Kitchener-Waterloo, ON

By Vile Love It

The opening game of Friday’s action between the No. 8 seed Demolition City Roller Derby (Evansville, IN) and the No. 9 seed Bear City Roller Derby (Berlin, Germany) set the tone for the weekend in an intense and very close 60 minutes of action.

This was the first appearance for both teams at a WFTDA tournament and Demolition City suffered a loss before the first whistle when their star jammer Bambi ThumpHer (#149) couldn’t make it to the tournament at the last minute.

“This year our goal was to get to the tournament,” said B Donk Kadonk (#00) from Demolition City. “We are thrilled to have made it.”

Bear City was slow to warm up and for the first half of period one, it seemed that Demolition City had their number. Demolition City’s defense held Bear City’s jammers captive in their swirling tripod blocking formations, which also contributed to some early Demolition power jams that helped them put up the points. By midway through the first it was 54-19 in Demolition City’s favor.

And then, it was as if something clicked and Bear City’s defense figured out how to shut down Demolition’s jammers and their jammers figured out the way through the wall of Demolition blockers. Over the next 14 minutes the team from Germany put up 81 points and basically shut down Demolition City’s scorers.

“Midway through the first we found our stride. We are a team that plays the entire 60 minutes but we will take as much time as we need to find out where we need to be and how we need to be,” said Bear City’s Master Blaster (#2). “We will enter into a game pretty conservative and then attempt to ramp up our play once we have the opposition figured out.”

The teams were evenly penalty-heavy. Demolition City’s skaters hit the box 42 times and Bear City’s skaters took 39 trips. Jammer penalties were also evenly split: 12 for Demolition and 11 for Bear City. Demolition lost two players to foul outs and Bear City lost one.

“Our defense is what really pushes us and when we start going to the box we get broken up,” said Demolition’s B Donk Kadonk. “ We didn’t know what to expect with Bear City. We just tried to play our game the best way we knew how and for us that means focusing on defense.”

At the half, the score was 59-100 in Bear City’s favor.

If the first half story was about Bear City’s comeback, the second half was about Demolition City’s.

There were jams where both teams seemed to be bleeding players to the box and Demolition was able to capitalize during power jams to pull the scores closer together. In a few jams, Bear City lost scoring ability as their jammer was caught and their blockers were too focused on freeing her and Demolition’s jammer was able to collect unchallenged points. With 10:30 left in the bout Demolition pulled to within 27 points.

A series of Bear City jammer penalties gifted Demolition with more scoring opportunities and they took full advantage of it. By the time the clock read 1:11 the numbers on both sides of the scoreboard were identical: 176-176.

The referees huddled with captains from both teams and then huddled by themselves. The scoreboard was changed 175-176 with Bear City holding the tiniest lead.

The teams set up for the next jam. Demolition won lead jam and called off the jam after collecting two points and holding Bear City to zero. But there was still 40 seconds on the period clock. Even without the timeout that Bear City called, it was plenty of time to start a new jam.

In the final jam, Bear City’s stellar jammer Master Blaster (#2) worked through to get lead jammer status, pulled through for one scoring pass while her blockers held and recycled the Demolition jammer. She tapped her hips and the scoreboard read: 177-180. Bear City moves on in the tournament to play the No. 1 seed DC Rollergirls at 4 p.m. Friday. Demolition City will begin playing in the consolation bracket Saturday morning.

Final Score

(9) Demolition City Roller Derby 177
(8) Bear City Roller Derby 180