Nashville Rollergirls take down Dixie Derby Girls, 164-61
Editors' note: we're finally catching up a backlog of content submissions, including this recap from several weeks ago. We need production assistance! If you'd like to help keep DNN current, and the thankless work of prepping stories, finding photos, and editing copy sounds like a hoot to you, please contact Hurt Reynolds.
The Nashville Rollergirls cemented their place in the top ten of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association’s South Central region with a commanding victory over Huntsville's Dixie Derby Girls on May 16th at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds.
Last time the two teams played, in April of 2008, a back and forth battle ended with Nashville on the losing side of a five-point differential. “All we remembered was waking up the next day feeling like we got hit by a Mac truck,” says Ramb0 Samb0, one of NRG’s go-to jammers. But Nashville’s game has grown by leaps and bounds since then, and with the inside scoop from 5 Scar Jeneral – a Dixie transplant who joined NRG in December 2008 – Music City’s finest were looking to avenge the loss.
Dixie came into the match sporting pins with a target on 5 Scar’s face – all in good fun, of course. But they should have been just as worried about Ramb0, who in this bout would single-handedly outscore all of Dixie’s jammers combined. Ramb0 scored a league record 100 points of her team’s 164. “I have awesome blockers,” Ramb0 said upon hearing about her new record, “a jammer is only as good as her blockers and Nashville played great defense tonight.” Dixie had no response to NRG’s camo-clad Kobe Bryant and her teammates, managing only 61 points of its own.
If Dixie was a Mack truck, this time around Nashville was a Lamborghini weaving in and out of traffic. Nashville’s jammer would slip through the pack and come back around to score, and then around a second or third time for more points, before Dixie’s jammer could work her way past the tight pack defense of the Nashville blockers to score points of her own.
Nashville controlled all but a single play in the first half, racking up dozens of unanswered points. By half time it was 103 to 22, and NRG looked like it was on its way to another 200-point blowout, just like its last match against Big Easy Rollergirls of New Orleans. The action finally slowed down in the second half, but not because NRG let up on the pressure. “We always play like we’re down by at least 60. It helps to keep our focus,” says 5 Scar Jeneral.
It was Dixie that turned up the heat. Pride on the line, the Huntsville crew put the demolition back in derby, throwing elbows, hips and everything else they had at NRG. Blockers from both sides were called to the penalty box left and right. “We’ve been in that situation many times,” Ramb0 says. “They were like, ‘we don’t want to lose [by] that much.’”
At times the pack seemed to disintegrate. For a brief moment, there were only four blockers on the track, two from each team, instead of the usual eight. The rest were cooling their skates in the box.
But the chaos didn’t rattle Nashville. The team had outgrown the little slip-ups that cost young teams matches. On the final play of the 2008 match, Ramb0 lost her jammer “panty,” the elastic cap a jammers wears on her head. Without it, her points on that play didn’t count, and NRG lost.
Ramb0 closed out the game again for Nashville but this time only a timewarp could have changed the outcome. The bout ended with Nashville winning 164-61.
Photos: Brian Murphree
