Detroit Derby Girls: Motown Wreckers vs. Glass City, and the Fresh Meat Face Off

September 22, 2012, at The Masonic Temple

Glass City (Toledo) vs. Motown Wreckers

If you're not familiar with the Motown Wreckers, they're the Detroit Derby Girls C-level travel team. They're the squad that's brought out to play against other leagues that don't have as much experience, or as large of a talent pool as DDG.

The biggest difference in tactics used by Glass City is face-to-face blocking. Their defending blockers will skate backwards in order to directly face the opposing jammer that they're trying to block. This carries a certain risk, because in that situation the opposing jammer can ram into that blocker with as much speed as she can muster. If a blocker is facing forward and the opposing jammer rams into her from behind, the jammer gets a "back blocking" penalty. While Glass City didn't use this tactic on every jam, they also never suffered the painful consequence I kept expecting to see.

Motown was leading from the first jam, when Mean Streak outscored Glass City's Mother Nature 9-2. Mean Streak made the biggest point gain of the bout in the 6th jam, when she skated for 14 points, putting the lead at 25-6. Between her performance at this bout, and the fact that she won a game MVP at least once in the last year leads to me to ask, "Isn't Mean Streak overqualified to play on the C-team?"

Motown held the lead all night, and had several shutout streaks. They held Glass City scoreless from jam 2 through 4, 9 through 13, and 15 through 17 in the first half. From the last jam of the first half through jam 3 of the second, followed by jam 11 through 14. Glass City was still able to make some shows of strength, like when Looks That Kill scored 10 unanswered points in jam 7 of the first half

Final score, 164-50.


Freshmeat Face Off

The Freshmeat Face Off is a chance for the league to showcase the rookie players just before the draft results are announced. Eight players were divided between two teams formed just for this exhibition bout: Team Beav, and Team Sleeze, with a couple dozen veterans thrown in to create two one-time rosters for this face-off.

Jam 1 of the bout had the rookies Mag Pie and Catch-La-Fever jamming against each other. The very first time the public gets to see the rookies play, and Catch come out ahead 4-0.

The first big impression was made by Detroit Knock ya Silly. If a jammer is still in the penalty box at the end of the jam, she is still her team's jammer for the following jam. Knock kept ending the jam in the penalty box, and as a result was her team's jammer from jam 4 through 7. I've never seen such a long penalty box streak.

Veteran players not normally in the spotlight also took the chance to stand out. Midnight Vulture scored 30 (yes, 30) answered points in the 6th jam (of the first half) while Knock was bouncing in and out of the penalty box. 8 Mile Rose scored 14 unanswered points in the 11th jam.

The second half also had its fair share of big plays from veterans. Seoul Slayer scored 19 points in the 3rd jam. Doom Shakalaka scored 24 unanswered points in the fifth jam, and another 25 unanswered points in the 10th and final jam of the bout. I also got to see Doom pull off an impressive spin maneuver to redirect the inertia of a collision and stay on her skates. (Some may remember that she was the #1 pick in last year's draft)

The final score was Team Beav over Team Sleaze, 125-97, although the final score isn't really that relevant, since these line-ups may never exist again.

Now the draft results, in the order they were announced:

• Mag Pie - The Detroit Pistoffs
• Detroit Knock Ya Silly - Grand Prix Madonnas
• V8 Nightmare - The Pistolwhippers
• Renegae - Grand Prix Madonnas
• Catch-La-Fever - Devil's Night Dames
• Smack Morris - D-Funk Allstars
• Furious Fro Sheba - Grand Prix Madonnas
• Tig O' Hitties - The Pistolwhippers

It was also announced that Rockem Shockem was traded to Grand Prix Madonnas. Traded for what? Why did the Grand Prix Madonnas get so many draft picks when they came in 2nd place last season? Why did 3rd place D-Funk only get one? I hope to have all of these answers for you in advance of the November 17th regular season opener.

All photos by Dan Bachorik

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I'm a dork, I live in the Detroit area, and sometimes I take blurry photos on an outdated camera