Shot at as an X-Pistol

Note: I'm a little LOT late finally finishing this blog, so this is pretty old news, but better late than never!

Mission Accomplished. I had a fantastic time at the X-Pistol vs. Assault Rivals bout with the Nashville Rollergirls. Being that I'm a first year newbie skater, I was a little concerned that I might not be able to hold my own against their advanced All-Star players, especially since they had pre-warned me that I was going to be on their jammer rotation for part of the game. But it turned out not so bad at all.

Don't take me wrong. I got pummelled pretty well by some of the Rival powerhouses. Sexy Slaydie sent me completely airbourne on more than one occasion. And of course, skating against my own Asian Invasion is never easy. R2D2 was in attendance, and I'm sure he approved of some of the jedi-style yard sails I was doing.

The original plan in the locker room was that I'd be jamming in the first period and blocking in the second, but that really never happened. I ended up on jammer rotation for the entire bout. Nashville is a very fast skating team, which made my job all the much more difficult for me. I don't really know the stats from the game, but I scored a few points and managed lead a few times as well. That made me really happy personally with my performance, because I've really never had the opportunity to jam in a bout against A team players.

Besides loving the Nashville girls, and being really honored to have been ask to skate with them, I was really excited about the learning potential from this bout. It was a packed house in Nashville, and their fans are pretty spectacular. Seeing the game from a different team's perspective and learning a different style is something I think will be beneficial to my quest to become a better skater. I learned a lot and played around with adjusting my own style of skating to see how I could improve. It was also a great way to gauge my progress this season, a sort of benchmark that I don't get to experience in game situations very often.

The final score had the Assault Rivals taking the win 83-62, but the score isn't really indicative of how close the gameplay felt.

Sadly, it was the last X-Pistol/Assault Rival/Distress Damsel game Nashville will be playing, as they phase out interleague play. But I'm very grateful for the chance to have played with NRG!

View more photos:

Hungry Photographer -- Roller Derby Pictures -- DeWeese

Guest Skating in Nashville

Talk about TIRED.

I'm at work and barely functioning this morning. Took a quick bonzai run to Nashville last night to practice with the Nashville Roller Girls. I've done it once before, and I really love practicing with them because I get to learn a lot of things that you can't get from skating with your own team every week.

This time, my excuse to go practice was because myself, Asian Invasion, and Hell Razor were invited to skate with Nashville in their season ending Intraleague bout, the X-Pistols vs. the Assault Rivals. I wanted to get in a little skate time with the Nashville girls I'd be playing with this coming Saturday, and figured I'd be some extra work out time as well.

Nashville is about 2 hours from Huntsville, so I took off right after work. I didn't make it home until about 12, so I'll be needing some catch-up sleep tonight.

If you happen to be in Nashville this weekend, come out and cheer us all on!

Date: Saturday, October 17, 2009
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Tennessee State Fairgrounds-Sports Arena

Doors open at 6pm. The action starts at 7pm. Tickets are are $10 online and $15 at the door, but don't wait until the last minute. The venue routinely sells out, and they expect a full house! Be there!

Whip-IT

This weekend was the opening for the major motion picture, Whip-IT, Drew Barrymore's directorial debut and feature flick dedicated to the wonderful sport of Roller Derby.

I'm pretty excited to say that I was a part of roller derby before it went mainstream, an idea which we have been preparing for since we got word over a year ago about the movie and its potential influx on our sport. That I'll get a front row seat to watch WFTDA grow leaps and bounds will be an added bonus to the benefits I get from playing.

This weekend, our team (Dixie Derby Girls) teamed up with Rave Valley Bend to do some joint promoting of the movie out front of the theater. Though there wasn't enough room to set up a mini-oval, we did stick some cones out for some mock drills as people were coming up to the theater. Jumping, Blocking, Whips....

We all piled into the theater (on skates, mind you...) and gave a brief intro before the movie to let the movie goers know that Huntsville does indeed have a local team to support come April when our home season kicks back off.

Then it was onto the movie...

The summary seems to be the go-to Hollywood coming of age flick. Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is your average 17 year-old rebellious teen in small town Texas, driven by her beauty queen mother Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden) to compete in pageants in effort to mold Bliss into her ideal of a presentable woman. Joined by her best pal Pash (Alia Shawkat), a fellow waitress at the local BBQ joint, Bliss struggles to break free of her mother's 1950's inspired idea of womanhood and find her calling and ticket out of suburbia.

Enter nearby Austin, TX eccentric rollergirls, the Hurl Scouts, whose flashy and carefree personas entice Bliss into sneaking away and checking out her first TXRD bout, and ultimately taking her spot next to the hard-hitting ladies of roller derby as "Babe Ruthless", her derby alter-ego. Though some of the derby action was a bit misleading (Clothesline plays only qualify for ejections), the action and gameplay was overall realistic and well explained to the audience.

The movie did a great job of navigating the common misconception and stereotypes of a rollergirl, captured by Bliss' mother's beratting rebut of who would employ, marry, or otherwise condone the behavior of such a group of women. Without overly dramatizing the issue, Whip-IT delivers the counterpoint... that roller derby players can still be mothers and professionals, while embracing the fact that above all they are capable, strong beings, and proud adversarial competitors. The film does a wonderful job of portraying the women as strong and ruthless without diminishing women in general as overtly weak by nature. Though the girl-power chord rings strong, it is not watered down by sugar-sweet stereotypes.

Perhaps the most realistic aspect of the film to the current roller derby landscape is how all-encompassing derby life can be to its participants. Enter the very real conflict with the many non-derby people in her life, Bliss finds it hard to balance when Pash takes offense and just fails to understand the level of commitment Babe Ruthless displays in her new passion.
There is a small hollywood-esque love story to make the coming-of-age equation valid, but thankfully it plays a backseat to the storyline and doesn't detract from the flow and overall message of the film.

All derby bias aside, the flick was a great debut for Drew Barrymore, who not only directed, but also played a convincing Hurl Scout (Smashley Simpson).

Four Skates out of Five!

View eRacer X Whip-IT Gallery --- View Dixie Derby Whip-IT Gallery