Derby!

This Saturday, Atomicate, Atomicate's sweetie Pants and I went to the Dulles Sportsplex to check out the DC Allstars vs the Charm City Allstars. I've been itchin' to see some skating, and Charm City's got two of the best skaters around, Joy Collision and Dolly Rocket. (And a host of other amazing chicas: Mibbs Breakin Ribs, Coach Ballbricker, Frenzy Lohan, Lady Quebeaum...) Charm City's also just one of the strongest leagues around, and DC's pretty new, so basically I wanted to see if DC could put any points on the board at all. 

And they did! The final score was DC 21, Charm City 205. So yeah, it was a rout... still tho', any time DC even got close to scoring a point, the home crowd went wild. In some ways, I was like, wow, why would DC ever play Charm City... they've got to have known they'd get spanked. But, speaking as a skater who skated in her team's very first bout against the Charm City Night Terrors (we got spanked also) there's something awesome about skating a bout you just can't win. You learn a lot very quickly. 

From what we could see, it looked like Charm City formed a strong wall in the front of the pack. DC's blockers were focused on trying to stop the Charm City jammer, and then couldn't seem to get up to help their jammer in the front of the pack. If they had focused only on breaking the wall at the top of the pack and getting their jammer through, they might have narrowed the point spread a little. It's easy to say, of course, and hard to do. 

I love watching Joy Collision skate. As a jammer she seems to just kind of float through the pack; the real fun is watching her block. She can trap a jammer at the back of the pack just with a continuous booty block, and then when the time is right she sends them flying out of bounds. She makes it all look completely effortless. It was also fun to see Joy Collision and Dolly Rocket take hits - they wobble but they just don't fall down. 

DC rallied in the second half, and started breaking walls, so their jammers could get through. There was also some AMAZING skating from a couple of DC jammers - I noticed Meatball just fly past the pack on the outside a couple of times, which takes a great deal of speed and endurance. 

In general everyone played nice, although there were multiple times when both jammers were in the penalty box and the jam had to be reset. I know Charm City has mentored DC, and you could tell there was a lot of good feeling amongst the skaters. 

Atomicate is slowly getting seduced by the lure of ze derby. I'm not sure if Pants liked it or not. He's a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a cool t-shirt, that one. I had fun, so... yay for derby!