Asheville, NC

Oklahoma Starts Strong in First Playoffs Appearance

The first game of the 2013 WFTDA Division 1 Playoffs in Asheville, North Carolina, saw a lot of fast packs and hard hits. The Oklahoma Victory Dolls (Seed 9) from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, came out on top of the higher-seeded Nashville Rollergirls (Seed 8) from Nashville, TN with a score of 221-120.

T Pain drew first blood for the Oklahoma Victory Dolls against Nashville’s Four-Leaf Roller. Nashville took the back wall hoping to hold off T Pain, but she went straight up the inside line for lead jam and four points.

The first jammer penalty of the day went to the Nashville with 1:13 left in the third jam, with the score at 21-2. Nashville escaped with the score 30-2 and 24:40 left in the first half.

The tide started to turn for Nashville with a track cut for the Victory Dolls’ jammer. Zip Drive fought through a three-wall of Oklahoma’s blockers, but she was able to pick up 10 points before calling off the jam, giving her team an advantage of starting the next jam as a power jam and 21:42 left in the half.

Nashville started with a power jam, Four-Leaf Roller danced on her toe stops around the outside of the Victory Doll’s wall and continued to put up points as her blockers contained the Victory Doll’s jammer. Roller called it off with the score 30 – 15.

Oklahoma continued to build their lead jam by jam, but Nashville received another break when T Pain was called on a misconduct penalty, but Oklahoma’s defense kept Nashville from running up the score. With the clock winding down on the half, the Oklahoma defense wrapped up the Nashville jammer and Czech 1-2 extended OK’s lead to 108-49 at the half.

Five minutes into the second half, Czech was called for a back block. Nashville took advantage of this and the fact that there was only one blocker on the track for Oklahoma and pulls closer with the score 124-73. Nashville and Oklahoma traded penalties for the next few jams, but Oklahoma was better able to take advantage and put points on the board. The score was 159-78 at 19:24 left in the game.

Nashville had gained a few points again when a tired Zip Drive passed the star to Tear O’Bite, who was subsequently called for a track cut. Following that power jam and a 30-point scoring endeavor from Jammin’ Jane, Oklahoma lead 219-91.

Nashville had one last push when Zip Drive scored 24 points on a power jam, taking the score to 221-118, but with less than 4 minutes left in the game, they were unable to close the gap.

final Score

(8) Nashville Rollergirls 120
(9) Oklahoma Victory Dolls 224

Oklahoma goes on to play #1 Gotham Girls Roller Derby later in Day 1; Nashville plays the Mad Rollin’ Dolls.