Fort Wayne, IN

Rose City regroups against Grand Raggidy

By Whacks Poetic

The Rose City Rollers of Portland, Oregon found themselves in the consolation bracket after a hard-fought loss against the London Roller Girls from London, UK, yesterday. They came into the tournament ranked fifth and now must fight through the consolation bracket to retain that ranking. Grand Raggidy Roller Girls from Grand Rapids, Michigan came into Fort Wayne’s 2013 WFTDA Division 1 Playoff tournament as the 10 seed and will have a chance to improve on that tomorrow.

Play looked sloppy from both teams early in the bout with Scald Eagle from Rose City calling off the first jam just a bit late during her second scoring pass allowing Grand Raggidy’s jammer, Lucy Morals, to pick up a single point, and Grand Raggidy’s Ultra Fox getting sent to the box on a backblock in the third jam just before trying to call it off allowing Licker’N’Split to pick up 20 points. The penalty trouble continued for both teams with Mutch Mayhem getting sent to the penalty box on her initial pass in the fifth jam.

Photo by John Wijsman

Grand Raggidy jammer Shotgun Shell picked up lead jammer status and scored 13 points for the Michigan team in that jam. After seven jams, the score stood at 46-21 with Grand Raggidy having an edge on lead jammer status with four lead jammer calls to Rose City’s three. Rose City appeared to wake up at that point and Scratcher in the Eye earned lead jammer for the Portland team, having started the jam in the box. She went on to score 4 points and call it off before Grand Raggidy’s Shotgun Shell could score at all. Rose City jammers then figured out how to evade the Grand Raggidy blockers and scored 153 unanswered points in the remainder of the first half while the Rose City blockers drew four penalties from the Grand Raggidy jammers. The score at halftime reflected this newly energized Rose City team’s hard work at 203-21 for the Rose City Rollers.

Grand Raggidy, just like in their game against Wasatch Roller Derby yesterday, looked much improved in the second half. Lucy Morals managed to get lead jammer status and score points for the Michigan team in multiple jams and the Grand Raggidy blockers did some great point control both in getting their jammer out of the pack and forcing the Rose City jammers to call off the jam before picking up all four points. Of particular note was the play of Nnegatron. Twice, she found herself to be the lone blocker on the track for Grand Raggidy and managed to avoid the offensive hits by the Rose City team in order to engage their jammer.

“It was complete and utter panic in my head but I had two goals: when the other jammer’s coming up go for her and when she’s out of the pack get my jammer through. I just worked with that with singular focus,” Nnegatron said.

In the second last jam of the game, Nnegatron took to the jammer line for the first time and was rewarded with lead jammer status for her team, putting up four points through an incredibly fast pack before calling the jam.

The Rose City blockers, on the other hand, seemed to lose their focus in the second half. They regularly started jams at a pack disadvantage with two and sometimes three blockers in the box. Fortunately, the four jammer rotation of Scald Eagle, Mutch Mayhem, Licker’N’Split and Scratcher in the Eye persevered despite the pack disadvantage and Rose City put up an additional 226 points in the second half with the final score being 429-48 in favor of the skaters from Portland.

“We noticed from our game yesterday that there were definite areas that we needed to improve on in playing our game. We came in and found ourselves adjusting to a new style of skating from Grand Raggidy," said Rose City's Havana Good Time. "They play amazing offense but we were able to wrangle that in. We left today’s game feeling very confident going into this evening’s game. Today’s games are all about completing our final test, taking from the season what we’ve learned from the season and moving forward to the 2014 season having opportunities to really hone our skills.”

Final Score

(5) Rose City Rollers 429
(10) Grand Raggidy Rollers 48

Grand Raggidy Roller Girls will be playing for 9th place at 10 am Sunday morning. Rose City will be playing later today at 6pm against the Cincinnati Rollergirls, hoping to make it into the fifth place game tomorrow at 2pm.