Click Click: DC Rollergirls Weekend Action

Posted by Tom in DC Life on 01 18th, 2010 | no responses

Kay Johnson, aka A-Kay 47, is soon going to see greater danger than she finds on the D.C. Rollergirls’ flat track. As a member of the U.S. Coast Guard, she is bound for pre-deployment training in Port Smith, Virginia, where she will be stationed until she departs in April for Bahrain. There she will serve on a patrol boat, protecting oil platforms and other sites off the coast of Bahrain and Kuwait from suicide bombers and other threats. Johnson will soon have a host of new responsibilities providing security in Bahrain — but she hopes she doesn’t have to leave her A-Kay 47 persona behind. “I saw on the Sin City Skates site that there’s a team in Iraq,” said Johnson — referring to the Divas of Dirt, a derby team comprised of U.S. military women stationed in Iraq. (Hardcore.) “It’s a little further than where I’m going to be, but I’ll definitely check it out.” A-Kay 47 was honored by the D.C. Rollergirls following her final game as a pivot on the Cherry Blossom Bombshells . She said she’ll miss the female camaraderie most, as it is difficult to come by in the armed forces. No doubt she’s also going to miss hurtin’s the likes of which the Bombshells put on the Harrisonburg Rocktown Rollers on Saturday. Granted, Rocktown is a young team, and the Bombshells entered what turned out to be an 84-31 victory feeling confident. But as A-Kay 47 explained, this game was their first win of the season. Several players departed following a double-overtime loss in the championship to the D.C. Demoncats at the end of last season, and the team now has more new recruits than returning veterans. Call it a rebuilding year, but it didn’t much matter to Yankee Scandal, who was named the game’s MVP. The Bombshells jammer put up a personal record of 15 points in one jam. “I kicked a lot of ass as a jammer,” she said. “I turned left a lot.” Saturday’s game was a doubleheader. The inter-game entertainment by the godawful Jim Moyer Circus Club — an honest-to-goodness

family of circus performers — provided a perfect opportunity to learn the rules of roller derby. For the offense, it’s all about the jammer , who wants to skate to the lead and who receives points for every player on the opposite team she laps. On defense, blockers want to prevent this from happening. Blockers also need to maintain the pack. And no one should go out of bounds, except when it’s legal to bodycheck other players into oblivion. Oh, and there’s a pivot , who can perform a sort of chess-castling maneuver with the jammer and become the jammer, though otherwise she’s another blocker. The lead jammer will sometimes “call off the jam,” a tactical maneuver with a really cool-sounding name. All you really need to know is that D.C. Rollergirls boasts better athletes and more intense competition than some of the other flat-track leagues around the nation. Befitting the District, it’s a league made up of professionals; you won’t see the public spankings or live psychobilly rock performances that you find in Texas Rollergirls matchups, for example. The D.C. league is still totally fun — one of the league officials goes by “Refsputin,” for Pete’s sake — but D.C. Rollergirls puts the sport before the kitsch. So even the 116-57 blowout between the D.C. Demoncats and Scare Force One made for a great game. The match was over by the end of the first period, after Scare Force One jammers Marion Barrycuda and Lenore Gore led the Fright Attendants to an 85-23 lead. Demoncats veteran blocker and occasional jammer Shredica — I couldn’t make up a name like that if I wanted to — put forward the Demoncats’ best effort. In the second period, Shredica’s constant harassment of Lenore Gore helped the Demoncats to hold SF1 to 31 points. Unfortunately for the Demoncats, Scare Force blocker Soledad kept Demoncats jammer Free Radical from making any headway. With the Redskins’ season in the toilet, the Nationals’ seasons blessedly months away, and the Wizards’ prospects in the slammer, DMV sports fans are taking solace in skates — both ice and roller variety.