There has been quite the buzz about our game against Tallahassee’s Capital Punishment this past Saturday night. Some of the following are Q&A requested by and provided to the Derby Deeds podcast, along with some additional info.
Who scheduled this game, and why?
Meow Mix scheduled our bouts this season. Being an ILC is a balancing act, part fortune teller and part mathematician. Meow reached out to at least 50 leagues for this date and didn’t get any takers. We put out an all-hands call for someone to help fill this home date for us, turning to social media for help. League members were posting the request. We included a travel stipend, the ability to play B-Level, C-Level, Juniors or our Mens teams in a double header. We also offered to facilitate a hangover bout with any of the leagues nearby so that the trip to Jacksonville would be maximized for any league that agreed.
Tallahassee was the *only* team that stepped up to help us fill this date. When we started working out the scheduling TRG was closer to us in rank.
Since last season we have lost 10 very strong skaters and a bench coach that had been with us for years, 3 of the skaters were primary jammers and 8 had been on the floor at playoffs; the year before that it was another handful. When half (or more) of your team is new you can’t be certain that you’re going to have the same successes.
If you guys were aware of the point spread that you would have to maintain for the rankings calculator, why did you choose to sanction the game?
From a WFTDA rankings calculation perspective we had 3 bouts that were falling off from last year (DC, Blue Ridge and Columbia) that we needed to replace so that our average stayed close to the same. This date was an important one to keep due to this. We didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. We are 2 WFTDA teams that scheduled a bout together, I don’t believe that either side ever questioned if it should be sanctioned or not.
We never told the team the exact spread that we needed (which was probably about 400 points) but a quick look at FlatTrack Stats and everyone could see that it was expected to be fairly one-sided. We didn’t take the track and expect what happened.
What happened on the track?
We went out with a simple plan – play a clean game and put into action everything that we’ve been working on.
Penalties, as always, were a huge factor. We didn’t have a single jammer penalty the entire bout and at the half we had a total of 5 penalties. Our intention is certainly never to beat up on anyone, I know that some people see it that way because of the final score and that’s unfortunate. We feel like we did what we had to do with the circumstances that were given to us.
We have played our fair share of hard games, it comes with the territory. It’s in those instances that you can really learn a lot about your team and yourself. This is a competitive sport, I think that we are all conditioned to play our hardest, no matter if we are losing or winning (regardless of the score difference) and that’s exactly what both teams did. The Tally ladies are filled with so much heart and they never gave up, they played a hard-hitting game from start to finish. I would think it would be offensive to have a team ‘ease up’ on their opponent. Isn’t that why skaters boycotted the ‘mercy’ rule with the Womens World Cup?
What happened after the bout?
We went to the after party of course; we shoved our faces with food, we danced and had fun. All of us. We have been playing against Tally for years, the wins and losses have traded hands back and forth, we consider them our sister league.
The next morning we hosted a camp for Tally. We had Streak, Meow, Jamsterella and Erin Jackson run mini-clinics on important areas of focus; skater stance, walls, foot work and the mental game. We have been lucky enough to have a great wealth of information and experience available to us and we were glad to be able to take the opportunity and share it. I hope that they found it beneficial and were able to take some new drills and ideas back with them.
We thank Tally for coming to play us and they will always hold a special place in our hearts, we have a ton of respect for them. <3
