Dallas, TX

by Shelly Shankya

Home town favorites, the Dallas Derby Devils Army of Darkness (#6) skated against the Philly Roller Derby Liberty Belles of Philadelphia, Penn. (#3) in the final game of Day 1 at the 2015 International WFTDA D1 Playoffs. Home advantage can be a momentum force strong enough to defeat even the most tenacious of foes, but that was not the case in Game 6.

Photo by Christopher Cross

In the second jam of the game, it looked like Philly would roll away with high-scoring jam after high-scoring jam, electing to run down the clock to their advantage; jammer Herrmann Monster scored 24 points to Miley Virus’s 3. The run fell flat for Philly in the fifth jam when jammer Devoida Mercy cut the track once, then twice, then three times, affording Dallas to regroup as their jammers scored 33 points to Philly’s 0 in six jams. Blanking Philly’s experienced jammers and blockers is no simple task, as the veteran league has played tournament-level play for years and years. The Army of Darkness, however, didn’t let the opposing league’s history deter them whatsoever.

In the 20 jams of the first period, Philly gave up eight power jams to Dallas Derby Devils, many of those jammer cut penalties forced by experienced Army of Darkness blockers like The Little Murdermaid and Guillotine Grace. The lateral footwork from Triple D’s jammer Miley Virus didn’t hurt either. Philly ran into penalty trouble in the latter half of the period; at one point blocker Whacks Poetic was the only blocker on the track for the Liberty Belles. Captain V-Diva started on the jammer line near the end of the half, though, and brought the Philly Liberty Belles within striking distance of the Army of Darkness after scoring 17 points. The period ended with Dallas in the lead by a slim margin, 85-81.

“We really let the fan interaction from Dallas get to us in the first half,” Philly captain and jammer Vanessa “V-Diva” Sites said. “It was tough because anytime we did something good, the crowd was silent. At the halftime we had to change that. Dallas is an amazing group, but we had to play the Philly way.”

Photo by Jennifer Ramos

What was a fever pitch at the end of the first period slowly became a silence of confusion, the crowd wondering how Dallas could let the momentum switch to the ladies from Philly. The momentum changed dramatically as Philly blocking grew in strength as the clock rolled on; the Liberty Belles allowing only three lead jammer statuses to go to the Army of Darkness. The jammers from Philly also played cleaner than they had in the first; they earned eight in the first period but only three in the second.

“It was an eye-opener, playing Dallas,” V-Diva said. “It’s the first time in history that we’ve played them, and we got in our heads. But we adapted our play and played our game. We knew what we needed to work on, we changed out our jammer rotation, and we started communicating much better in the second half.”

Dallas lost a blocker as Blakely fouled out with just over 8:00 left in the game. The gap between the teams had already grown to an unattainable level for Dallas at that point, however. At the time of Blakely’s foul-out, Philly had added 137 to their score from halftime, while Dallas added only 15. Although the clock ticked closer to zero, the intensity of the game never wavered: Dallas continued to block with a level of vengeance that only a home town team can muster, and Philly continued to dominate lead jammer status.

In the end, Philly closed the door of hopes for the Dallas Derby Devils and secured their advance to a semi-final game against Texas (Seed #2) at 8:00 on Saturday night. Dallas moved to the consolation round to play Ohio Roller Girls (Seed #9) on Saturday at noon.

FINAL SCORE

Philly Roller Derby (#3) 241
Dallas Derby Devils (#6) 114