Dear Derby Santa

Dear Derby Santa,

I've been a bad good, good rollergirl. How about getting me a few gifts to shove in my fishnet & stiletto stockings? You know, it IS the off-season training time, and what better time to break in new gear than as I sweat off all those holiday hangovers extra pounds??!?

Tell Blitzen & the rest of the reindeer pack to plow-stop right on over to my place! It really isn't much!

• ZÜCA Starz and Pink Sport Frame & Bag
• Triple Eight Brainsaver Rubber Skateboard Helmet --Medium
• Pro-Tec Street Gear Skate and Bike Wrist Guards --Medium
• Bones Swiss Labyrinth Competition Skate Bearings
• Radar Mojo skate wheels 62mm - Pink
  

Hits & Bruises,

eRacer X

Chain Gang Train Wrecks the Junktion

Another great bout weekend, this time I was lucky enough to participate in Chattanooga's first Roller Derby expo bout as a guest skater. The Chattanooga Rollergirls are a newly formed league, filled with some great skaters with a lot of great things happening for them.

Dixie was the first team they ever bouted against when they came to play us at the Thrill-HER bout. I was really excited that I also was able to play with them in their other first, at their debut home exhibition bout.

The bout was a huge hit! CRG had already presold over 400 tickets, and had more than 900 people show up to watch and rally behind their new roller derby team. The Chattanooga girls were split into two home teams: The Chain Gang (black) vs. The Junktion (white). I was on the Chain Gang team, and was really excited that they made me a super nifty CRG reversible jersey with my name and number that I got to keep. Way cool! Black/White jerseys are always handy to have for scrimmage purposes with other teams, so that will get to see a LOT of usage.

In addition to the CRG teams, myself and 3 other NRG (Nashville, TN) skaters joined in to guest skate. Smith and Wesson was a Chain Gang member with me, and 5Scar Jeneral and Fully Addomatic joined the Junktion team, coached by Miss Murder from Hard Knox Rollergirls (Knoxville, TN). The Chain Gang had me on the line up rotating between Jammer and Pivot. I haven't played jammer really very much lately, so I was a bit concerned. Okay, I also haven't really been scrimmaging lately. We're on our winter wind-down practice schedule, so things haven't been too intense at practice, and how quickly you get rusty in this sport!

My jamming was pretty weak in my opinion... I had a heckuva time trying to get around 5Scar Jeneral, and took a pretty good beating. I haven't played Pivot too much, but I didn't seem to awful at that position. The Chain Gang played great defense, so we entered the half up. The second period would see me jam even more (yikes!), but I managed a few leads and scored a few points. Our team worked together great, and we finished up with the victory.

Final Score: Team Junktion 66, CHAIN GANG 81

Way to go Chattanooga! I'm looking forward to watching you ladies grow and playing with you in the coming season!

Watch a clip from the bout: Chattanooga local 9 TV.

View eRacer X's photo gallery.

-----------------------------------------
DERBY WORLD TOUR NOTE: Chattanooga, TN (Chattanooga Rollergirls) becomes stop #11 on the Derby World Tour.

ROLLER BALL 2009

Roller Ball is Dixie Derby's annual season ending bash, and 2009 quite the doozie.

Awards were given, food was plentiful, and drinks were flowing. I had a great time with my girls, and got to get crazy for the last time with my derby fiancee, Asian Invasion, and my Hell Razor, who have decided to move on from Dixie Derby.

Ian McCalister did a fantastic job shooting the action and making everyone look great. Here's his album: http://edited4tv.com/rollerball3/

>>>View Roller Ball 2009 Album<<<

Sending the Bootleggers limping...

Its been a heck of a rookie season for me, but the official Dixie Derby season is finally OVER.

What a way to end on a really kickass note too! We headed up the road 10 hours to play the Carolina Rollergirl Bootleggers in Raleigh, NC. This would make twice in just a few months that I visited the Raleigh area. I had just been there a few weeks back for my cousin's wedding and to visit my best friend, so I was really excited that I'd have some cheering support for this game.

We actually went into this bout a little psyched out. Honestly, since CRG is ranked #5 in the east, we knew they were a high caliber team. Due to the travel strains, only 10 of us were able to skate for this bout, so knowing we were playing a fundementally great team also short was a little un-nerving going into it. But sometimes, if you try, you even surprise yourself.

BOA and I left after practice to get a jump on driving, and did a bonzaii run to Carolina straight through the night. The valuable life lesson gained: 2 Full Throttle Energy drinks + 1 NOS Grape energy drink = one seriously wired skater (incidentally, it also = a MAJOR energy drink hangover the next day, but whatever, we made it!). After some quality time with my bestfriend and her family, it was game time on Saturday.

The Carolina Rollergirls play at the historic Dorton Arena. This is probably one of the COOLEST venues I've ever skated in. The floor was unpolished concrete, and fairly grippy, but the best part was the late-setting dusk sun flooding through the windows during our early warm-ups. We arrived at 1:30pm for our 5:20pm bout start time, which felt like an eternity, but it allowed me some time to get my skates cleaned and ready and all the other pre-bout preparations that I didn't get to do while visiting my bestie.

For this bout, I was playing the Middle Out position, which I hadn't ever played in a game before, but I am liking more and more every day. My pack consisted of Blazin' Barbie, Ebbin Flow, myself, and BOA with CU Afterclass as our main jammer. This was one of the best, most cohesive packs I've ever worked with. We really had great communication and teamwork going on, and it felt GREAT to play with those ladies.

We jumped out on the first 2 jams to an early lead, and held strong the whole game. I haven't seen the stats yet for the game, but I know I had a few great jammer takedowns (YAY! My can opener finally was effective!) and only went to the box once the entire game for 4 minors. I did take the jammer line once, and managed a quick 4 points before it was called off, but CU and ChaChee were rocking the jammer line all night with no issues!

The final score was 86-76, with DDG never losing the lead during the bout. For a game we thought we were coming in as severe underdogs, we did excellent! I feel as a group, we were able to learn a lot about ourselves from this bout.

The afterparty was at a bar called Alibi, and of course was a good, crazy time. Who knew Chocolate Demolition was such the showstopper on the dance floor?!? A couple of PBR's later, it was off to bed and homeward bound.

UP NEXT: Guest Skating with the Chattanooga Rollergirls for their debut intraleague expo bout December 12th.

-----------------------------------------
DERBY WORLD TOUR NOTE: Raleigh, NC (Carolina Rollergirls) becomes stop #10 on the Derby World Tour.

DDG's 1st Annual Powder Puff Football

We have some awesome new freshmeat, who are really spirited and coming up with some great new ideas to implement. Zombie Kitty and Erica SLAPton came up with the idea to host DDG's 1st Annual Powder Puff football game.

With fall in full swing, and football fever at its height, we figured DDG needed to hit the gridiron for a little action ourselves. About 14 of us signed up to sqaure off into two teams and play some good ole flag football. Carlos and Carson (coach and guard, respectively) from Huntsville's Womens' Football league, the Tennessee Valley Tigers came out to help coach us and ref the game.

The teams looked like this:

THE BOMB SQUAD (black)

• M'Shell O'BombHer
• Legally Bombed
• Snidely Bitchslap
• Blazin Barbie
• Nookie Monster
• Erica SLAPton
• Brutal Honey
• Coach: Carlos

BAMA BITCHES (pink)

• Bama Brewser
• Tallulah Skankhead
• Brigitte Badonkadonk
• eRacer X
• Pinky Tuscadero
• Zombie Kitty
• Bama's daughter, Sidney
• Coach: Carson

After a quick rules overview, and a few quick run-throughs (the extent of our practice for this game) it was coin toss time and away we went. Since catching and running seems to be my forte, I took on the Wide Receiver position.

The Black team had first possession, but we got in there for a safety, and the early lead. Back in our territory for our first possession, Sidney threw me a great pass that I was able to run in for a touchdown on the 2nd down. Some more great runs by our team put us up 22-0 at the half.

Second half, we came out just as strong. Black's defense was improving, but some great running plays by Sidney, Badonkadonk, and some great blocking by Zombie Kitty, Tallulah, and Pinky continued our scoring run. We even organized a beautiful pass-fake run that allowed me to run the ball down the field for my 4th touchdown of the game. There was some great teamwork on both sides, and I know they'll be plenty of good-natured ribbin' until next year's event.

I was pretty excited when they voted Sidney and I game MVPs. Kinda makes me want to give some Tiger Football a try next.... hmmmmm!

Final Score: 44-0 Bama Bitches (pink) over The Bomb Squad (black).

Up Next: Our last away game of the season against the Carolina Rollergirls in Raleigh, NC.

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!