Fort Wayne, IN

Denver holds strong against Cincinnati

By Whacks Poetic

In the second bout of the day for the Cincinnati Rollergirls, the Cincinnati, Ohio players found themselves facing a formidable opponent in the Denver Roller Dolls from Denver, Colorado, who were the #1 seed for this 2013 WFTDA Division 1 Playoff in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Roller Dolls were able to end the Championship aspirations of the Cincinnati team with a crushing final score of 419-50.

© Bob Dunnell

Of note in this game was the ease with which Denver played their style of game. Denver blockers seemed to slow the Cincinnati jammers down with zen-like movements. Denver jammers were fairly consistently scoring 10+ points per jam and they didn’t appear to let any pack disadvantage slow them down. They had scored 100 points thirteen minutes into the game, and hit the 200 mark in the first jam of the second half. Cincinnati managed to get lead jammer for the first time in the sixth jam, although that jam resulted in a 3-0 win for Denver when Cincinnati jammer, Wheezy, called it off a tad too late. The very next jam though, Cincinnati managed to put their first points on the board 10 minutes into the bout in a 19-4 jam that favored Denver jammer Wilhelm over her Cincinnati counterpart K Lethal. On a power jam in the 10th jam, Sadistic Sadie managed to put up 15 points for Cincinnati, the most Cincinnati would score in a single jam for the entire game. The remainder of the first half would see Denver climb steadily higher with the score going into the break being 197-26.

The second half showed the promise of a stronger Cincinnati in the near future. The Cincinnati blockers became more effective at slowing down the Denver jammers. Nuke ‘Em in particular played a great game, working at chasing down and subsequently recycling the Denver jammers to the back of the pack time and time again. Sadistic Sadie also did some great work as a jammer, pulling several direction of gameplay penalties off of Denver blockers during a power jam late in the second period. In the end though, Denver was just too powerful for Cincinnati to mount any substantial offense and the game ended 419-50. Both teams were very happy with the result.

“I feel really good about it," said Denver Co-Captain Tracy “Disco” Akers. "The most important thing to us is that we played our game the entire time and I feel like we did.”

“That was awesome," Cincinnati's Sailor Scary said after the game. "They [Denver] were pretty awesome. It was frickin’ fantastic. And we won the equipment check.”

Final Score

(1) Denver Roller Dolls 419
(8) Cincinnati Rollergirls 50

Denver will be playing the London Rollergirls in the semifinals on Day 2, the winner of that game being guaranteed a place at the 2013 WFTDA Championships in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this November. Cincinnati will be playing either Grand Raggidy Roller Girls or the Rose City Rollers in the consolation bracket.