The Naughty List Preview

Dec 16, 2015 | Bout News

We’re missing the sun up here in the Northern Hemisphere. The curse of our latitude combined with the earth’s axis tilt means that we see our life-giving star only for a precious few hours a day. Many of us commute to our offices in the morning darkness, then after toiling all day must drive home after night falls. This cycle is as old as the Earth itself, but understanding that doesn’t make it seem any less cruel.

Which is why for time immemorial around this time of year folks have lit fires and come together to enjoy the warmth and light of each others’ spirits. We’ve called it Saturnalia or Solstice or Christmas or Yule, but the important part is that we come together to celebrate the bounty of the harvest and the company of the people we love. For thousands of us living near this particular crook in the Mississippi River, the Minnesota RollerGirls December Bout is part of that grand tradition. We pit the red against the green, together with the orange and pink, and we gather round and yell and scream and sip our sodas and beers. This year we call it The Naughty List, and it should help keep away the long night.

Garda Belts v. Rockits

The Garda Belts and Rockits are both coming off wins in last Month’s Tear It Up event, where the Gardas won convincingly over the Dagger Dolls and the Rockits survived a nail-biter with the Atomic Bombshells. Both teams have the fundamentals of blocking down solid, but there’s a constrast in how these teams’ jammers best get through the pack. The Rockits main rotation of Obscene Sheen, Rhea Volt, and Dreidel Robber are all agility-first jammers – they’ll use lots of side-to-side juking and spin moves to get around opposing blockers. On the Gardas side, Beach Slap, Hal’Luci Jen, and Second Hand Smoke tend to rely more on smash-and-push tactics – none of them will hesistate to drop a shoulder and plow into a blocker who is showing them a legal target zone. Either strategy can be effective, but the game might come down to which team’s blockers adjust faster to what the opposing jammers are throwing at them.

Like so many events this time of year, the Garda Belts and Rockits each have a bittersweet moment associated with this bout. The Rockits just wished bon voyage to Betsy Wrecksie who is relocating to Seattle, and the Garda Belts will skate for the last time on Saturday with Crust Almighty, who is about to embark on a cross-country journey with her husband and dog. Both skaters have given their time generously to the Minnesota RollerGirls on and off the track, and the whole league wishes them the best in their new adventures.

Atomic Bombshells v. Dagger Dolls

Looking for their first win of the regular season, both the Dagger Dolls and Atomic Bombshells are likely to show up to this holiday party hungry. Both teams have been using a wide swath of their roster as jammers this year (The Dolls fielded 7 different skaters in the last bout as jammer, for instance), but currently both teams have relied on a single skater for the biggest chunk of their points production. These things tend to change quickly, but for the time being Riotchu for the Bombshells and Jacked Pipes for the Dagger Dolls are their teams’ #1 scoring threat. The symmetry of that matchup gives either team strategic options going into the bout – each team wants to maximise their best jammer’s impact on the game while minimizing the amount of time that the other team’s best scorer is out on the track. You might see teams take counterintuitive steps to prolong or cut off jams if it means they can create a matchup to their advantage.

Riotchu, formerly of the Chippewa Valley Roller Girls, is also an example of a trend across MNRG this year: “rookie” skaters drawing on experience from other roller derby leagues to make an immediate impact in home season play. Riotchu will face off against Lola Frequency who made her Dagger Dolls debut last month after skating for years with the St. Cloud Area Roller Dolls. The Rockits’ Animal (Fairbanks Roller Girls) and Gardas’ Hal’Luci Jen (Babe City Rollers) and OCDevious (North Star Roller Girls) have all made an immediate impact as well. Combined with a strong home-grown training program in the Debu-Taunts, the ability to integrate talent that moves to Minnesota from around the country speaks to the long-term health of the Minnesota RollerGirls organization.

So dust off your favorite sweater, bring the family, buy your tickets, and head on over to the Roy Wilkins Auditiorum for the most festive event of the Minnesota RollerGirls season.