Bout night, Richmond vs Oakland

WHOO.

This weekend, I went to my first ever non-Australian roller derby bout! BAD's Richmond Wrecking Belles were playing the Oakland Outlaws, and it was their season opener.

This is where the magic happens. Yep.

The first thing I think I should note is that the bout took place in a giant shed. Like, a giant, warehousey shed. When you first got in, there was a little vendor village bit with BAD merch (note: having credit card facilities on the premises would be a really good idea if you have people who are going to buy a lot of merch) and Cruz Skate Shop also had a stand (where I pretty much took all their free stickers) and there were girl scout cookies and cupcakes and a lot of beer. There was some limited stadium seating (think metal bleachers like at kiddie baseball games) but most people were just on the floor, or standing in the back. And even the people on the floor in what we'd think were suicides were behind a two foot tall foam barrier thing that went all around the track. CRDL bouts at Tuggers had better seating, if not more capacity. (The AIS definitely had better seating and heaps more capacity.)

Delicious derby-themed cupcake menu.

We didn't see much of the Oakland warmup, because they were on track first while we were still outside in the cold trying to buy our tickets, or I was buying all of the merch from the merch stand. The Richmond warmup, though, was pretty cool to watch. They started with some laps and then did things like transitions around the entire track (so you're skating around the track and constantly transitioning), hops/juking, sticky skating with your legs crossed, and then some packwork and positional blocking. Oh and then they did their rollout going anti-derby!

I think I was pretty much going for Richmond, with the possible exception of Oakland's Jane Hammer. I really like Hammer; she's a great skater and just a really cool overall person. She's taught me a whole bunch of nifty tricks at training. She did some pretty strong jams, but bout pretty much went Richmond's way from the first jam. Richmond seemed to have four jammers that they rotated: Chiquita Bonanza, Chantilly Mace, Diva Negativa and Cutya Kackoff. Their packwork was pretty good, and Chantilly did some crazy jams where she pretty much sailed through the pack within about two seconds of getting off the jammer line. She also did some awesome apex jumps. Yes, swoon. I think she also did a couple of grand slams. Oakland had a couple of good jams as well, but they seemed to constantly have someone in the bin, which wasn't to their advantage.

Go Hammy! I am a Jane Hammer fangirl.

Actually, there was a LOT of binnage; more than I expected. At one point the bin was pretty much full, and the Oakland jammer (who was supposed to come out when the Richmond one went in) kind of hesitated for a few seconds before going back in and then the benchies had to yell at her to get back onto the track. Also, I think there was one other bit when there were too many blockers in the bin, but I can't remember. One thing I did notice though was that most people tomohawked to the bin, because you could go straight there real quick and then sit down, rather than go there, knee slide and then have to get back up before your butt hit the seat. I guess that kind of timing matters.

Refs, possibly scheming or something.

I also learned a couple of things from watching the bout. Knee starts seemed to be pretty popular, but one thing I noticed was that if the opposing team was doing a knee start, you put your blockers right up against the jammer line so they can block the jammer right away, instead of giving her ten feet to skate into and build up speed before she gets to the pack. That seems obvious now, but I don't think we really did that at VDL. Of course, then the knee starting team can always just drop to their knees right before the whistle, or (I think) after the whistle provided that the pack isn't over the pivot line yet...

Demanda Riot, moments before she took out Sheer Luxe

Another thing I saw was Demanda Riot messing with the other jammer. I was so excited to see Demanda skate. She is pretty fucking badass. She jammed about two or three times, but I don't think she was as good there as she was as a blocker. She did a lot of defensive jamming, I guess. But this one time, when she wasn't lead jammer, she used her blocking skills to just get all in the way of Sheer Luxe, since if she got far enough ahead Luxe would just have called off the jam anyway. So, instead, Demanda skated in front of her just enough to be positionally blocking her but to make it such that Luxe *could* possibly get past, and then... Demanda knocked her on her ass. Hahaha. I guess at that point in the bout it might also just be a stalling tactic, since Richmond were ahead by like 100 points anyway.

Anyway, the final score was 167-71 to Richmond. It's a pretty big margin (such that some people left early to get their cars out of the parking lot before there was a traffic jam... WTF?!?!) but it was totally awesome to watch. And then I wore my new BAD merch to training the next day. Yay.

For some good profesh photos of the bout, click here for LeVar Hurtin's official ones!