LADD Tough Cookies, SDDD Swarm Face Off for Derby Dolls Title

By Busta Armov, Last updated Fri Dec 3 2010 7:50pm

LOS ANGELES, CA -- This Saturday Dec. 5, 2009 the Los Angeles Derby Dolls’ Doll Factory will be buzzing with excitement as the undefeated Swarm of the San Diego Derby Dolls battle the reigning champions Tough Cookies in the 2009 Derby Dolls Championship game.

Live streaming video from this bout will be available on DNN courtesy of the LA Derby Dolls; coverage begins on Saturday, December 5 at 6:30pm Pacific, 9:30pm Eastern.

The Derby Dolls, established in 2003, are an interesting anomaly in the roller derby world. While ostensibly a banked track league, the San Diego Derby Dolls (established in 2005) have fielded an interleague WFTDA regulation flat track team for over two years. LA assembled its first WFTDA regulation flat track team this year, based on its Ri-Ettes all-star banked track team; that team managed to come in third in The Big One, California’s largest invitational flat-track tournament, last May. That made LADD the fourth place flat track team in California behind second-place finishers Angel City and Big One champs San Diego (who were solidly beaten 140-67 by Bay Area later in the year.)

The San Diego Derby Dolls Wildfires made it as high as #14 on DNN’s Power Rankings. But their relative quiescence in the flat track world, exclusion from the WFTDA tournament season, and August loss to Bay Area followed by a 103-71 October loss to Cincinnati tarnished their rising star, dropping them to #22 in the December Power Rankings.

Toes dipped into the flat track world aside, the Derby Dolls’ main specialty is banked track.

In the second Battle on the Bank in Austin, the San Diego Derby Dolls Border Patrol landed the top spot, defeating the LA Derby Dolls Ri-Ettes 78-76.

The LA Derby Dolls saw a lot of changes in 2009. Their intraleague season went from three Los Angeles teams playing each other twice, to five teams playing each other once. One of those teams happens to be the San Diego Derby Dolls Swarm -- largely the same roster as the Wildfires and Border Patrol. One team with a few alternates, three names. One of their skaters, Steely Jan, even uses a banked track only name in the Swarm: Sarkastika.

The other four teams in the Derby Dolls intraleague system all draw from a common draft pool, and like most intraleague systems, the top players are spread among them.

Until November, there were two undefeated teams in the Derby Dolls intraleague system with a 3-0 record: last year’s champion Tough Cookies, the “Bad News Bears” team more known for being fun than winning games until 2008, and the obvious inspiration for Whip It’s “Hurl Scouts”; and the all-star SDDD Swarm. Both teams rampaged through the season picking off LADD’s veteran teams left and right.

When they finally met in November, San Diego consistently led the scoreboard. Nearly coming back from a halftime 20 point deficit, the Cookies had a 4th quarter rally that brought them behind by only 5 points of San Diego, 84-79. But suffering numerous ejections and a Swarm rally, the Cookies succumbed in the final two minutes, 94-79.