Beating the Brakes off the Vette City Vixens

Anyone that knows me, knows that I'm a DIE HARD Ford Racer. Although I can appreciate all kinds of horsepower, the one car that I absolutely can't stand is the Corvette. It probably has more to do with the stereotyped driver than the actual car, but its enough to have ignited a long-term hate relationship with any Corvette newer than oh, about 1963.

So that in mind, you must understand my mentality heading into our first 2010 expo home bout on the Redstone Arsenal against none other than the Vette City Vixens from Bowling Green, KY. This wasn't just about derby anymore... this was the deepest of rivalries. Ford vs. Chevy. Corvette vs. Mustang. Whatever you want to call it, this was eRacer X on a MISSION.

As the first home bout of the season (unofficially... the regular season kicks off April 17th), this was a special expo bout held for Arsenal/NASA employees and their families and friends to come out and watch the action for free. Our hope is that they would see how wickedly awesome derby is and buy tickets for our regular season... and we might all pick up some new fans. There were quite a lot of fans at this bout, and I'm pretty sure that we succeeded in the goal of picking up some newbie fans. I signed a few autographs for the kiddies and took lots of photos with them, so I expect they'll be asking Mom and Dad to bring them back. (photo: a young fan with my jammer panty on her head... isn't she a cutie?)

Now, to be fair, Vette City is a brand new derby team. This was their first public bout. You'd think we'd show them some kind of mercy. Mmmm, No. They are a great bunch of girls, and they have lots of promise, but derby is derby my friends, especially when its an auto related rivalry for me.

So I would start the game wearing the bright pink star. After going back and forth last season between jammer/blocker, it appears that I've been marked a jammer for this season. And what a way to start 2010... with a 19 point jam! I ended up in the box twice, once for a major elbow and then another right away for an illegal procedure 4th minor that sent me right back to the box (I wasn't behind her hips apparently... I got a little antsy!) But I did score 2 separate 19 point jams, which is the highest single scoring jam I've ever had to date.

Dixie ended up beating the brakes off Vette City, 219-50. The afterparty carried over to the Benchwarmers, and was a ton of fun. The Vette City girls are a great group! I look forward to skating against them again when they've got some more play time under their belts.

Part of my personal goal/training plan is to really analyze my performances by studying the numbers after each game. This is how I ranked for this bout:

• I played 11 jams out of 32 in the bout (34.3%).
• Of the 11 jams, I was declared Lead Jammer in 9 (81.1%)
• I scored a total of 83 points in the game, an average of 7.55 points per jam
• My plus/minus total was +64, that means 64 positive points during jams I played.
• I ended with 1 major elbow, a 4 minors box trip, and 2 left over minors at the end of the game. That's actually a pretty sloppy game for me, I tend NOT to collect any penalties at all.

Overall, I feel I'm starting to get a little better jamming. I'm trying to develop my style a bit, and photos are helping me see areas I need to work on. One big accomplishment for me this bout has been getting my jammerline start more proficient. I've always been kinda awkward on the start, and never felt I had a starting procedure that worked for me until now. I did some research on toe stop running starts and duck walk starts, and what I saw was that there was some wasted momentum in the way I was trying to run on my stoppers. So I played around with something I'm gonna call the ToeStopDuckyHop start.... its too difficult to explain in words, but it basically means I'm almost running sideways off the line and straight into a power push 3 -4 hops later. Its probably wrong, but its a lot quicker than what I was doing before, so I'll keep it for now.

Up Next: WFTDA Sanctioned bout against the Oklahoma City Victory Dolls on my 30th birthday, March 27th.