Feature Preview: The Golden Bowl

By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Fri Aug 12 2011 2:03am

OAKLAND, CA -- This Friday, the Bay Area Derby Girls (#5 West WFTDA, #6 nationally via DNN) host one of the last major multi-bout events before the Regionals cycle begins, bringing Windy City (#1 North Central WFTDA, #10 DNN), Texas (#2 South Central WFTDA, #11 DNN) and Detroit (#2 North Central WFTDA, #13 DNN) to town to play. Much like last year's Hometown Throwdown event in Portland, this three-day mini-tourney between very closely matched teams features doubleheaders on each day, allowing all four teams to play each other once. Though Bay Area has never played Windy City or Detroit before, there's plenty of history in all the other matchups.

BAD and Texas first met in the championship game of the 2008 Western Regionals, where Texas solidly won 135-59. The next two times they met, though, Bay Area lost again but came within a jam's worth of points in doing so; most recently, Texas dealt Bay Area a heartbreaker of a loss in an extremely low-scoring opening game of 2010's WFTDA Championships, 72-59. Bay Area will be definitely be keen to avoid allowing Texas to extend the series record to 4-0 on BAD's turf.

Windy City first faced off against Texas in the opening round of the first WFTDA Nationals in Austin in 2007; Texas solidly defeated them there 108-56, but Windy City got revenge a year later in a thrilling overtime semifinal at the 2008 Nationals, denying Texas a trip to the championship game in a 110-97 finish. WCR won a standalone rubber match last year in Chicago 88-62, giving Windy the lead in the all-time series at 2-1.

Windy City and Detroit are currently #1 and #2 in the North Central, with Windy City holding a 2-0 all-time record against Detroit and having been narrowly victorious in a March meeting earlier this year, 133-114. Detroit will be trying to stop Windy City from taking their 20th straight win over North Central competition here, and this one could be a preview of the final bout of the WFTDA regional tournament cycle, if seeding holds through the North Central tournament.

Finally, Detroit's match with Texas has an interesting storyline of its own, as it marks the first time that Texas' famed double-threat Sarah "Killbox" Hipel goes up the Detroit team that she was a major part of for its formative years. The previous and only time the teams met was September 2008 in a low scoring struggle in Austin; Texas won 83-46 there (video recap.)

Live coverage is currently TENTATIVE for these bouts pending adequate Internet access - check back!