Malice in Derbyland

I spent the first hour at the Sport’s Center helping sort out last minute dilemmas. "Yes, B is here but she’s sewing C’s uniform, I’ll go get her, no I don’t know why the DJ isn’t here – oh what do you mean he quit?!... Yes, S’s son is going to fill in he’s getting equipment right now… We only printed out two of them, we’ll have to give our copy to the score keeper, no,… Yes, I know the program is wrong… No, I don’t know who’s name he’s calling off second…” and this went on until the message therapy lady made me sit in her chair while she pounded on my back and I realized we were going to be on the track in less than 20 minutes and I needed to focus. Everything else would have to fall into place without me.

I’m not the best authority on the subject only because when you’re all up in the middle of something, sometimes it’s hard to remember in what order everything happened in but as best as I can recollect, we scored pretty even with the Maulers during the first period keeping a two to five point lead. I also scored myself three penalties for throwing elbows – one more and I’d have to sit in the penalty box. Right after I shoulder check someone, I tend to push off the other women with my elbow, it’s a bad habit my coach is trying to break me of.

The second period we took off, and had a twenty point lead. I’d like to say that I scored some of those points with my awesome wheels but when I jammed I got didn’t get lead jammer because I got knocked out of bounds in the first pass, I didn’t know if the other jammer got it because I was long gone by the time she made it through. I entered the pack on the third turn trying to score points and before I was clean through again their pivot sent me flying into my own team sitting on the bench. By the time my head realized I was lying on the floor staring at the ceiling catching my breath and the jam was still going my body was already getting back up and running on my stoppers back onto the track. I remember wondering if this was the same jam or if I was running onto the track in the next jam and no one was telling me. I’m not sure why or what happened next but whistles blew and I went to sit on the bench and catch my breath. I can hardly wait to see it on the replay. I think I may have scored three points, I’m not sure.

Over the course of the second period we kept a good lead, but during the second break we came to the sobering realization how many penalties we all had. The reality was this; Sandra D. Molisher was out of the game because she’d gotten a skate to the ribs. She is one of our best pivots and all round players, she can jam or block or coach or anything. The EMT’s wouldn’t let her back on the track until she was x-rayed and so she sat next to the bench cheering with tears streaming down her cheeks. Our fearless captain, Wilma Fistdoo had been in the penalty box too many times and was doomed to be thrown from the third period, the same as blockers Brute A. Licious and Sawyer Payne. Our coach was frantically trying to replace them in the line up as much as possible in preparation for third period without making people skate two and three jams in a row.

As expected we lost three women in the last period to penalties and we served gobs of time in the penalty box. I gave up throwing shoulder blocks completely because I couldn’t chance accidentally throwing an elbow and getting ejected from the bout so I threw my hips around and stuck my butt out in front of the opposing jammer. I didn’t get ejected from the bout, but I did get ejected from the track by the opposing pivot sending me skidding feet first into the crowd again. The Chi-Town Sirens caught me, they were cheering from the most dangerous corner of the floor to sit on. Beer spilt everywhere and the crowd booed for the spilled beer and then cheered when I stood up to skate back in. My skate was slippery with beer and I had a hard time catching up again, but we skated hard and furious with what was left of our penalty decimated team. Apparently even though our bios say we save lives and sign for the deaf and read stories to little kids, we are dirty skaters.

In the end it really came down to the last two minutes with the crowd all on their feet screaming and the skaters desperate and straining every muscle. I watched from the penalty box, while serving time for another skater. We lost by one point and the crowd went wild. Right afterwards we went to the side of the track to meet and greet, our little fans, a group of eight year old boys dressed in orange, came up to console us.

“You guys were robbed! – you should’ve won!” said the first freckled face, the rest of the boys nodded in agreement.

“Well, Sandy broke a rib so we had to skate short.” I respond pointing toward Sandy

“REALLY?!” their mouths agape their eyes big as roller skate wheels.

“Hey Sandy! Come say hi to our biggest fans!”

As Sandy walked over holding her ribs with a giant smile on her face I found markers and we signed their orange and black megaphones. They asked her all about her ribs and the other skaters crowded up and signed autographs too. It was a good game and W.A.V.E. will bet a big ol’ check from the Rockford Rage next week so we can feel good even when we loose.

Oh, and the new wheels are awesome!




















March Maddness 2007















Feb Bout - Bombadee, Southern Helle, Bubbles the Brawler & Aim Low.
Photos by Tom Holoubek