About a year and a half ago I got four free tickets to a Windy City Rollers game (or “bout”; they call them bouts). My family and I never had more fun at a sporting event. The DIY spirit of the league, the intense competition, and the outright thrill of a high-speed collision on roller skates–it really was a fun way to spend an evening. I’ve been to several bouts since, and have never had a bad time.
This November 5-7, Chicago is hosting the national Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby championships at the UIC pavillion. Invitations were settled in four regional tounaments held over the past month, and the pairings for the final were released this morning.
If you can’t already tell, I’m pretty geeked for the tournament, and I think this sport is on the verge (OK, maybe over the next 5-10 years) of exploding. It may seem a little lowbrow for this crowd, but does anyone in the forum follow this sport, or is planning to attend the championships?
If I were to handicap the pairings, I think the Oly Rollers (Olympia, WA) and the Gotham Girls (NY, NY) are the favorites for the final. Defending champion Oly has two nationally-ranked speed skaters on their team; jammer Atomatrix–aka Julie Glass–has won 12 World Inline Speed Skating Championships, and is routinely described as the Michael Jordan of the sport. Oly went into their regional undefeated (20-0) over the past two years, but in in the West final Rocky Mountain pulled off a stunning upset in the last five minutes of the bout. With the loss, Oly is bumped to a #2 seed for the championships; even with a home advantage, Windy City will have their hands full if Oly advances. By contrast, Gotham was hardly cahllenged at all this year and breezed thru their own East regional; no team got within 100 points until Philly capitalized on penalties in the last 10 minutes of the regional final and quickly reduced a 100-point Gotham lead to 30 as time expired. Note: This is definitely a sport where penalties have a huge impact on the outcome (elite teams routinely score 20-30 points in a one-minute stretch if the opposing team has a jammer in the penalty box), so I personally wouldn’t want to bet on any of this…
As for the other teams, Rocky Mountain scored that big upset on Oly, and they handed Windy City the worst loss in their history this past August, so they could definitely upset the plan. Kansas City also scored an upset of Texas in their regional final, but Texas has had a down year and isn’t the team they used to be. Finally, Minnesota deserves a little derby love; they entered their regional tounament as a seven seed (out of 10 midwest teams) and made it to the regional finals to earn their berth.