring standings, and both teams are 4-1. Each is assured a place in the championship game, but there are too many chips on the table at the end of the regular season for either team to check.

photo by Gil Leora

UPDATED! 

This past bout marked the beginning of the second half of the Windy City Rollers home-league season. The Fury lined up against the Manic Attackers at the UIC Pavilion looking to avenge an opening-day loss in which Ruth Enasia ran wild. Since January, however, The Fury has risen like a supercell on a hot Kansas afternoon, and when it was all over, the Fury had all but blown out dreams of a Manic return to the championship, 110-85.

 The Manics looked like they might give the Fury a game, jumping out to a quick 8-point lead after two jams and sustaining at least a ten-point advantage across much of the first fifteen minutes. Beth Amphetamine leveraged a penalty on Go-Go Hatchet in the sixth jam and split Tori Adore and Sonya Mouthshut on her way to seven points. In the eleventh, she put up 8 more when Jackie Daniels was sent off for cutting the track. 
 
Unable to spring the dangerous Kola Loka early on, the Fury lined up for the fourteenth jam down two skaters and looking for a spark. It came in the form of a fifteen-point jam by Ska Face, who was able to exploit a cutting the track major on Beth Amphetamine. The Fury seized momentum, mounting a 36-0 run over a seven-minute span late in the half behind superior offensive blocking led by Tori Adore. The Fury finished the game with five players in double-digit offensive actions. Most impressive might have been third-year player Ivy Sedation, who made the most of her 9 jams with eleven assists. Hatchet, Sargentina, and Red Zeppelin repeatedly slammed the door on Manic jammers before the lightning bolts gave the star to Amy Nonamey for first time this season; she too failed to score.

The Manics seemed to get untracked in the seventeenth. Di Richmond, who anchored Manic defense all night along with pivot Rose Feratu, held up Ska Face, allowing Enasia to pick up lead jammer. Wreck N Shrew laminated Jackie Daniels and Mo Vengeance supplied a well-practiced whip to propel Enasia to two of the jam’s six points. The two teams went to the locker rooms with the Fury up 59-39.

 Fans seemed to find the half-time circus act as enjoyable as the unfolding bout. Macha--a remarkably durable pair of young women who might just as well be called “Who Needs Weights?”--cleaned and jerked each other for several minutes to an appreciative crowd. As one skater put it afterward, “Doing lunges is hard enough without some girl crawling up your back.”

 The two teams traded penalty trouble early in the second half, and while the Fury didn’t look particularly explosive, they held the Manics scoreless on 8 of the first twelve jams to generate a thirty-nine point lead with 11:35 left in the game. Ska Face rang up another ten in the fourteenth jam, slipping around Beth Amphetamine for the final points. Amphetamine played valiantly in this game as a blocker, and Ruth Enasia scored 14 of her 34 total on the next to last jam of the game, leaving the final score closer than second-half play indicated. 

 The Fury are now tied at 3-1 with the Double Crossers at the top of the standings. The Fury look to increase their all important points-for total in a tune-up against the winless Hell’s Belles on May 1st before facing the Crossers on May 22nd. Interleague-transfer jammers Ska Face (45) and the remarkably fluid Jackie Daniels (25) have partnered with Fury veteran Kola Loka (35) to form an awesome threesome; the three scored 105 of the Fury’s 110 points. Ska Face collected HOWCOOL.COM Player of the Game Honors and sounded at game’s end like the Fury intends to keep pushing their three-game winning streak. The announcer, Mouthpiece, asked her if the team would go all the way to the championship. “It’s already done,” she said.

photo by Gil Leora

UPDATED! Resurrection is a dominant theme this time of year, and having been buried by the Double Crossers in January and the Fury in February, Hell’s Belles were hoping to roll back the stone on the 2011 season this past Saturday night at Chicago’s UIC Pavilion.  But Manic Attacker blockers had other plans for the rookie Belles.   Four Manic pack-masters—including Amy Nonamey , Mo Vengeance, Di Richmond, and Ada Hatelace—combined for 82% of the Manic’s defensive actions.  Nonamey celebrated the Kiester season with six jammer knock-downs, showing one red jammer to her seat multiple times.   When it was over, the Manics had pulled the shroud over the Belles, 121-59. Many of the Manic points came from the third and fourth jammers; Zoe Trocious (35) and Wreck N Shrew (36) consistently turned out short, single-digit jams all night.  While Wreck sat in the box with a major in the game’s third jam, the team’s enforcer, Amy Nonamy, punished Belle jammer Zombea Arthur.  Wreck jumped out of the box, slipped past the creeping pack, and the Manics were on top to stay.  In the middle of the first half, as the crowd begin pushing into the stadium’s upper deck for the second time this season, Trocious pushed the lead to 38-5 on the sole double-digit Manic jam.

 Despite the lopsided score, this was the most competitive half of the night.  For the first time this season, Belle jammers routinely fought through opposing blockers to force call-offs or put up points; the two teams went to the line 25 times in the first thirty minutes.   Manic ace Beth Amphetamine looked frustrated at times, scoring just eighteen points in the game despite taking 9 lead jams.  While speed allowed the Manics to control most of the quick jams whether they had the lead or not, Shocka Conduit kept the Belles in it at the half by scoring 17 points on power jams in the seventeenth and twenty-fifth.  The two teams left the floor after thirty minutes with the Manics up 46-27.

 The Belles cut the lead to 17 just minutes into the second half; with both teams down two skaters, Mya SSault blanketed Manic jammer Trocious, springing Arthur for two points.  The Manics went on a 32-7 run over the next fifteen minutes, however, punctuated by an 8-point jam by Trocious.  While Manic jammers had just 3 double-digit jams all night, the Blue Blockers dominated, limiting the Belles to zero points on 13 of their second-half jams.  Deb Autry put up eleven points in the eighteenth jam with help from Ssault, Bloody Elle, and Loco Chanel, but the Manics nailed the game down with 29 points in the last two regulation jams.  A grimacing Wreck, who was slow to get up from a collision with Bloody Elle several minutes earlier, scored ten and Ruth Enasia logged the game’s last nineteen on a pack of Belles who had no more to give.

 Although again doubled in points, the winless Belles continue to show monthly improvement on defense.  Scrappy Memphis transfer Bloody Elle had a huge impact in her first game, making each of the rookies around her better in the pack, and plugging a hole left by Dinah Party, who was injured in February and did not play.   Shocka Conduit was stellar on defense, a performance she will need to repeat for the Belles to be competitive down the stretch.  And Mya Ssault—who played only sparingly last year on a heavily veteran team—is making up for lost time; she played more jams than any other Belle and left it all on the floor. 

 Manic co-captains Amphetamine and Enasia will rise to meet the challenge of Fury speed when the two teams lock up on April 10th. The two had to be pleased by the way Wreck and Trocious—who took HOWTO.COM player-of-the-game honors—picked up the slack.  The winless Belles will look to sneak up on a wounded Double Crossers team. 

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!

Loco Chanel: This is your third year with the Windy City Rollers. Can you compare and contrast the feelings of going into this season vs seasons prior?

Di Richmond: Last season was totally magical. I wouldn't have wanted it to take any other path.  I just can't get the thought out of my head that we're going to have 6 games where we are announced as defending champions. Champions, that sounds awesome doesn't it?

Anyway, that being said, I'm excited to see how well the team works together this year. I think we've got generally good team cohesion and some great newbs. We're lining up for our total domination and that feels nice.

LC: Please describe your sports background prior to joining the Windy City Rollers.

LC: You're responsible for the sparklefication of numerous WCR skater helmets (including mine). How many have you done so far? Whose was your favorite? How did you get the idea to sparklefy helmets in the first place?

LC: What's been your favorite WCR memory/ experience thus far?

Questions answered.

On Saturday, January 30^th , a tighter, more focused Double Crossers team steamrolled Hell’s Bells 171-48 and the Manics tamped down The Fury 101-83. A crowd reported by Derby News Network at 3,977—the largest to watch modern roller derby in Chicago—began rising into the UIC Pavilion’s upper deck before the 6:00 p.m. start.

Double Crossers vs. Hell’s Belles

Perhaps not since the summer of 1998, when the six-time champion Chicago Bulls splintered in the off-season, has Chicago sports seen a red and black transition like Hell’s Belles are going through now. Just this past June 20^th, the Belles were tied with the Manic Attackers in the Ivy King Cup championship game with eleven minutes to play, scrapping for their second consecutive league crown. But gone now are a who’s who of  past stars—Megan Formor, Varla Vendetta, Belle Diablo and Athena DeCrime. On Saturday night, the Belles managed just 17 offensive blocks and 1.41 points per jam in the 123-point loss.

The Crossers broke out to an 18-0 lead, showing dominant blocking at the front of the pack that would hamper the Belles all night. In the bout’s fifth jam, Loco Chanel  held up Crosser jammer Reina Chaos, positioning Deb Autry to cruise when Georgia on Yer Behind was sent off with a major. Autry circled for 14 points, but the red and black would not be in it again. Two jams later, the Belles set up camp in the sin bin, where they would spend a remarkable 46 team minutes. Indycent rang up 15 point while Chanel circled the track waiting for a seat to open up in the box. Led by Chanel’s 20 total penalties and eight minutes in the box, HB repeatedly put itself at disadvantage with elbow and forearm play.

The first half ended with the Crossers up 86-28, both teams giving way to half-time favorite the Power of Cheer, who appear to have spent the off-season muscling up. Mattrick Swayze and crew ripped through its most dynamic and athletic set to date; more power, less cheer, but great fun as usual.

The second half picked up where the first left off. In the fourth jam, with the Crossers up by 61, jammer Nina Millimeter went on defense, picking at Belle rookie Zombea Arthur like a tiger barb right off the jam whistle. Two jams later, just seven minutes into the second half, the Crossers slipped over the century mark as Georgia on Yer Behind, Donna Party and crew repeatedly slammed the door on Belle jammers. The crowd stayed with the Belles, however, erupting into a roar when Autry and Shocka Conduit took lead in the seventh and twelfth jams. Down but not out, the Belles sent Gotham Girls Roller Derby (New York) transfer Dinah Party to the line in the final jam and its least experienced rookies into the pack. Party juked her way to lead jammer. She put zero points on the board but scored big with her struggling teammates by sucking pro-Belles cheers out of the crowd.

It was likely a career night for several Crossers. Five different silent assassins, led by Julia Rosenwinkel, Nina Millimeter and Indycent, racked up double-digit jams. Rosenwinkel, the Crosser captain, looks considerably faster and stronger than she did in 2009 and led all scorers with 50, a remarkable 8.33 points per jam.

One had to feel for Shocka Conduit, the league’s 2009 point champion and now the Belles' sole travel-team member. Conduit drew heavy attention all night from Crosser blocking; she had just 9 points and too few assists from a roster including seven skaters playing their first bout—Arthur, Brawla Poundstone, Payne D. Spencer, Pominatrix, Sue Perduper and Nancy Pagan, who made the most of her opportunity by blind-siding Crosser veteran Donna Party to the Skate Court late in the second half. Deb Autry, one of last year’s early draftees, appears to have made great strides during the off-season. Zombea Arthur, although she did not score in six attempts, skated opportunistically and will find holes as the Belles' blocking improves. The Belles' other heavy-rotation jammer, Hermione Danger, who has both burst and heart, must cut penalty minutes to help on offense. With the vastly improved Fury on the schedule in just three weeks, the young Belles will need to grow up fast.

Final score: Double Crossers 171, Hell's Belles 48

Manic Attackers vs. The Fury

In the off-season, roller girls take up a second sport—drafting players for the new season. How it works is all guess-work for the outsider, but there are clearly winners and losers. Just ask Hell’s Belles. And in a year like this one, when so many four-year players chose home-league retirement, the stakes were sky-high. The Fury came away from the draft season with two huge scores, increasing team speed exponentially with the return of Kola Loka and the acquisition of Grand Rapids transplant Jackie Daniels. On paper, their match-up with the Manic Attackers looked like it could be a preview of the 2010 Ivy King Cup. But the Manics, last year’s champs, equaled Fury speed, decisively won the penalty battle, and looked long on endurance in their 101-83 win.

The Fury’s Loka and game MVP Beth Amphetamine of the Manics put on a speed clinic, lining up against each other with some regularity throughout the night. Amphetamine scored just 19 points in the game, but played a crucial role in neutralizing Loka’s velocity. The two skated to a 0-0 draw on the first jam, but the Manics opened a 19-6 lead after the first ten minutes. Loka finally got loose in the game’s eighth jam and scored her first four points. With the score 19-11 and 17:50 left in the first half, the next jam ended with Jackie Daniels putting her shoulder just under Wreck N Shrew’s chin. The game stopped while Wreck thought about getting up, and though she went on to score the Manics’ final points, she could be seen after the game with an ice bag fashionably draped over her right collarbone.

The Manics opened up a 17-point lead, but The Fury began to chip away during a furious thirteenth set. Loka picked up lead jammer and then traded short penalty stints with Amphetamine, who shot out of the box and appeared to be headed for a scoring pass when Daniels and Go-Go Hatchet snagged her in a perfectly executed sandwich. Loka took advantage of a dispersed pack and cut the lead by four.  Daniels registered six on a pretty run with three minutes left, and in the half’s final jam, Loka burst past Fury blockers like they were moving backwards, taking lead jammer in turn two. The half ended with the Manics leading 39-33.

The Fury kept up the pressure as the second half began, and in the fourth jam, Daniels executed a deft cut to take advantage of a block on Amy Nonamey and momentarily take the lead away.  Mo Vengeance was able to hit her scoring pass, however, and end the jam with the Manics still in control, 46-43. Nonamey—who in just her second full season is emerging as one of the league’s most fearsome hitters—found redemption two jams later by crushing Ska Face, ending her ten-point jam. Loka would tie the score at 55, and then Hatchet later at 64, but The Fury would not lead again.

In the twelfth jam, Ruth Enasia, who led all scorers with 48, ducked under Sonya Mouthshut while Di Richmond and Wreck N Shrew tied up The Fury’s Shannanigan to open up a ten-point lead.

Discipline served the Manics well over the next ten minutes of play as Fury skaters were waved into the penalty box. Daniels and Loka were each sent off while jamming inside the eight-minute mark, and the Manics stretched their lead to 29. Loka, however, never looked spent, and if her year-long leave has had a negative impact, it will take interleague play to prove it. With 2:49 left in the game, she ran down the lead jammer, Enasia, forcing her to call it off. And then, albeit against the light end of the Manic bench, she put up 15 of her 31 points on the final jam, her 18^th of the night.

Final score: Manic Attackers 101, The Fury 83

The Manic Attackers will square off against the Double Crossers on February 21^st, while The Fury will face a scrappy Hell’s Belles squad with nothing to lose. Will that be a great time? Four thousand people can’t be wrong.