Martin’s Blog

So I’ve been struggling to find something to write about in my blog. The majority of my time is spent doing my analysis homework – the last one I handed in was a small novel that would have been worthy of a certain communist known to some of my readers.

So I cast my eye around – Fitz hadn’t updated in weeks and before that just made cock jokes, Sam had a guest blogger with a very interesting style, Uncle J-Rod had a brilliantly disturbing account of Jacques Kallis’ sex life, Busty St Clair used partial nudity to bring in the crowds, Dave was off looking at Florence and Rome so could get some pictures out of that. After toying with the partial nudity idea I decided I had better go and look at something interesting to get some material: Roller derby it is!

Tucson Roller Derby is an amateur all-female flat track roller derby league with the representative Tucson Saddletramps team currently ranked 6th in the nation. I went down to Bladeworld on a Saturday night for the double header of Iron Curtain vs Copper Queens and Vice Squad v Furious Truckstop Waitresses. There would have been a crowd of about 500 people and a pretty good atmosphere.

Roller derby is a sport played with 2 teams of 6 players on the track at a time. One player from each team, the ‘jammers’, set up behind the pack containing everybody else. The jammers then catch up to the pack and with help from their teammates blocking for them try to make it past the pack. The first jammer to do this is ‘lead jammer’ and has the right to call off the ‘jam’ at any time after this. Once a jammer has passed the pack they race around the track and any skater from the other team that they pass is worth a point. A jam is over after 2 minutes or when the lead jammer calls it off.

There are about 5 referees skating around and sending players to the penalty box for illegal contact. There was quite a lot of players in the box at various points and then you can score points just by skating past them.

The game is played in 2 30 minute halves with a fifteen minute break and has scores that look something like low scoring basketball games: 87 to 69 and 96 to 45 in the games I saw.

It’s actually a very impressive sport: fast, high scoring, some big bumps and you can really see the skill of some of the skaters. The Furious Truckstop Waitresses had some stars: Deadlock Doe was an immovable object at the front of the pack and Sloppy Flo and Peaches Rodriguez (aka P-Rod) were quick and agile.

I saw the end of the first bout between Iron Curtain and Copper Queens. The Iron Curtain had probably the best theme with players like “Karla Marx” and “Dot Stoevsky”. Their mascot however (a kind of commissar character) was no match for the miner representing the Copper Queens who was played by a rather burly professional wrestling type. On the track the Copper Queens triumphed in a close match, running away at the end to an 87 to 69 victory.

So onto the main event: the math department was well represented with

The Turkish Slammer playing for the Vice Squad

and Stricly Bizniz as a referee.

The Vice Squad was up against the Furious Truckstop Waitresses, undefeated in the last 2 seasons. You could see why as the waitresses put on a clinic in the first half to be up by 36 points at the break. Although the Vice Squad threatened to come back getting back to within 20 points or so in the end the waitresses blew it out to end up winning 96 to 45.

To finish up here’s a video of a bout earlier this season: Iron Curtain v Furious Truckstop Waitresses.