Tucson, AZ

By PyRo Blaze

Cliché as it sounds, Game 9 of the D1 Playoffs in Tucson was nothing less than a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred scrap. B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls (BAD), the golden dames of the San Francisco, California, area, met Arch Rival Roller Derby from Saint Louis, Missouri, in a head-on collision showing that both teams want this win like they know it’s going to punch their ticket to the D1 Championships in Saint Paul.

Photo by Bill Zingraf

The opening jams took no prisoners, both teams playing with a fury, jamming like they were shot out of a cannon. (It may be worth mentioning that Bricktator, captain of the St Louis team, transferred from BAD a year and a half ago when she traveled Midwest, giving a new and derbified meaning to the term “Arch Rivals.”) Starting in Jam 8, Arch Rival pulled off a lead change in a three-jam surge when Swanson answered BAD jammer Huck Sinn’s four points with a triple grand slam to bring the score difference to 10 points, followed by an unanswered 7 from Brickyard. Harmony Killerbruise earned 14 points in Jam 10, scraping a lead for Arch Rival 46-35.

Scuffling and scrapping, Arch Rival held the lead for three more jams, once with jammers on both sides unable to break the pack for over a minute. In Jam 13, all hell broke loose. With both jammers in the penalty box, BAD won another lead change with a triple grand slam from Frightmare to bring the score to 46-50 in BAD’s favor. This lead was quickly reinforced by 8 points from BAD’s Lulu Lockjaw.

Photo by Bill Zingraf

Point by point, Arch Rival clawed their way toward closing the gap, their blockers only giving up five points to BAD’s Fluezy in the next six jams. As the first period closed, renewed determination by Fluezy and Lulu and a three-point award in an official timeout brought the halftime score to 81-59 in BAD’s favor.

BAD Girls are known for using the halftime to regroup, assimilating what they’ve learned about their opponents in the first half and adjusting their game to come back even stronger. This bout was no exception. In Jams 2 & 3 of the second period, 12- and 13-point pickups by Fluezy and Frightmare stretched BAD’s lead to 112 -59, a gap from which Arch Rival was never able to recover.

In an era of geometric defensive formations, it was rather startling to see that BAD often deployed the traditional style of a four-blocker forward-facing wall across the track. But their maneuverability and mobility remained as effective as ever, contributing to BAD’s triumph in a final score of 163-103.

FINAL SCORE

B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls 163
Arch Rival Roller Girls 103