The New Look Bombshells Won't Get Caught Napping by the Gridlock

By Thomas Gerbasi

Roster turnover is an inevitable part of every Gotham Girls Roller Derby season. But few have been turned over like last year’s runners-up, the Bombshells from Brooklyn.

“I feel like this is the most turnover that we’ve had in a really, really long time,” said co-captain Raggedy Animal, who will begin her 12th year on the track when her squad faces the Bronx Gridlock this Saturday at John Jay College in NYC.

PHOTO DAVID DYTE

So how different will the Bombshells look in 2017? Well, there will be five new skaters representing the team this year, the most of any GGRD home team. But that’s not why this is such a league-shattering news item. What makes this such a big story is that joining Girl Friday among the “newbies” will be former Bronx star Sweets McBacon, GGRD junior league phenom Bellatricks, current All-Star V-Diva, and another skater Gotham fans might remember, Donna Matrix.

Put those five on the track and it’s an all-star lineup in itself. Add them to a team that has won two championships in the last five years, and that’s a frightening prospect for the rest of the league. But as Animal points out, it takes more than talent to win in this league.

“We are super grateful and tickled that our turnover resulted in drafting huge, huge individual talent, and we have that excitement going into it,” she said. “But the challenge is knowing that individual talent can’t win games. It’s really been about making sure that we’re not just showing up with individual talent, but that all the draftees are enmeshed in the team culture and we’re on the same page with playing roller derby.”

Given this reality, Animal and the blue crew were very happy that their season opener was scheduled for this weekend and not on March 25.

“I’m so glad we didn’t play first,” she said. “The turnaround from a draft to the first game is tight. You’re basically dusting off the cobwebs from the off-season and it’s really intense. And while you always want more time, I definitely feel like we had the time that we needed. Because we drafted a lot of talent, our focus wasn’t necessarily on individual skill building. So Day One, we got right into how we play and our strategies and making sure that we were on the same page and had the same language and were doing the same things. So we’ve spent our time making sure that we’re skating together as a team.”

PHOTO MANISH GOSALIA

And if this group of skaters has come together as a team, it’s going to be quite a show this weekend. Yet regardless of the final score on Saturday, anticipation is at an all-time high to see what this group offers to the league.

“Because they come from such amazing backgrounds, to get to see them skate for the Bombshells is a whole new world of excitement, with Diva and Donna and Sweets, and even Bella coming from the junior league,” Animal said. “She (Bella) is incredible and did amazing things in the junior league. She’s unassuming and quietly effective, but she’s always in the right place at the right time. So it’s not that we drafted new skaters that have experience. We drafted some serious skaters with major accolades from what they were doing previous to becoming a Bombshell.”

Yet even though all eyes will be on Brooklyn in this opening matchup, the Gridlock aren’t showing up to make up the numbers. They’re coming to win, and with no victories on their ledger since May of 2014, the Bronx are hungrier than ever and more dangerous than they’ve been. But they won’t sneak up on Brooklyn, whose veteran skaters know just what it’s like to be in that position.

“I’ve been on the losing side and I’ve been on the winning side,” Animal said. “In 2014, we lost every single game and in 2015 we won every single game. They are very different motivating factors. Even in the early years of the Bombshells, when I first joined, we couldn’t win a game to save our lives. We kept being called the lovable underdogs, the Gotham darlings, and we couldn’t beat anybody. So I know how bonding it is to go into a season and be like, ‘Damn it, we want to win.’ And they have so much individual talent and they’re big and strong, so they’re absolutely a threat.”

The Comeback Begins for the Gridlock This Saturday

By Thomas Gerbasi

It’s been a rough couple years for the Bronx Gridlock, but if there’s an omen for getting back into the win column for the first time in nearly three years, it may be that they will be lining up this Saturday against the team they beat in that May 2014 bout, the Brooklyn Bombshells. But the cabbies aren’t superstitious or thinking of the past. They’re simply approaching the season opener at John Jay College as a fresh start.

“I think we’re all really positive,” said Lucky Scars. “It’s a brand new team, a brand new year, so we’re all very excited to be able to go out there and show everybody what we’ve got. People are pumped.”

Home to four new skaters (Scars, Annie Mergency, Gwen Animals Attack, Heronymous Bosch), the Gridlock still retains much of its veteran core, a unit that has weathered the bad times and still show up on bout night ready to leave it all on the track. In this league, that’s the M.O. for every team, but with so much talent on display across all four Gotham Girls Roller Derby league home teams, it becomes a game of inches where one key injury or one penalty at an inopportune time can spell the difference between victory and defeat. For fans, that’s a blessing. When you’re on the wrong side of that injury or penalty, it’s a curse, and one the Gridlock hope to break in 2017.

“That says something about the draft process and how close games have gotten in the past few years,” said Scars. “It’s really anybody’s game, and over the last few years, the Bronx has put up a really good fight, but it’s just come down to a few points. So it’s really anybody’s game on any given day. Bronx is a really hard working team, we love each other just like any other team, and we have just as much of a chance as anybody. So I’m really looking forward to bringing back those wins for the Bronx.”

PHOTO TYLER SHAW

With league parity making virtually every game a fight to the finish, it’s the intangibles that often set the squads apart, and even early on this season, team personalities are starting to take shape. So far, the Mayhem are the defending champs looking for a repeat and Queens is the team that returns fully intact from 2016. But what are the Brooklyn Bombshells bringing to the track this year? The two-time GGRD champs got hit hard with turnover in the off-season, but their draftees are some of the most experienced and highly-regarded skaters in the league. So are they the derby version of Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates?

“We don’t know what we’re gonna get,” laughs Scars. “But I think as a league there are some things that we can expect, some things that the Bombshells do that never change. We’re all familiar with each other’s little tricks and twists and we try to prepare for that, but then you never know what’s going to come out of left field. But we try to adapt and that’s part of the game and I think we’ll be able to do that.”

As for the Gridlock, they’ve gone through various personalities as a team over the years. The near-dynasty years from 2007-2010 saw the team skating like a well-oiled machine, technically sound with few mistakes. Then they became the cardiac kids of Gotham, pulling off miracle late bout runs that kept fans on the edge of their seats. And in recent years, they’ve been the squad that has stared adversity in the face and just kept moving forward, refusing to give in on and off the track. So what does the 2017 version of the Bronx look like?

“The personality of the 2017 team is very hardworking, very close knit,” Scars said. “We’re funky, we’re a mixed bag, but it just works. We all meld together in this funky fresh kind of way. Every jam’s a new jam, every game’s a new game and every year’s a new year. You just have to keep working hard, and it’s like a restart. Every game is anybody’s game, so we can absolutely take it.”

PHOTO DAVID DYTE

On Saturday, the road back begins. And while it is a fresh start, Scars and her teammates realize that there is also a history there for the Gridlock, and it’s something they take seriously as they attempt to recapture the glory days.

“Whenever I put on that jersey, it’s a very proud moment,” she said. “There is the history. You have Bonnie Thunders and Vicious Van GoGo, who have been on the team before, and it gives you confidence.”

The Fight for the Golden Skate begins with Manhattan and Queens

By Thomas Gerbasi

No home team in the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league has repeated as champion since the Bronx Gridlock pulled the feat off in 2010. On Saturday at John Jay College in New York City, the Manhattan Mayhem begin the defense of their title against the Queens of Pain, and the champs are most certainly hoping to end the six-year repeat drought.

“It’s always the year for a repeat,” said Mayhem newcomer Brawleen Lidz. “We have a lot of amazing new talent on our team that I think has been meshing very well at scrimmages and at practice and the vibe has been very welcoming. I felt accepted onto Manhattan Mayhem as soon as I got the phone call that I was drafted, so I’m really excited to try and make this a repeat for us this year.”

Lidz is one of four skaters donning the orange and black for the first time, and with a 16-skater roster, that’s a quarter of the team that needs to get acclimated not only to the Gotham way of derby, but to the reality of playing at the highest level of the sport every night. Luckily, after winning three of the last five league titles, Mayhem deals with the yearly turnover better than most, and as Lidz points out, that unity among the team was evident from the first time she saw her future squad on the track.

PHOTO DAVID DYTE

“The first Gotham game I ever saw that wasn’t on television was a Manhattan versus Brooklyn game and I didn’t know any back story about the two teams or that they had this chemistry off the track as well, but when I was watching Manhattan play, there was something there that I couldn’t quite figure out because I was just getting into derby, but something was happening that I ultimately wanted to be a part of,” she said. “And it’s this chemistry, this magical thing that happens. And now I’m here, and it’s still like a dream almost. I’m waiting to wake up from.”

It is still largely a crap shoot until the first whistle blows, though, because when the games are for real, anything can happen, and it’s in the heat of battle that teams with new skaters sink or swim. So if we’re breaking this weekend’s season opener down on paper, the edge would have to go to Queens, a team whose roster is untouched heading into 2017. And with that being the case, the usual desire to not be in the first game of the season is gone. In short, Queens wanted to play yesterday.

“I think because we didn’t get any new skaters this year that we’ve been ready,” said Beauty Andie Beast. “Honestly, when the season first started, I was like, ‘Let’s just play.’ (Laughs) I forgot that other teams were still drafting people. So that’s really given us an advantage as far as having the camaraderie already there and knowing who skates well with each other, so we are definitely ready.”

And how important of an edge is that to have?

“It’s really important,” Beast said. “Even more so than physically being able to skate together and understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses, because you can pick that up pretty easily. But just the mentality and the bond that you have with your team, everyone’s already comfortable, everyone’s already to work hard and knows the expectations, so you can hit the ground running and work on strategy at a higher level. So we’ve been able to try a lot of new things this year and it’s made practice really fun.”

PHOTO DAVID DYTE

This all sets the stage for an epic showdown, the type of bout Manhattan and Queens are accustomed to. Last year’s bout was a thriller, Mayhem squeaking by the ladies in black by a 192-187 score, and Queens winning by just seven points in their 2015 meeting. Add in a host of stars on both sides, from Manhattan’s Bonita Apple Bomb, Em Dash, Roxy Dallas and Violet Knockout to Queens’ Hyper Lynx, Puss ‘n Glutes, Short Stop and Suzy Hotrod, and it’s a must see for local derby fans. As for the skaters, it’s a must win, because in a three-bout home season, every match matters. So it’s no surprise that neither team is taking the other for granted.

“I know Manhattan is going to be working their hardest out there,” said Beast. “They’re hungry for it just as much as we are. So this game won’t be an easy win just because of how much both teams want it and how much we’re both going to be working hard for it. I know it’s going to be a good competition.”

“I see a very, very dedicated team ahead of us that really wants to go a hundred percent at us and get a hold of another championship,” said Lidz when asked her thoughts on Queens. But when it comes to that whole Queens winning the championship thing, that’s not something her squad will allow. “No, absolutely not,” she laughs. “That’s not how it works.”

But Queens getting back to the top and winning their first Golden Skate trophy since 2013 is an interesting subplot to the 2017 season. Some would argue that the ladies in black have been the most talented team in the league over the last several years, but there is only the one title to show for it. What will it take to change that?

“Keeping our physical endurance and our strength up, because we are a smaller team in comparison to other teams,” Beast said. “So we have to be stronger than them to be able to hold and block, and when our penalties are low, we really see an impact on our game. So if we stick to our game and to what we know we can do, I think we do that very well. It’s keeping ourselves focused and not worrying about what anyone else is doing but remembering what we can do better.”

PHOTO DAVID DYTE

On Saturday, the breakdowns and predictions are over. At 7pm, the 2017 season – or more accurately the fight for a title – begins. And it will be a fight.

“When it comes down to it, you’re playing jam by jam,” said Lidz. “Like my co-captain Roxy says, it’s a game of inches and you always have to keep that in mind. You’re going inch by inch and not foot by foot."

Brooklyn and Manhattan are Ready for a Fitting End to the 2016 Home Season

By Thomas Gerbasi

How appropriate is it that it has come down to this? Brooklyn. Manhattan. Golden Skate trophy.

Yes, the Bombshells and Mayhem have proven themselves to be the elite in the 2016 Gotham Girls Roller Derby league home season, but when the blue and orange collide, it’s always more than just a game, even if this one will determine a champion.

If anyone has seen them play each other, they’ll know precisely what this means, but for a more nuts and bolts explanation, the proof is in the numbers.

2013 – Brooklyn 178, Manhattan 171

2014 – Manhattan 170, Brooklyn 169

2015 – Brooklyn 153, Manhattan 148

2016 – Brooklyn 161, Manhattan 158

Forget the 3-1 Brooklyn advantage. Look at the scores. Four games decided by a grand total of 16 points. In modern derby, a single game decided by 16 points is a close, back and forth bout. Four games determined by that total is unlike anything ever seen in GGRD.

So what’s the secret?

“On a certain level, I wish I knew,” laughs Manhattan co-captain Roxy Dallas. “I hesitate to call it chemistry, but there’s a real sort of agro-magic that comes out on the track when we meet each other. And that’s true in our private scrimmages as well. That’s not just something that comes out on game day. If I had to guess, I would say that it had less to do with the actual strategy or technical skill on the track and even more to do with the team cultures. The way that we operate culturally as squads off the track really contributes to the way we end up playing on the track.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

Suffice to say that both teams bring a high-level of hard-hitting intensity to the track, and it’s almost as if each team could accept a loss, as long as it wasn’t to each other. It makes picking a winner in this Saturday’s championship bout at John Jay College in NYC impossible, which speaks to the quality of the matchup, because those looking at the bout on paper would have to lean toward the defending champion Bombshells.

Unbeaten in 2016, Brooklyn hasn’t lost a bout since Manhattan edged them out in July of 2014. That’s a lot of success in the last two-plus years, and as the weekend approaches, the Bombshells are on the verge of history, as they have the opportunity to become the first team since the 2009-10 Bronx Gridlock to repeat as champions. It’s been a long drought of dominance, but Brooklyn captain Evilicious has a theory.

“We have so few games, and our drafts are so steeped in math that our teams are more evenly matched than ever before,” she said. “We’ve eliminated all of the variables that left one or two teams unbalanced as compared to the other teams. There are obviously the rebuilding years and someone who you draft on to your team early in the season is going to contribute differently than someone who has skated on the team for a decade or close to it. But because of how serious we are about the math behind who has the ability to draft someone, the teams are so evenly matched that you can’t bank on any one team winning any game, even if they have a perfect record. So I don’t think it’s a mental thing; that’s just the nature of the cycle of what we’re going through in Gotham. I would love for the Bombshells to change that on Saturday.”

PHOTO: SEAN HALE

And Manhattan would like to keep the parity status quo, at least until they attempt their own history in 2017 should they win on Saturday. So at the moment, Roxy enjoys the “any given night” nature of the league.

“I think that this trend that no one stays on top too long is so awesome,” she said. “I really love it, not from a Mayhem perspective, but from a league perspective it just shows how much insane talent we have and how much talent is joining the league and working up through the ranks. As much as I’d like to spoil it for our own personal gain, I think that the turnover for the Golden Skate is saying really good things about our training.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

That training for the home team season begins early in the year, continues through the spring and summer, and culminates in one game for all the marbles.  For a long time, Brooklyn and Manhattan watched as the Bronx and Queens traded championships back and forth. But in the last few years, there has been a changing of the guard of sorts, with no transformation more miraculous than that of the Bombshells, who went from the oft-noted lovable underdogs to dominant champions. Evilicious is fine with the team keeping the lovable part of the equation, but as far as being underdogs, the veteran blocker can’t even fathom those days ever returning.

“I think we’re a completely different team than that,” she said. “Our maturity as a group of skaters and the hours that we’ve put in together have really changed us. It’s kind of lore now. Queens and Bronx used to be the only teams that won championships, and that was individual talent, great management and years of experience together. Those teams were the teams that had that core anchor that helped propel them to championships. Manhattan and Brooklyn were scrappier and we weren’t able to rack up the wins with the consistency that they were. But it’s equalized throughout the league and so we’re unrecognizable from the Bombshells of five years ago, for sure.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

Of course, having said all that, now Brooklyn or Manhattan will win by a hundred points this weekend. Nah, not likely. Especially not with these two squads. And whether the victor walks away with a win by 10 or a hundred points, both teams will know they’ve been in a war.

“It’s not possible to get out of a game unscathed, no matter who you’re playing, especially Manhattan, because they have such strength, and that leads to really strong offense, which is how the blockers get beat up,” Evilicious explains. “The jammers generally get beat up no matter what. That lends itself to a really taxing game, even if the audience can’t tell. So even with a hundred point spread, I think you do need triple digits before anyone can relax, because anything under that is a couple of jammer penalties, and as everyone’s seen this season with all our teams, you can rack up 30 points in a jam and your lead is a distant memory. So unless we can to a three-digit differential, which we haven’t see this year, no one’s gonna relax and everything is going to feel like a fight in every jam.”

That’s what derby fans want to see and hear. Now all that’s left is for Brooklyn and Manhattan to play for the championship. Not just of the league, but of each other.

Tickets for tomorrow available here.

Queens and the Bronx Get a Chance to End 2016 with a Win this Saturday

By Thomas Gerbasi

In sports, there’s nothing like a second chance, or in the case of the Bronx Gridlock, a fourth chance for a first win and third place in the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league standings. If those are a lot of numbers to digest, suffice to say that the Gridlock are unconcerned with the specifics of this Saturday’s bout against the Queens of Pain at John Jay College in NYC, only that when those numbers are tallied, they have more points than their opponents.

“This is kind of like the playoffs,” co-captain Back Alley Dred said. “There’s a team that can have a bad season, but then all of a sudden, boom, this is the playoff and this is what matters. So in some ways, this is our playoff. We don’t have four out of seven or three out of five, but it’s still that same idea of this is where it counts.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

Winless since May of 2014, the cabbies have had another rough year in 2016, but as is usually the case in such a competitive league, the scoreboard doesn’t always tell the whole story.

“We give people a run for their money,” said Dred. “No one ever walks away from a game with us and says, ‘That was so easy, we felt like we had it in the bag.’ And that’s a win in and of itself.”

That was certainly the case in April, when Queens defeated the Gridlock 200-159 in a bout that was a lot closer than that score would indicate.

“The game went back and forth and felt really close and really hard the whole time,” agreed Queens’ Tiny Apocalypse. When that bout was over, it looked like Queens was just getting warmed up for a spot in the GGRD championship game, but pivotal losses to Manhattan and Brooklyn dashed those hopes. Thankfully for the ladies in black, they too get another shot at finishing 2016 on a high note.

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

“We’re really lucky that we get that extra game and that the season isn’t over for us,” Paco said. “Looking back at the games we’ve already played, we get to take the things that we’ve learned and try to improve on any mistakes we’ve made and keep doing what we’re doing right. It’s a good way to start getting ready for next year.”

2017? Already?

“Not that this game isn’t also important, but we’ve already started thinking about next season,” she said. “We learned a lot from our last game against Brooklyn, and even though Bronx and Brooklyn are very different teams, we’re looking forward to taking what we learned from that game and capitalizing on opportunities against the Bronx where maybe we didn’t in our Brooklyn game. We just want to prove that this season, even though it looks like a rebuilding year for us because of all the new skaters, we’re pretty strong and we’re going to finish strong.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

The Bronx squad has the same motivation, and as Dred describes it, this isn’t the same team that lost to Queens four months ago.

“We played Queens early on, and we had just started working together,” she said. “Right now, we’re at that point where everybody is trusting each other on the track, having a feel for what our jammers want, how to play offense for them, how to stick together in the walls and communicate, and that’s what’s different for us. So we’ve been building after each and every game. Our walls are getting stronger, our jammers are getting better, and we’re working as a more cohesive unit. And this is just going to continually progress. This is one more step of us gelling together and a win would be fantastic.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

As for Queens, they’re also not counting on playing the same team they did in their season opener. They’re ready for a battle.

“I think every team is so close skillwise that playing a team one day versus playing a team a different day, whether it’s four months apart or a week apart, could produce a completely different outcome,” Paco said. “And I think we know that. We see it during the week when we have scrimmage nights and we saw their walls in their game at Coney Island against Manhattan and they looked really good. They were really strong, and they’re really different from us, so we know what we have to focus on. We have to focus on those differences, the difference in size, and their offensive style versus ours, and how we can make the most out of our strengths and take advantage of any of their weaknesses or mistakes.”

And just win. It may not be for the Golden Skate Trophy, but for two teams looking to exit the 2016 season with a victory, it could be even more important.

Tickets for Saturday are available here.