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Live from the John S. Knight Center, the Rubber City Rollergirls






When I had last saw Roller Derby in any form, it was Roller Jam, which was telecast every Friday night on TNN, now Spike TV. And as the Roller Games I saw in the seventies, it was sports entertainment, or in my son's words, wrestling on skates.

My fondest memory was watching Roller Game of the Week. The Los Angeles T-Birds were the good guys and everybody else were the bad guys.

Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing the Rubber City Rollergirls in a bout against the Black-N-Bluegrass Rollergirls. The Rubber City Rollergirls are from Akron, Ohio. The Black-N-Bluegrass Rollergirls represent Northern Kentucky and are from Florence. I suppose Jeremy could tell us a little more about these ladies.

Now this is different from the Roller Derby of my youth. First difference in this is that the ladies weren't skating on a banked track, but a concrete floor. The other difference was that this was an actual competition and not "sports entertainment." One other thing, these athletes, and I can call these ladies athletes, are amateur and were skating for the love of the sport.

Since most people nowadays are unfamiliar with roller derby, there was a demonstration of the game before the competition began. The bout itself had two 25 minute halves with a 15 minute intermission. The action was very rough and tumble and was before a packed house. Those sitting in the front roll were taking their chances as there were no barrier between the action and the spectators. At one point during the bout, one of the ladies ended in between the seats.

There were announcers doing play by play, Alanouncer and Mad Dog Madrin. They did a very good job of explaining the action, telling who the lead jammer was and who may have been serving the penalty.

If you click on the photo of the teams, you will see that the only theatrics were in the names and the numbers.

The Black-N-Bluegrass Rollergirls won the bout by a score of 88-71. There was a great display of sportsmanship during the bout.

I had the WIXYcam with me and plan on doing two more posts about the evening. The photos in this post were from the program. The logo is from the Rubber City Rollergirls website.

Comments

Mike Golch said…
I did not know that there were any of these teams left.I thought that they fadded into the sunset a long time ago.
August 23, 2009 3:23 PM
clean and crazy said…
i think it is great that you keep up on this
August 23, 2009 4:49 PM
J. Moses said…
The funny thing is, Cliff...I never knew they were here! Now I do and will go watch their next match next week...
August 23, 2009 11:47 PM
Pat Jenkins said…
karen saw on your facebook page you were going to see some roller derby. i look forward to hearing about more of the evening!!
August 24, 2009 7:02 AM
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