After the success of last year's junior bouts in the old challenge hall at Wild West Showdown, the organizers decided to create a junior tournament featuring not only the big six junior teams around the northwest, but also some up-and-coming junior teams from around the rest of the USA and Canada. This was a double-elimination tournament, so each team was able to get at least two bouts in over the weekend. Here are the results of that tournament...
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Saturday
Emerald City 244 - Port Scandalous 234
Edmonton 253 - FOCO 121
I-5 177 - Seattle Derby Brats 173
Portland 263 - Kitsap 128
Nashville 335 - Edmonton 132
Port Scandalous 410 - FOCO 116
Seattle Derby Brats 355 - Edmonton 129
Portland 235 - Emerald City 112
I-5 348 - Nashville 173
Kitsap 234 - Port Scandalous 216
Seattle Derby Brats 172 - Emerald City 71
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Sunday
Kitsap 265 - Nashville 165
I-5 201 - Portland 159
Seattle Derby Brats 237 - Kitsap 114
Portland 182 - Seattle Derby Brats 159
I-5 162 - Portland 128 (Championship bout)
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Forget the final score of the championship game (although it was still relatively close by roller derby standards...a 34 point spread); the final bout between the I-5 Rollergirls and the Portland Rosebuds was probably the best played bout between two teams that I've ever seen.
In my notebook, I was reminding myself that there were very few penalties about halfway through the first half. This was a trend that continued throughout the bout. Especially in a 2nd half that was about as gripping of a game that I've seen in my 7 years following the sport. Both packs were doing an outstanding job of containing the other teams jammers, yet still getting their jammer out and on a scoring pass after a good, tough, long battle to do so. Not only that, but I'm not sure if there was ever a point during that second half when one of the teams had more than one skater sitting in the penalty box at any given time. And there were probably only 3-4 occasions when there was one skater from each team sitting in the sin bin at the same time.
It was clean. It was fast. It was hard hitting. It was, perhaps, the finest display of roller derby I've ever seen.
But the deciding factor in this one was the fact that the I-5 jammers (Dee Stoir, Lex Celerator, The Archer and Short Fuse) were usually the ones who broke out of the pack first for lead jammer status. On most occasions the Rosebuds jammer wasn't too far behind, though. So this caused the I-5 jammers to "hit it and quit it" more often than not.
That's how I-5 basically inched their way closer to victory jam after jam. It was also kind of funny in that, even though Portland was still usually only a good power jam away from taking the lead, the way the two teams were playing and staying out of the box made a 25 point lead seem insurmountable even in the middle of the second half.
Talking with people at halftime during this bout, someone mentioned that this was a bout that "could change the face of roller derby from here on out." I'm not sure if that's 100% true, but for many of us in attendance on Sunday afternoon, this was how roller derby should be played. I-5 played the slightly better game came out on top and took home the championship trophy, but the Rosebuds have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in losing that bout. In fact, they should all be incredibly proud of themselves both individually and as a team. They participated in a bout that us die-hards will look at and marvel over for many, many years to come.
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I have lot's of articles that get into the idea stage and maybe are even worked on a little bit, but are never posted on here for one reason or another (usually it's a time issue with me. Between working 10 hour days and everything else on the weekend, it's hard to get stuff out in a timely manner). One of those articles was going to be posted just after the New Year back in January. And, since we're on the subject of I-5, I figured I'd bring this up now just for kicks.
It was going to be titled "The 5 Best Players Not To Make the Washington All-Star Team." I don't remember who #4 or #5 were, but #3 was Quadzilla and #2 was Lil Tonka. People always ask me why Quadzilla hasn't ever made the list. It's pretty simple; he doesn't get many votes for some odd reason even though everyone marvels at his skills. And, believe it or not, after the first week of voting, Lil Tonka was not only leading the all-star voting, she was also leading the MVP voting. Then, for whatever reason, people stopped voting for her and a lot of the other Oly Rollers and she dropped out of the top-20 with only a couple days left.
#1 on my little list was I-5's Dee Stroir. In general sports terms, she is Scottie Pippen or Mark Messier to Lex Celerator's Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky; an awesome player in her own right, but playing in the shadow of the best player in the game. Dee got votes last year, but finished just outside the top-20 (22nd to be exact...right behind Lil Tonka).
But this weekend, she was really rocking it while jamming for I-5. Again, I wasn't keeping stats this entire tournament, but it seemed like...especially in the championship bout against Portland...that she was earning lead jammer for I-5 most of the times she jammed and was picking up a lot of those quick points during that bout before wisely calling the jam off. She's also always had awesome north-south straightaway speed. But I also noticed this weekend that her east-west lateral quickness has greatly improved over the winter, too.
Anyway, I don't promote people for the all-star team or anything like that. This is why I keep the voting as secret as possible; I don't want people influenced by the way others are voting one way or the other. However, here in early March, I do encourage you to keep an eye on Dee Stroir for the 2013 Washington All-Star Team. Because, frankly, with as many points as she piles-up and as many "Key Jam of the Game" awards she's taken home over the years (without going over all of them, I think she might actually have more of those than Lex Celerator), she's probably the best player who has never made the list. And that's a crime, in my opinion.
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Another interesting bout on Saturday night featured the Kitsap Derby Brats and Port Scandalous Roller Punks. It's noteworthy for a couple different things. The first being Port Scandalous jammer T-Wrecksher piling-up a 45 point jam at one point during the game. The second being that Kitsap...much like Treasure Valley the day before...dug themselves out of a rather deep hole (they were behind at one point by around 80 points...wasn't keeping point tallies on this one at all. It was late and all I wanted to do was go to bed at that point) to come back to win the bout.
Again, more proof that even when you're really down, you should never, ever give up in a bout. Funny things can happen if you keep plugging away at things. Funny things like, you know, actually winning.
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The Emerald City Junior Gems also had themselves a nice little showing. They started the tournament by squeeking-out a slim 10 point win over Port Scandalous in the first bout of the tournament Saturday morning, then ran pretty strong with the Rosebuds in the first half of their bout against them before fading away. Then in the final bout on Saturday night, they were eliminated by the Seattle Derby Brats. Still, considering they played their first bout of the day Saturday at 8:30am and their last bout at after 10:00pm, they did pretty good for themselves.
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I also loved what I saw out of Edmonton, FOCO and Nashville. All three looked like they have a lot of promise in them. In fact, I would go so far to say that, if they hold a tournament like this next year at WWS and Nashville comes to participate, they have a pretty strong chance at finishing in the top-4 if they continue to improve. Maybe even higher. And, with the way things go in the junior derby world, it's also entirely possible that FOCO and Edmonton would have strong showings next year, too. You just never know with junior derby. And that's a good thing. A very good thing.
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The only real quibble I would have with the junior tournament was how so many full-length bouts were crammed into two days. Especially later Saturday, the skaters were really looking pretty gassed out there on the track. Both Port Scandalous and Emerald City started the day at 8:30am and were still playing bouts after 9:00pm (Emerald City didn't start their final bout until after 10:00pm...13.5 hours after their first bout of the day with another one in between those two times). I also don't think it's much of a coincidence that there were so many injury time outs later in the day. Exhaustion can lead to players becoming more vulnerable to getting hurt.
I'm also not faulting the WWS organizers or anything like that. I just think that, when they were putting this together, they didn't imagine things running so long on Saturday for everyone. Really, I don't think anyone did. Hopefully they have another junior tournament again at next year's WWS. And, if they do, hopefully they'll learn from this experience and create something that doesn't have so many players skating in so many games in one day. It'll make for both better games and a safer environment for the players.
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Minus the quibble above, this was still an outstanding tournament! I-5, Seattle and Portland all proved my theory once again that you could take those three names, put them in a hat, shuffle it up really good, pull two of the names out of that hat and you'll have yourself an instant classic of a bout. Kitsap, Emerald City and Port Scandalous proved that they're rapidly rising and shouldn't be taken for granted come NW Junior Championship time. And Nashville, FOCO and Edmonton all showed that junior derby is alive and thriving not only across the United States, but in Canada as well.
I've been banging the junior derby drum around here for quite some time. Sometimes I think that, even though they know it's good, those that don't go to their bouts and see them in action think I'm using hyperbole when describing exactly how great these kids are. Then at one point over the weekend, I overheard a couple of WFTDA skaters talking as they walked by; "the junior skaters are better than us. Hopefully we don't play them anytime soon."
And I thought to myself (using my best Yoda voice in my head) "oh, you will be. You. Will. Be."
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