Cleveland, OH

By The Oxford Commakaze

In an intrastate battle pitting the St. Chux Derby Chix of O’Fallon, Mo., against the Kansas City Roller Warriors of Kansas City, Mo., Kansas City’s tournament pedigree proved insurmountable for the newer St. Chux team, which in its second-ever playoff tournament versus Kansas City’s tenth -- yes, you read that right. Both teams relied on powerful jammers able to punch through the pack in a game marked by low-scoring, hit-and-quit jams rather than massive scoring runs -- although there were certainly no shortage of power jams, either.

Photo by Andrew Keyes

The outcome was far from certain at the beginning. After Kansas City jammer Mary Lou Wretched emerged as lead jammer from behind two teams engaged in heavy defense, she earned a quick 5-0 jam before calling without realizing that her team actually had a power jam. But the tables turned on Kansas City almost immediately, as their jammer went to the box just after St. Chux jammer Jedi Knight-n-Gale was released from the box. Eager to make up for lost time, she racked up a 20-0 jam with a series of gravity-defying apex jumps. Kansas City quickly tightened the gap, holding St. Chux to just 10 points over the next six jams to its own 28 -- enough to snatch the lead from St. Chux’s hands.

That was only the first of several lead changes as St. Chux kept at Kansas City’s heels, starting in the very next jam, when a 5-0 jam for Sugar Shock put the lead back in St. Chux’s hands, although a fierce Kansas City defense and beautiful bridging by Xcelerator kept the damage minimal. Just two jams later, Kansas City snagged the lead once again with a 23-point jam -- Kansas City’s largest jam in the entire game -- from JessiKaboom, capitalizing on St. Chux penalty trouble that left the team with no jammer and just two blockers on the track for much of the jam. After a few more high-scoring jams for both teams, the game settled into the short hit-and-quit plays that would dominate most of the remainder of the game, with Kansas City’s fluid walls proving difficult for St. Chux’s carefully coordinated offense. The 25-point gap at the halftime score of 110-85 in favor of Kansas City was the widest point margin of the game thus far.

Despite a close first half, St. Chux started to show inevitable fatigue in their second game of the day. Kansas City snapped up the first points of the period, and although St. Chux continued putting up low-scoring hit-and-quit jams, it was taking their jammers more time and effort to clear the pack right as Kansas City started to hit its stride. Kansas City jammers Reptar and Mary Lou Wretched were relentless in their physical jamming, pushing their way up the middle and turning glancing hits from opposing blockers into their own personal momentum machines.

All those low-scoring, fast jams started to pay off for Kansas City as it put up 53 points in 11 jams to St. Chux’ 15 points in the same span. St. Chux snuck in a solid 15-point run as Jedi Knight-n-Gale made quick work of the two Kansas City blockers remaining on the track while her teammate Whip L’Ash kept Kansas City jammer Reptar in the pack with vicious recycling. After a lengthy official review, Jedi Knight-n-Gale hit the track for the second jam in a row, handing St. Chux a 14-point jam to bring the score to 173-133 with barely 10 minutes left.

Unfortunately for St. Chux, that was its last big point opportunity of the game as Kansas City held the team to 15 points in the remainder of the game, with Jedi Knight-n-Gale, the game’s highest scorer with a whopping 114 points (nearly double the next highest scorer on either team), putting up St. Chux’s only points during that time. Kansas City kept the score creeping up thanks to clever positional blocking by Enigma, who consistently positioned herself squarely in the middle of any defensive formations St. Chux tried to set up. Although St. Chux escaped the pack quickly in the final jam as the clock wound down, Kansas City controlled the jam, and jammer Case Closed called the jam off before points could be scored right when the clock hit zero with a final score of 218-149.

Kansas City will move on to play Houston Roller Derby tomorrow at 8 p.m. St. Chux will play the winner of tomorrow’s game between Jet City Rollergirls and the Columbia QuadSquad Rollergirls tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Final Score

Kansas City Roller Warriors (#2) 218
St. Chux Derby Chix (#7) 149