Cleveland, OH

By The Oxford Commakaze

The Brandywine Roller Girls of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, rolled to a comfortable -- if not exactly easy -- win over the Oklahoma Victory Dolls of Oklahoma City, OK, at the 2015 International WFTDA Division 2 Playoffs Cleveland, guaranteeing them a spot in tomorrow’s game for fifth place. Both teams exceeded expectations for the weekend, with Brandywine coming in as the #10 seed and OKVD as the #9 seed. Both teams went into the game knowing that neither could finish the tournament lower than 8th place and congratulated each other on making it this far before the first whistle.

Photo by Steve Jurkovic

OKVD came in hot with a quick 10-0 jam for jammer Fatal Inferno while her blockers held Brandywine jammer Buenas D. A$$ behind an unmoving braced wall. Brandywine looked to steal the lead with a power jam for Lurz Lemon, who picked up 18 points with fluid leaps over the apex, but a quick track cut to Lemon amid a sea of OKVD blockers on the inside line opened up a scoring opportunity for OKVD’s Czech 1-2, holding the lead at 22-18 at the end of the two-minute jam. A fast four-point jam for Brandywine brought the game to a tie within six minutes of the game’s start, but a series of lead jam calls for OKVD kept them in the lead -- although not without a few points sneaking onto the board for Brandywine as its jammers pushed for points all the way to the fourth whistle, stealing points in multiple jams.

With a slight 51-37 lead at the eighth jam, OKVD looked like they were hitting their stride, but a 33-point jam for Brandywine’s Lurz Lemon brought the game its first and only lead change as her blockers kept OKVD so distracted they couldn’t find the jammer to stop her, bringing the score to 51-70. Three lead calls in a row for OKVD kept Brandywine’s edge very thin, closing the gap to 66-70 with just under half the period to go, but a 17-point power jam for Buenas D. A$$, aided by decisive offense from Not-Knotty and Rapid ArrhythMia, kept Brandywine’s lead solid as OKVD struggled with a throwback two-two offense-defense combination to hold D. Ass and aid their own jammer.

Both teams had power jam opportunities in the last part of the half, but shutdown defense by both teams kept the point gap fairly even. As teams doubled down on defense, jams shifted to hard-and-fast hit-and-quit point opportunities, keeping the score inching up to a halftime score of 81-126.

The same hit-and-quit jams with a heavy focus on defensive walls carried over into the start of the second half, with neither team managing to put up more than five points at a time for the first 10 minutes of the game, leaving a still-narrow margin of 96-137 in Brandywine’s favor. An 18-point run for Lurz Lemon as her teammate Skinny Guinea made life very difficult for OKVD jammer Fatal Inferno chiseled the lead wider for Brandywine to a 60-point gap, 96-156. After trading points and yet another scoreless jam with jammers escaping the pack almost simultaneously to force immediate call-offs, a 19-point jam for Raggedy Aneurysm halfway through the period pushed the point gap to an increasingly difficult 101-179.

But that still left half a period, and OKVD wasn’t ready to call it done. Czech 1-2 put 14 points on the board in the next jam, after a track cut by Brandywine’s jammer, waving her hands above her head to call for swarming offense from her blockers, who seemed happy to oblige. Three more quick jams kept the score gap nearly the same at 119-184, but yet another power jam for Buenos D. A$$ and an active offense from Brandywine gave her a huge 25 points with less than 10 minutes left in the game for a score of 119-209. That was the last big scoring opportunity for the game as both teams reverted to defense-heavy formations, with fast and tight jams the norm for both teams with four points or less the norm for the remainder of the game. A series of lead jam calls for OKVD held Brandywine scoreless for four jams, but the 90-point cushion Brandywine built earlier in the period was insurmountable for OKVD. With just seconds on the clock as Fatal Inferno for OKVD and Raggedy Aneurysm for Brandywine lined up on the jam line, the 3-1 blocker advantage for Brandywine made it quick work to earn Brandywine the lead, and Raggedy Aneurysm called the jam with three more points after the period clock expired, making the final score 128-220.

The Brandywine Roller Girls will move on to play for fifth place tomorrow at 2 p.m. against the winner of today’s St. Chux Derby Chix vs. Jet City Roller Girls game; the Oklahoma Victory Dolls will play for seventh place tomorrow at 12 p.m. against the loser of that game.

Final Score

Oklahoma Victory Dolls (#9) 128
Brandywine Roller Girls (#10) 220