Asheville, NC

Steel City Stands their Ground

By Beth Row

The trend of penalty-heavy play continued into the second game of day 2 of the 2013 D1 Playoffs in Asheville, North Carolina. Game 7 between Columbia Quad Squad, from Columbia, South Carolina, and Steel City Roller Derby, from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, was a physical, hard-fought game in which 2 skaters left the game due to injury and another skater fouled-out.

The first two jams of the game had jammer penalties. Mel Anoma got through and got lead jammer for Columbia on the first jam of the game, but was then sent to the box on a track cut. Mal Pacino jammed for Columbia in jam 2 and was called for a major forearm. The score was 34-5, Steel City leading less than 5 minutes in.

David A Carter Photography

To Columbia’s credit, Holly Hunter and Truckstop made Hurricane Heather fight to get through on a Steel City power jam and the Columbia defensive wall of 2 held Steel to 41-9 at end of jam 3. Columbia continued to use Truckstop and Holly Hunter as their 2 wall as blockers racked up penalties. As the game continued, both teams traded hard, physical hits.

Columbia’s first power jam opportunity occurred when Poison Violet forced Hurricane Heather to cut the track. Mal Pacino, released from the box, had a hard time fighting through a smaller Steel pack. Steel City held on to the lead, but CQS hacked away at it, the score 53-31. Mel Anoma took the star to finish out the penalty minute, but committed a back block and released Hurricane Heather early. Steel had the score at 59-34 with less than 15 minutes left in the first half. Steel continued to have power jams in their favor when Chucktown Bruiser took the star for Columbia and was called for a back block. With Leeannibal Lecter jamming, Steel pushed the score to 79-34 with 12:18 left in the first half.

Poison Violet took the star, displayed some fancy footwork and added to the CQS score 108-56 with 2:12 left in the period. But the momentum quickly faded when, in the last jam of the half, Columbia’s Mal Pacino was called once again for a track cut. The half ended with Mal Pacino still in the box and 114-56 on the scoreboard.

Starting the second half, Mal Pacino, upon release, in the second half fought the Steel City defense, but decided to give the star to pivot Fearless Fritz. Steel City’s Snot Rocket Science called it before Fritz could make it around for points.

When Fearless Fritz took the line for the first time as a Columbia jammer, she immediately went to the box for a penalty. Chucktown Bruiser, Holly Hunter and Boston Terror continued a barrage of big hits and hard defense to knock down Snot Rocket Science, forcing Snot to call it off after only gaining 5 points.

Columbia called an official review to argue that no impact penalties were being called as majors. The calls stood. It only seemed to fuel the Steel City defense as they held Mel Anoma back while Leannibal Lecter pushed the lead the 160-56 with 21 minutes left.

“The game against Steel City was a great eye-opener for us,” said Columbia’s Truckstop. “I don’t think we have played a such a physical team and we learned a lot about playing different teams on a higher level. We had a lot of fun trading hits with them.”

After an injury timeout, both teams had only 2 blockers on the track. On the jammer line, Snot Rocket Science vs. Poison Violet. Snot Rocket got out as lead jammer with Poison right behind her. Snot ran down the clock by staying in front of Poison. Poison was hit out by Snot who brought her all the way back to the blockers and the Steel City blockers swallowed up Poison. The jam ended with 17:42 on the clock and Steel City ahead 168-61.

Steel City continued to get their jammers out first and add points to the scoreboard, despite big, physical hits by Columbia. Steel City is no stranger to big hits and delivered some blows of their own. Steel City broke the 200 mark with 11:30 left.

“We didn’t know what to expect from them,” said Steel City Captain Ally McKill. “They played us really tough the whole game even though the score didn’t reflect it. We worked really hard and we’re going to try to get some down time before the next physical game.”

Posion tried an apex jump to gain points for Columbia and was faced with a misconduct call with a little over 8 minutes left. On her way out of the box, Posion committed a low block and went right back in. It gave Steel City 2 full minutes without an opposing jammer and Steel City continued to put points on the board.

final score

(10) Columbia QuadSquad 82
(5) Steel City Roller Derby 269

Steel City goes on to play Oklahoma Saturday afternoon. Columbia will play the Mad Rollin’ Dolls for 9th place Sunday morning.