The finals will be Rat City and Rose City. Rat City won its quarterfinals 124-27 and Olympia won 173-45. After Rose City handled Lava City 81-34, Rat City and Olympia had a nailbiter of a match. Oly actually led after the first couple of jams, but they got in foul trouble and Rat City held on for an 80-66 match that was closer than the score indicates. The halftime score was 40-33; I think it's neat that it was exactly half the final score.

In the final match, Rat City won, 67-61. It was a lot of fun. I'm tired now.

We are most of the way through Round One. Rose City defended its #1 seed by defeating Slaughter County 90-50, and then Lava City (Bend, OR) took out Lilac City (Spokane, WA) 86-25).

Right now, the second period of Rat City-Treasure Valley (Boise, ID) is about to start, and Rat City leads, 64-14. Then Oly Rollers-Jet City will finish, but since Olympia is up 92-24, there's not much drama there either.

The matches have been pretty lopsided so far, but it's been really cool to see so many leagues from the area.

The Kansas City Roller Warriors defeated the Rat City Rollergirls in the championship. While I personally am disappointed, I'm not as devastated as I thought I'd be. It was a great weekend of roller derby, and I got to see a lot of great players from around the country. I was starting to mope a little, but the Roller Warriors were so happy, I was unable to be mad at them.

And the Kansas City fans were really great! They were the only visiting fans who could match Rat City's section for volume and enthusiasm, although they did have to use drums. Actually, the drums worked great, because they were loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to be annoying, so they weren't like Thundersticks.

Kansas City had great jammers. Both Snot Rocket and Xcelerator were super fast and super agile. They'd get hit sometimes, but it would hardly slow them down. They also had some showmanship: a couple of times, Xcelerator called off the jam with a move that looked suspiciously like a D-Generation X crotch chop, and facing Carolina, Snot Rocket got through the pack and then spun around and skated backwards before calling off the jam (just before the Carolina jammer could get there). They were much more straightforward against Rat City, though. I mean, there was some celebration at the end, but who can blame them?

Carolina looked pretty tired in their semifinals against Kansas City and then completely exhausted against Texas. My favorite Carolina skater was Princess America, who was very cheerful even though she was in two-thirds of her teams jams (their only jammers were her, Vella Lugosi, and Betty Rumble -- and Princess America also blocked and pivoted a lot). Having two thirty-minute periods with only ten minutes off is brutal, and skating three full bouts in two days is even more so. At an event like this, conditioning is key.

Rat City fielded an all-blonde lineup against Texas (I believe D-Bomb was the pivot, Rettig to Rumble, Femme Fatale, and Edie Brickwall as blockers, and Blonde an' Bitchen jamming), and it was the jam where Blonde an' Bitchen got leg whipped. In the last jam against Texas, Rettig got Lead Jammer. And I'm not sure if she's always been skating this low, but Miss Fortune, was reaching down and tapping the track on ther turns when jamming. Well, when she wasn't zipping through the pack.

I saw Texas doing some very clever things against Carolina: Rice Rocket (skating as blocker) would pretend to not be looking at the jammer, but Derringer would direct her where to go. So the jammer would try to slip by but get wiped out anyway. I imagine Derringer has a great view of the pack from way up there. I also saw a great move on the first day (possibly by Chicago, because my notes say "Harmadillo" -- although I might have just been writing down her name because it made me laugh) where the three blockers would be all bunched together, and the jammer would skate up silently and tap the back one on the hips. Then the blockers would explode out, walling off the opposing blockers unexpectedly.

It was a great weekend of roller derby and I'm glad I came down for it. It was stressful (I thought I was going to throw up!) but it was awesome.

Oh -- and Kansas City has the best theme song in Roller Derby.

Seattle 92
Detroit 12

Number of leg whips by Seattle 1

It took way to long to make that last post - so this one is short and sweet.
Texas 108
Windy City 56

I missed out on the first six jams because I was trying to type up all the info from the previous period. I can tell you that we saw a lot of Rice Rocket - she's impressively fast and if we go up against Texas tomorrow she's going to have to be shut down!

Next up RCRG vs Detroit! Don't expect any updates during that bout - I'm on vacation and I want to watch our girls skate!

Final Score: Texas 57 Windy City 23
(Bold text signifies lead jammer)

Scores at the end of each jam

That game stayed close right up until the end! The final score was Carolina 80 Tuscon 73

Tomorrow it will be Carolina vs Kansas City