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.

Brooklyn Gets Scare Before Vanquishing Queens

By Thomas Gerbasi

For a while in the July 16 bout between the Queens of Pain and the Brooklyn Bombshells at Abe Stark Arena in Coney Island, it looked like Queens was about to rebound from their lone loss of the year and secure yet another trip to the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league championship game on August 27.

But it was not to be, as a one-time 69-20 lead turned into a 179-152 loss that sent the unbeaten Bombshells to John Jay College for an opportunity to defend their title against the Manhattan Mayhem.

“It will definitely be a good matchup between our teams,” said Brooklyn MVP D.A.R.Y.L.  “It's going to be an intense game but it's a really great way to end the home team season.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

Queens, the four-time winners of the league’s Golden Skate Trophy, will now play the Bronx Gridlock in this Saturday’s third-place game. “It is always physically and mentally demanding to play Bronx,” said Queens’ MVP Pinky Swears. “We have very different styles of game play. Queens is about recycling and utilizing speed changes. Bronx plays a slow and controlled game with effective delayed offense, so you have to be on guard and ready to anticipate the next move. We joke they are ‘the Land of the Giants,’ whereas Queens is a fairly ‘vertically limited’ team in comparison.”

The idea of Queens playing this weekend and not in three weeks didn’t seem realistic early on in their battle with the Bombshells. Shortstop put up 48 of her team high 73 points in the early going, and soon, the ladies in black were up by nearly 50 points. Brooklyn was on the ropes, but not rattled.

“We were able to trust each other and our leadership that we were stronger than how we started the game,” D.A.R.Y.L. said.  “It only takes a jam or two to get back in the game, so we just kept our heads up and kept fighting.”

And while Queens aimed to put the nail in their rivals’ coffin, penalties allowed Brooklyn back in the game.  “We went into the game knowing we needed to remain calm and super focused to be able to pull off a win against the very challenging Brooklyn team,” Pinky said. “We were able to build a lead at the beginning, but as derby often proves, there is no such thing as a solid lead. Penalties, of course, are often what can win or lose a game. Even with getting lead 60 percent of the game, we had some trips to the penalty box that came at very critical moments, like during power jams, and we just weren't able to gain the traction we needed to jump ahead again.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

By the 20th jam of the bout, a 22-point effort from Miss Tea Maven gave Brooklyn an 87-73 lead,and while Queens superstar Suzy Hotrod put her squad up by 10 points at halftime, Brooklyn regained the advantage early in the second period and never let it go, setting up what should be a memorable championship game. Yet for the blue-clad bombshells, they expect it to be business as usual.

“I think that we're just going to keep doing what has been working for us,” D.A.R.Y.L. said. “Working hard, practicing our basic formations, and being mindful of penalties and staying clean.”   

PHOTO: ASA FRYE

QUEENS vs. BROOKLYN STATS

Queens 100 52 152

Brooklyn 90 89 179

Queens MVP – Pinky Swears

Brooklyn MVP – D.A.R.Y.L.

Leading Queens Scorers

Shortstop – 73 points (19 jams)

Suzy Hotrod – 72 points (20 jams)

Beauty Andie Beast – 7 points (6 jams)

Leading Queens Blockers

Puss ‘N Glutes – 31 jams (+20)

Livvie Smalls – 31 jams (-42)

Chopstick Murphy – 25 jams (+35)

Leading Brooklyn Scorers

Miss Tea Maven – 107 points (28 jams)

D.A.R.Y.L. – 51 points (14 jams)

Hela Skelter – 12 points (4 jams)

Leading Brooklyn Blockers

Sexy Slaydie – 37 jams (+89)

Lady Fingers – 28 jams (-13)

Papierschnitt – 25 jams (-30)

Queens Penalties

Minutes in Box: 35 Jammer Box Trips: 4

Brooklyn Penalties

Minutes in Box: 30 Jammer Box Trips: 4

Stats compiled via Rinxter

1 2 F

Mayhem in Coney Island, as Manhattan Earns Title Shot

By Thomas Gerbasi

First, the Manhattan Mayhem put a dent in Queens’ hopes for a return trip to the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league championship game. Then on July 16 at Abe Stark Arena in Coney Island, the orange-clad ladies put the stamp on their own ticket to the title bout with a 140-119 victory over the Bronx Gridlock.

The win capped off a 2-1 regular season for the Mayhem and sets up a showdown with the defending champs, the Brooklyn Bombshells, for the Golden Skate trophy on August 27 at John Jay College in NYC.

“Brooklyn vs. Manhattan is always a very physical game, but I think that the winner of that game will come down to who wins the mental game, which team remains the most calm,” said Manhattan MVP Veronica Ache. “During the season opener with Brooklyn, our team really struggled with penalties.  We have been working throughout the season to clean up our game and stay out of the box.  Our last two games, our penalties significantly dropped and no one fouled out during our last game.  Hopefully, we can carry that on to the championship bout.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

In that season opener, Brooklyn outlasted the Mayhem 153-148 instant classic. The Bombshells went on to win their next two and wrap up an unbeaten season, while Manhattan was forced into must-wins in their final two bouts. They fulfilled their end of the bargain, with the win over the Gridlock cementing their championship game slot.      

“The key to our victory against the Bronx was our ability to focus on playing our game and not be ruffled by their offense,” Ache said. “We knew that the Bronx had been playing a great deal of offense all season long, especially off the line.  So, we knew we just had to ignore their offense, step in front of it, give them a little bump back and focus on maintaining our strong four wall to contain their jammers, so that our jammers would have time to work and get free. Also, our chance to go to the championships was on the line during the bout, and I think that drove everyone to push harder and really lock it down.”        

Jumping out to a 20-0 lead thanks to Bruzin Brody’s efforts in the first jam of the game, Manhattan soon had to hold off a ferocious charge from the gutsy Gridlock, who were seeking their first win of the year. Kate Sera Sera put the Bronx ahead 33-24, but penalties would eventually allow Manhattan to soar ahead and stay there.

There would be one more big push in the second half, as the Gridlock cut the Mayhem lead to two thanks to a 43-10 run, but Manhattan got back on track and locked things down defensively in order to secure the victory. The loss put the cabbies at 0-3 for the 2016 regular season, but they never stopped fighting.  

“Gridlock's biggest takeaway from 2016 is our incredible potential,” said team MVP Fast and Luce. “We have had a taste of the success that comes with teamwork and dedication, and we definitely want more. The fight and heart that was with us every second of the season is exactly the spirit we are ready to lead with moving forward. We are ready to come into our own next season, building upon the solid foundation we have laid down throughout the year. I'm confident when I say we are more unified than ever before, which is going to be a key factor in the Cabbies' rise to power.” 

PHOTO: SEAN HALE

Unlike previous seasons, the teams that didn’t earn a place in the title game will get one more shot in this Saturday’s third-place bout, with the Gridlock facing the Queens of Pain.

“Fans can expect a fast-paced bout with a well-matched defensive performance,” Luce said. “Queens is an excellent opponent, and we look forward to the rematch.” Then three weeks later, it’s another rematch. This one is for all the marbles. Just the way Manhattan likes it.

“I am really glad how it played out,” Ache said. “It feels great to go into the championship bout and have a rematch against Brooklyn.”      

PHOTO: ASA FRYE

MANHATTAN vs. BRONX STATS

Manhattan 83 57 140

Bronx 62 57 119

Manhattan MVP – Veronica Ache

Bronx MVP – Fast and Luce

Leading Manhattan Scorers

Bruzin Brody – 47 points (11 jams)

J Rod – 42 points (12 jams)

Em Dash – 41 points (10 jams)

Leading Manhattan Blockers

Roxy Dallas – 22 jams (+48)

Bonita Apple Bomb – 22 jams (+21)

Sunshine Skate – 21 jams (+19)

Leading Bronx Scorers

Kate Sera Sera – 63 points (10 jams)

Legs / Cite – 21 points (5 jams)

Big Banger – 19 points (10 jams)

Leading Bronx Blockers

Fast and Luce – 19 jams (-33)

Caf Fiend – 19 jams (-34)

Cherry Napalm -17 jams (+11)

Manhattan Penalties

1 2 F

Minutes in Box: 34 Jammer Box Trips: 5

Bronx Penalties

Minutes in Box: 46 Jammer Box Trips: 10

Stats compiled via Rinxter

Manhattan and the Bronx Fight to Own the Track in Coney Island

By Thomas Gerbasi

Heading into the final weekend of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby’s home team regular season before the championship and third place games, a cut-and- dried title matchup between Brooklyn and Queens got a shake up when the Manhattan Mayhem upset Queens on June 11.

For the Mayhem’s Full Metal Jackie, she knew what was going to happen the moment she stepped into the locker room at John Jay College. And it had nothing to do with the idea of “staying alive” in the title race.

“When you say something like we need it in order to stay alive, that evokes a lot of desperation,” she said. “There is that reality, but I think fortunately, we didn’t allow ourselves to have that infiltrate that team mentality or even let it be recognized. Coming into that game and walking into the locker room and seeing my team’s faces staring back at me, there was a sense of calm and reassurance and an understanding that we have to get this done. That’s it. There was a goal, we had to achieve it, and there wasn’t any other way.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

Sixty minutes later, Manhattan skated away with a 192-187 win, and heading into this Saturday’s matchup with the Bronx Gridlock at Abe Stark Arena in Coney Island, another pivotal win could produce a three-way tie for two title bout spots, pending the outcome of the other doubleheader bout between Brooklyn and Queens.

That’s a lot to play for when it comes to the top three squads in the standings, but what of the Gridlock, who sit outside of the title party but have not played like it in their first two bouts, showing the parity of the league in 2016. It’s frustrating, but as Bronx standout Fast and Luce points out, that’s part of the gig as a GGRD skater.

“Every team has taken its turn rebuilding, growing, coming to a peak and then going through the cycle again, so that’s something we always keep in mind with the Bronx,” she said. “At this point, I think we’re really just trying to play the best game that we can play. We find a lot of success in scrimmages every week. I think the public games that we play only a few times a year are only part of the story for the Bronx. And I think that we’re just now realizing that when we play well and we play together, then that feels good and it feels like winning and that’s our main focus for how we’re preparing to go into this game against Mayhem.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

Saddled with an 0-2 slate heading into this bout, the Gridlock have not won a game since defeating Brooklyn in May of 2014. It’s been a painful drought, but one that the cabbies aren’t focusing on heading into the weekend, simply because they can erase that streak with a victory against Manhattan.

“We’re definitely a team that plays with a lot of heart, we give a hundred percent in every game and I think that we always go in with the hope that our work will pay off in that moment,” Luce said. “But it’s also derby and games go the way that they go, so it is a difficult thing to kind of pick your head up after a game time after time and experience so many losses in these last couple seasons. But if we feel that we play well and play our best and are together on the track and we’re executing all the things that we work on in practice, then you have to take away what you can from it, and leave the rest on the track.”

And would a win mark 2016 as a success?

“A win on Saturday would mean that we have improved over the season, that we looked at how we were performing in previous bouts and that we worked on specific goals in practice to get better as a team,” she said. “And I think anytime you’re successful at that - and a win this Saturday would absolutely tell us that we were successful in that way - we can go away from this season being happy with it. I think it would be a great wrap-up to the season if we could say that we pulled through in the end.”

PHOTO: DAVID DYTE

The Mayhem are in a different place than the Gridlock though, and they have a different goal. In other words, they want to be playing someone on August 27 with the Golden Skate Trophy on the line. Does Metal have a preference if they make it that far?

“My preference is to play the most competitive and the most highly skilled team,” she said. “The team coming out of that game (Brooklyn vs. Queens) victorious is the obvious answer, so I’m looking forward to seeing who walks away from that, and I’m looking forward to playing them and beating them.”

But first, there’s the Gridlock, a squad whose championship game is a day away. “When preparing for Mayhem, we really have just been focusing on being prepared for their offensive skills and I think that both teams have good defense, so you can expect to see that matching up,” Luce said. “We always look to try to keep it calm and collected and Mayhem is a very chaos-driven team, with their offensive plays especially, so the Bronx is focusing more on the opposite of that and keeping cool and together on the track.”

Mayhem is fine with that, and if you think they’re focused on the end of August, think again. They’re just looking at taking it two minutes at a time, starting tomorrow night. “The game is just a series of two-minute segments, and how you play those two minutes and what you do in those two minutes can affect all your teammates,” Metal said. “So we try to play our hardest and our best for them. It’s all about concentration and where you allow your concentration to focus emotionally and physically. Going into this game, we’re focusing on each other and how we play. I feel that for any team, you are playing the way your team has been trained. If Bronx plays Manhattan’s style, then we will absolutely take it as a win and walk away victorious. But that’s always the biggest challenge – owning the track.”