Dallas, TX

By Whacks Poetic

Both the Ohio Roller Girls of Columbus, Ohio, and the Rideau Valley Roller Girls of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, came into today’s ninth-place game looking for their first win of the 2015 International WFTDA Division 1 Playoffs in Dallas. They had only met once before, with Ohio taking the win on that occasion. Today would be no different with ninth-seeded Ohio claiming 9th place, 251-208.

Jennifer Ramos

The game would start out well for Ohio, taking a 24-0 lead in three jams with a pair of penalties going to Rideau pivot-turned-jammer Sister Disaster. She came out of the box with fresh verve and vigor and secured lead in Jam 4, along with 20 points. Shania Pain would join her Canadian teammate in capitalizing on scoring opportunities when The Smacktivist was not jamming for Ohio, and put up 13 points in the sixth jam to close the gap to 5 points ten minutes in, 40-35.

Melanie Austin took the lead for the Canadian team in the very next jam, 44-42 for Rideau. It wouldn’t last, however, and the remainder of the half would see Ohio retake the lead, 82-54, with excellent jamming throughout Ohio’s jammer rotation combined with well-organized offense from the Ohio blockers and some penalty trouble for Rideau’s jammers. At halftime, Ohio had five jammers who had picked up lead for their team and Rideau had 9 trips to the penalty box for theirs. The score reflected that, 134-65.

Ohio’s The Smacktivist, said, “We used to have jammer specific practices but switched that up this year to have more team practices. This allowed us to have more people try jamming and develop different jamming styles. Also, it let everyone get on the same page. We set our jammers up for success by being able to lock down the defense and send someone to play offense.”

Photo by Duane Baker

The second half saw Rideau continuing to try to run the long game and winning jams when lead with both jammers having multiple scoring passes. Ohio’s blockers ran into their own version of penalty trouble playing offense to get their jammers through on long jams. This allowed Rideau to stem the tide and kept the score differential to around 70 points for the first fifteen minutes of the second half. In Jam 12, Shania Pain put up 26 points to Burnadeath’s 12 in a fast-moving pack and closed the gap to 51 points as Ohio passed the century mark, 203-152.

A follow-up fourteen-point jam by Melanie Austin brought the Canadians the closest they’d been since midway through the first half. Soul Rekker, joining the other Rideau jammers, put up a 15-0 jam in the closing minutes of the game and brought the gap even closer, to 225-194. However, Ohio would end the game on a high note with The Smacktivist returning to the track after an injury and running the clock out with a 26-point jam, taking the game 251-208.

Final Score

Rideau Valley Roller Girls (#10) 208
Ohio Roller Girls (#9) 251