Saturday night was a derby bout. Our first bout as a WFTDA team against another WFTDA team. We were pumped, and ready to win.
Then, the night before, ticket sales started spiking. And I mean, they were just pouring in on line. We sold out at the coffee shop, and we started freaking out a bit. Was this actually going to be a sell out?
Um. Yea. Total sell out. We actually had to turn people away.
These pics are from before the game even started, and it got even more packed until after about halfway through the first period before they cut off sales.
I couldn't believe it! Man, Indianapolis loves some roller derby!
This bout was against the Burning River Roller Girls All Star team. It was a tough ass game, start to finish. We kept a lead the whole time, but the spread wasn't as big as it could have been. I am constantly frustrated by the reffing situation in roller derby. Honestly, it's not like these girls were a dirty team, but they did a few dirty moves, that resulted in injury. Elbows to the face, shoving, and my favorite, dropping to one knee to dive bomb another girls knee. (which resulted in one of our best players being side lined) What made this even more frustrating, was talking to the refs later who admitted, yea, they knew it was happening, yes they knew about the knee thing, and the 20 feet out of bounds thing, the elbows, etc, but they had trouble catching it.
Um, hello, that's your job!
I try to put it in perspective though. There girls did spend a shit ton of time in the penalty box, so some stuff was obviously getting called, and I've tried reffing at scrimmages before, and it is a really, really tough job. I don't blame the refs per se, I more so blame the reffing system that is in place.
See, most derby teams have their own refs. Which is kind of silly, because how impartial can a ref be if he/she belongs to that team? With Naptown, our first season we had the problem of our refs trying so hard to be impartial, they would tend to favor the other team over us. Which is also no good.
Our final solution was to make the refs no long part of our league. Now we pay and hire the refs in, and try to test them beforehand. It's still not a perfect system, but until WFTDA gets a good ref system in place, it's the best that we can do. Obviously we're still tweaking and trying to perfect it.
Check out this crafty dude behind me with that orange sign. Can you see what it says?
How awesome is that????
Mother Russia on our team lives with a guy named Jerry Lee, and they design all of our uniforms. This season, they even gave our announcers their own custom made wester suits! Check out Dills below!
My friend Pitt Stain made me this last minute NIN sticker for my helmet. I was freaking out, because I had just purchased a new helmet (my old one cracked) and didn't have a music sticker on it! Bad luck! So Pitt made this one the night before the bout for me!
Oh and check out this crazy autograph!
I haven't been asked to sign a dudes bare skin since my band days! (and honestly, I signed more girl boobies back then than boy tummies...)
All in all, it was a good game. I'll post some after party pics later. Still waiting to hear how our girl Lilly is doing after her knee injury. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for her.
Next month it's Cincy. Can't wait!