Let’s jam!

To the left, you can read Kevin’s recap of the roller derby. Here is mine:\
I went to my first Roller Derby bout last night! It was fun! The first half an hour I was too amazed with all of the hot chicks there to really pay attention. (I kept making Kevin email a friend to tell him what he was missing.) They were in little gaggles and dressed to the 7’s, like they had gotten lost on the way to some club. I never did figure them out. There was also a huge contingent of computer nerds, goths, bikers, and families. It was surreal.\
The derby itself was kind of insane. It was a flat-track derby, with no rail between the participants and the fans. The first row was called the “suicide seats.” Yeah, we didn’t sit there. I had no idea what the rules or objective of roller derby was but after awhile, I figured out some things and could appreciate when someone made a good maneuver. It’s a rough sport, with lots of falling and elbows. Four girls from the roughly 45 players were recovering from serious broken bones. Youch! The basics are: This is a sport played on roller skates, which leads to all kind of craziness. Each period is 20 minutes (I am not sure if there are two or three periods per bout.) Within each period are several “jams,” where four girls from each team skate in a “pack” and one girl from each team initially skates behind them. These lagging skaters try to maneuver through the pack to be in front and then skate around the track to try to get through the pack again and again. They get one point for every opposing player they pass. These jams are at most two minutes long, which makes for lots of quick action and restarts with fresh skaters. There was some trash talking, elbows flying, and penalties all over the place. One girl even lifted her skirt and patted her ass a few times, to mock the skaters behind her. The audience laughed, the opposing skaters didn’t.\
The players have awesome names. That was probably one of the most fun things about the night. They also have really fun uniforms, with the shortest skirts in the world, that they embellish when not competing. The referees even have fun too. There was a guy in a clown face named John Dewayne Gacey and Refsputin, who would send you to hell if you disagreed with him.\
By the end, I was really getting into it. I felt like if we suddenly moved to somewhere exotic, that in a few short months I would be cheering for their wacky sports too. Cuz watching sports isn’t really about the love of the game, IMO, it is about the appreciation of a tough skill, the opportunity to root for your favorite team, and to be with other people.\
Roller derby is weird! But I enjoyed it anyway! If you ever have the chance, check it out! There is a probably a league near you!