February 8, 2009

Roller Derby

Alisha and I went to the season opener of the Nashville Rollergirl rollerderby game:

Ummm... It was pretty crazy. I think I can best describe it as this: gold miniskirts, mohawks, thick black eye shadow, fishnet stockings, tattoos, and lots of girls on rollerskates shoving eachother and wiping out. There was this one girl who was probably 6 feet tall, 220 lbs called "Hildebeast". You can imagine...



The video doesn't really do justice to the experience, but at least will give you a little glimpse of what it was like. It looks like everybody is just skating in circles, but there really are rules. There are two "jammers" behind the whole pack of defense skaters ("pivots" and "blockers") that are trying to maneuver safely through the pack. Once they lap the pack once, they get a point for each successive person they pass. Rounds are 2 minutes each. There actually is a lot of strategy that goes into the game. I'm not sure what constitutes a foul, but I can tell you that pretty much everything goes except outright punches. It was pretty crazy.

Here's a video on Youtube from an older game, but it shows off Hildebeast:



At halftime these guys on modified 8 feet tall bikes jousted eachother. I kept thinking someone was going to break an ankle, but nobody got too badly injured:



Alisha thought it was the best date of the year.