Diary of a Detroit Derby Announcer - Regionals Day 1

Posted on August 20, 2007

August 16/17 Heartland Havoc travel report from Rusty Wheeler

Most of the DDG travel team and support staff traveled to Columbus, Ohio, on the evening of Thursday, August 16, to attend the Heartland Havoc roller derby tournament. Twelve WFTDA teams from the East region were attending this event, with the top four finishers earning a trip to the National playoffs in Texas in September.

We arrived in Columbus around 11:30 pm, then checked in at the Hyatt Regency in downtown. I stayed up until 3 am (having stayed up until 2 am the night before) to work on updating DDG stats, just to have a few more tidbits of information to talk about at the bout. I definitely think I go way overboard trying to get the stats updated, I need to stop that stuff!

Awoke at 7am, and just for convenience, ate breakfast in the Hyatt’s restaurant on the 2nd floor, “The Market Stand Cafe.” As usual for a fancy hotel restaurant, it was expensive. I only had two scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, and toast, all for $11.50. Yikes.

I then quickly walked several blocks north of the Hyatt along High St (I didn’t see any folks along the way who appeared high, though) to the MoJoe Lounge, where a team captain meeting had started at 8 am. That was followed by a 9 am ref meeting in the same location. I left the ref meeting around 8:45 as I had to walk back to the Hyatt to attend an announcer’s meeting at 10am in the 2nd floor bar (sorry for any drinkers in attendance, but the bar wasn’t serving that early). “The Tank” from the Ohio Roller Girls was coordinating the announcing for the HH tourney, and they went over some things, gave us our admission ID badges, then a short walking tour, showing us the location of the food court - way cheaper than the restaurant where I ate breakfast!

But on to the games!

The first game of Friday was between the #10 seeded Atlanta Rollergirls and the #7 seeded Windy City rollers. Atlanta went out to an early lead, but Windy City came back and took the lead. Windy City ended up winning by a 106-77 score. I was still preparing for the following Detroit (#9) vs. Boston (#8) game. DDG’s Big Poppa Razzi hadn’t arrived, so Baam Baam of the Mad Rollin’ Dolls (Madison, WI) was prepping with me as Tank had assigned him to the game. Poppa Razzi finally arrived about 30 minutes before the DDG game started, so we had three folks talking on the mics.

Announcing was sort of difficult. Where we were sitting, we couldn’t actually hear what was being blasted through the loudspeakers to everyone in attendance, which meant that with the background level of noise we really couldn’t hear our fellow announcers very well. But we weren’t getting body-checked all over the derby track like the derby girls, so we figured it wasn’t too bad of a deal for us low-lifes, uh, I mean announcers!

And what a game it was! Boston’s Sarah Doom outscored DDG’s Rock Candy 4-0 on the very first jam, then Racer McChaseHer outscored Maura Buse 9-0 to put DDG up 9-4. After 6 jams the score was tied 20-20. On the 8th jam of the 1st period, Rock Candy outscored Maura Buse 10-zip as Buse had to go to the penalty box for being naughty. Detroit led after the 1st period, 36-32.

Racer put Detroit up 41-32 after the 1st jam of the 2nd period, but after the 3rd jam, Maura Buse put Boston up 44-41. Summer’s Eve-L had a bit of trouble with naughtiness herself, and managed to go to the penalty box a couple of times while jamming. After 5 jams Boston led 58-44. Boston seemed to sense they had a chance to pull away, but DDG cut the Boston lead to 58-53. At the end of the period Boston led 68-62.

There were seemingly more Boston fans (with signs) than DDG fans in attendance, which was a bit of a disappointment as Detroit is much closer to Columbus than Beantown, but c’est la vie. (By the way, “c’est la vie” is French for “time to cheat!”)

OK, so the 3rd period started with Boston outscoring the big D by 4-0 to then lead 72-62, then Racer outscored Sarah Doom 8-0 to pull Detroit to within 72-70. Finally, on the 5th jam of the 3rd period Killbox scored 4 points to put DDG up 78-77. But then Sarah Doom (pronounced “Doooooooooooooooommmmm” by the way) put Boston up again by 84-78.Then Maura Buse made it 88-79 just past the halfway mark of the 3rd period, and things were starting to look a bit grim for Detroit as time was beginning to run short. Then on the 9th jam of the period, Honey Suckit outscored Maura Buse 10-0 to put DDG up 93-92. Maura had been banished to the Box early in the jam, and Honey took full advantage of Boston skating without a jammer.

This is when the game got to its most intense moments. On the 10th jam of the period, Racer made it a 95-93 game in favor of Detroit. Cookie Rumble and Sarah Doom both were scoreless in the 11th jam. That set up the 12th jam of the 3rd period, with Racer vs. Doom. Racer was trying to pass one last Boston skater which would have given Racer lead jammer status and would have salted away the win, but referee Justice Feelgood Marshall instead penalized Racer for cutting the track, so DDG lost their jammer at a very critical juncture. Then, wouldn’t you know it, Sarah Doom got around the track, and with mere seconds remaining passed two Detroit skaters to tie the score at 95-95 when the clock ran out. If the clock would have had a few more ticks left, she would have passed another Detroit Derby Girl which would have won the game for Boston. As you can guess, the crowd was entirely on their feet during these last few jams, and everyone was going completely nuts. I usually try to not rip the refs too much, but I boldly asserted that ref Marshall had jobbed Racer by giving her a bogus penalty. (Later, after the game, Racer stated that she had cut the track and did deserve the penalty. So I will have to find ref Marshall on Saturday and give him an apology). Still not so sure about that though.

There was one minute rest, and the game went into overtime. There was no lead jammer status to fight over as the jammers began accruing points on their first trip through the pack. This also meant that the jam would last the full two minutes in length. One big problem, though, is that Detroit’s Racer McChaseHer was starting the overtime jam in the penalty box! (Remember that penalty she got on the last jam of regulation time?) However, Racer got out of the box and promptly zoomed around the track twice to Boston’s Maura Buse’s once, outscoring Boston 8-4 on the overtime jam and winning the game for Detroit 103-99. Whew! I think I said “Holy kielbasa!” I was almost speechless, which was OK as announcer Baam Baam was saying something, even though I couldn’t hear what was being said. Detroit players mobbed each other on the track right after the score was posted. I have to say that last jam was so hectic and confusing that I had no clue about what scores might have been achieved until they posted them on the scoreboard. There were players getting knocked down all over the track. Wow. If you missed attending this game, you missed a good one!

Lest it sound like it was the “Racer McChaseHer” (who scored 49 points) show, many Detroit skaters contributed to the bottom line. Honey Suckit scored 16 points, 10 of them very late in the game when they were badly needed. Rock Candy scored 14 points, Vega Vendetta scored 8 points, all in the 1st period. Killbox had 7 points. Cookie Rumble scored 5,and Summer’s Eve-L scored 4.

I haven’t seen the stats regarding blocks and assists and penalties yet (AK 40 oz, Lexpletive, Skid Bro, and Tin Gypsy were working hard all day long — four games in a row), but there were a lot of hard hits dished out in this game. Each team took the hardest hits the other team could dish out, and didn’t back down at all. What a bunch of tough derby girls!

Boston basically went with a three player jammer rotation of Sarah Doom (42 points), Maura Buse (27 points), and Claire D. Way (26 points), however, Claire didn’t jam after the 4th jam of the 3rd period, Boston also jammed Wanda Whipya (1 jam for 4 points) and Lois Common Dominator (1 jam for 0 points).

After the Detroit game, it was a bit of letdown to see our good friends from the Grand Raggity Rollergirls (seeded #11) get blown out by the Gotham Girls (#5). Gotham outscored GRRG by more than 150 points, winning 206-47. GRRG did the best they could, but I have to say that Gotham are like a machine. Their jammers are all fast, and their blockers take every opportunity to deal out punishment to not only the other team’s jammer but also to the other teams blockers. One gal in particular for Gotham, Beonslay, struck me as being particularly difficult to block.

The final game of the evening saw Providence (#6) beat Ohio (#12) 126-99. Providence was firmly in charge, but Ohio made a game out of it. Ohio had cut the lead to only 15 points late in the game before the Easterners pulled away again late.

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