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MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 12 – "All the veterans were saying 'we've done this once and we do can it again.'"

Rookie Jammer Katarina Hit and rest of her team took this message to heart and skate Saturday night, as a packed Minneapolis Convention Center watched the Banger Sisters win their second consecutive bout, this time over the previously undefeated Kilmore Girls, with a convincing 87-73 victory.

The second jam in the bout put in the Banger Sisters ahead in a big way as they poured in 16 points. Jammer Torii Hunt Her claimed lead jammer and circled the pack four times while pivot Roller Vixen and a blocking line of SAWSQUASH, Miss Hannigan, and Mickey Dismantle held the Kilmores back from scoring. The bout swung to 21-5, and the Kilmore Girls were never able to crawl out of that hole.

"The Bangers put out probably their strongest and most aggressive line during the second jam," Kilmore pivot Slammy Wynette said. "I personally spent a lot of that jam getting knocked down and trying to catch up." Jammer Stalker Channing said that "We lost sight of their jammer (and) got caught up in reacting to what the Bangers were doing instead of taking control of the pack."

Blocker Jowanna Beatdown and pivot Sister Shotgun of the Banger Sisters attempt to thwart Kilmore Girl Tin Lizzy. Also pictured: outside pack ref Reefer-E, and Kilmore Girl Lex Calibur (seated). Photo credit: Fotodog.

The Banger Sisters took a strong 19-point lead into the second half, winning lead jammer six consecutive times to close out the first 20 minutes of play.

But as has been the case with every bout for the Kilmore Girls this year, they made a serious run after halftime. Jammers Rhea Lentless and tin lizzy both led 10-0 jams, and the team fought their way back to within 5 at 78-73 after the 23rd jam.

But this bout the rally fell short, as the Banger Sisters slammed the door shut with a 9-0 run to end the game. Tin lizzy's jammer time in the penalty box prevented any scoring chance for the Kilmores in the waning minutes. "Believe me, Betty is not happy when the jammers get penalties," the Kilmore captain said.

The victory was spearheaded by Torii Hunt Her's 39 points and Katarina Hit's 23, both jamming 7 times. Rhea Lentless scored 29 points on 9 jams, and tin lizzy netted 24 points in 8 jammer appearances on the track for the Kilmore Girls.

The Banger Sisters moved to 2-1 on the season, defeating the two teams that faced off in last year's championship in consecutive bouts. Are the Bangers now the league front runner? "I can't say that," Katarina Hit said, "everybody's awesome." "We're only halfway through the season and it's still any team's game," Banger Roller Vixen said, "any team that can bring it will win it!"

The bout was the Kilmore Girls' first loss this year, and it could bring about some changes in the team's plans. "We are going to use this bout as a learning tool and work on our strategy for next month," captain Betty LaRude said. Pivot Black Sunshine was even more direct: "we needed (this loss) to remind us of what it is we are fighting for… you will see something different in our Kilmore eyes when that first whistle blows on February 23rd."

"Overall," Jammer Stalker Channing believes, "as a team we look at this positively… we have some things to work on, but we also feel we played well, we played hard, and it was a good game no matter the outcome."

Game Notes:

• The announced attendance of 1,100 was the largest in league history. The bout start time was delayed to accommodate a large amount of fans still entering the doors.

• The Banger Sisters won lead jam 17 times compared to only 7 for the Kilmore Girls.

• The Banger Sisters had a jammer in the penalty box three different times, and the Kilmore Girls added two of their own during the bout.

+ There were three guest referees for this doubleheader:  Roller Dex of Naptown Roller Girls and Rev. Riot and Marshall Law from the Mad Rollin' Dolls.

MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 12 – Facing a potential 0-3 start, the Delta Delta Di's defense dug in and secured a 73-66 victory over the Violent Femmes Saturday night. The Deltas allowed 27 fewer points than in their loss to the Banger Sisters last month.

Delta Delta Di's season hadn't started as planned, as they lost their first two games following their league championship last season, but the team had vowed to stay the course with their effort and strategy. "We had minor changes, but only to cover our loss of players," captain Frat Brat said. Assistant co-captain Ali Bye added, "Everyone who bouted worked really hard together… it ended up obviously working in our favor."

Delta Delta Di broke open the game on the fourth jam as Violent Femmes jammer Tickle Me Elbow was sent to the penalty box. Jammer MEDUSA raced for 13 points on the jam, putting the Deltas up 27-12.

Delta Jammer Frat Brat looks for help from her team to break past formidable Femme blockers Camel Toni (left) and Kili St. Cyr (right) in what proved to be a very close bout. Delta Delta Di picked up their first win of the season after claiming league championship last year. Photo credit: Fotodog.

Throughout the majority of rest of the game, the Violent Femmes could only really play pace, unable to shrink the deficit to less than 8, but the team saved their rally for a big opportunity on the second-to-final jam, capitalizing on a bizarre sequence with the Delta jammers.

Following a team time out, Frat Brat came out to the track as Delta Delta Di's jammer, only for a brief scramble to occur and the Deltas to call another time out. Naughty Kitty lined up as jammer instead only to be sent to the penalty box almost immediately. Violent Femmes' jammer Block-n-Deck-Her scored 8 points on the jam, which brought the Femmes roaring back and down only one, 64-63.

Frat Brat explained, "I was afraid I would end up in the box – I don't trust myself – so Kitty went out for me. Unfortunately, Kitty did end up in the box with a major."

Being a bit confused – "The deciding ref was unable to tell us why the major was given," Frat Brat said – and having lost their momentum, league scoring leader MEDUSA and her blockers still managed to clamp down and seal the victory with a 9-3 final jam.

Despite the loss, the Violent Femmes won lead jammer 10 times during the bout compared to the Delta Delta Di's 9. The Deltas outscored the Femmes 20-14 in the 4 jams where neither team took lead. "We got a little sloppy a few jams and really paid the price," Pivot Maiden Korea said.

The win marks the first for Delta Delta Di since their championship victory, and the team felt they were due. "It feels great - we lost our first two by not a lot of points, so we were definitely due for a win," Ali Bye said. Frat Brat agreed: "All four teams in our league have been playing at the same level. It really is anyone's season at this point."

The second loss in a row for the Violent Femmes leaves them optimistic but searching for answers. "We need to re-emphasize working with each other as a team… we seemed a bit disconnected with each other and unfocused at times," assistant co-captain Eda Mouthful said. "We have to work our butt off and not get discouraged," Block-n-Deck-Her said. "Today was the Deltas' day. But we played well."

Game Notes:

+ The Violent Femmes received a brief scare at the end of the bout when jammer Kayzilla took a spill in the final 30 seconds. Paramedics arrived on scene and were on the track for several minutes. Several Femmes indicated that Kayzilla was shaken up but has no lingering injuries. "She had a pounding headache and was (mad) she couldn't go out for an after-bout beer," Maiden Korea said. After Kayzilla's injury, the Violent Femmes officially forfeited the final 13 seconds remaining in the bout.

+ After scoring 49 points in this third bout, MEDUSA has a commanding lead in the league for scoring, amassing 165 points for the season.

+ There were three guest referees for this doubleheader:  Roller Dex of Naptown Roller Girls and Rev. Riot and Marshall Law from the Mad Rollin' Dolls.

MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 1 – A first-half surge punctuated by two high-scoring jams was enough for the Banger Sisters to defeat Delta Delta Di 93-84 in the second set of bouts in the North Star Roller Girls 2007-08 season.

13 points by Torii Hunt Her on the third jam of the game and a 9 point follow-up from Dominatrix three jams later broke open a lead for the Bangers that the Deltas could not shore up at any time during the bout.

The Bangers led 54-43 at halftime, and Delta Delta Di did not come closer than 7 in the second half. "Some last-minute roster changes threw us off," Delta co-captain MEDUSA said.

Delta Delta Di's MEDUSA jams her way past Banger blocker Jowanna BEAT down. Photo credit: Fotodog.

Torii Hunt Her led the Banger Sisters with 38 points in the victory. Contrasted with her jammer opponents scoring only 22 points, her +14 left her as one of three Banger jammers earning a net gain for her team. Captain Roller Vixen scored 6 more than her opposing jammers, and Jowanna BEAT Down went 4-0 in her single appearance as a jammer.

“Our jammers rocked and I had a good game,” Torii Hunt Her said.

MEDUSA had 64 of the Delta’s points on 13 jams in the loss, equaling Torii Hunt Her’s success by having a net gain of 22. When the two jammer powerhouses faced off against each other in three jams, they skated to a draw with scores of 10-11, 7-6, and 4-4.

The Banger Sisters move to 1-1 with the victory, setting up the potential to take first place in the league when they square off January 12th with the undefeated Kilmore Girls.

The loss drops Delta Delta Di, last season’s North Star Intraleague Champion, to 0-2 on the season. Do the Deltas know what’s going wrong? Some point to the officiating – “I do, and so do the fans,” one Delta Delta Di player said about questioning referee calls after the bout.

Game Notes:

• MEDUSA scored over three times as many points as the rest of her team’s jammers combined, rolling 64 points compared to 20 for the rest of the team.

• A huge hit on Delta jammer Luscious D by Banger Sister Shotgun opened up a big scoring run for the Bangers on jam six.

• Both teams were worn down by penalties late in the bout, with at least one instance of both teams being down two blockers at the same time.

• Today marked the last bout for Delta Delta Di AJ Dropavich, who is moving to Denver. Dropavich plans on transferring to the Denver Roller Dolls. Her parting advice to new rollergirls? “Buy good pads. Seriously, spend the money on good pads.”

MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 1 – In a bout where two teams seem to be mirroring each other, matching hit-for-hit, penalty-for-penalty, score-for-score, back and forth, one jam can make all the difference. For the Kilmore Girls Saturday night, jammer Rhea Lentless created the spark to electrify her team in the final minutes to seal a 90-80 victory over the Violent Femmes.

Rhea Lentless, who sat in the first half due to lagging behind practice requirements, revitalized her team with 24 second-half points as the Kilmores rallied from a 30-35 first half deficit.

"It's only fair to let other girls that have more practices play," Rhea Lentless said, agreeing with her team's decision to leave her on the bench for the first half. But even the Femmes acknowledged that they had no answer for her in the second half. "We fell apart, it was a [mess]… we were able to stop [ Tin] Lizzy, LexCalibur, Freddie [Kruelgirl], all of them, but we couldn't stop Rhea," Violent Femmes co-captain Kili St Cyr said.

The two teams skated to a tie in the early seven minutes of the first half, but a critical two minutes in penalty on the Kilmore Girls' pivot allowed the Femmes to take a 5 point edge, and they later re-took that lead into halftime when Femmes jammer Block-n-Deck-Her led a 5-0 jam.

Femmes' co-captain Crust Almighty (left) and captain Cher Noble (pivoting) make sandwich meat out of Kilmore jammer Rhea Lentless during the second-half comeback (also pictured, left to right: Reefer-E, Dee Dee Generate and Anita Tension.) Photo: Fotodog

Penalties mounted for both teams in the beginning of the second half, with both teams having skaters in the penalty box and making lineup substitutions because of foul trouble. "Our blockers and pivots had penalties and we had to adjust to that so we didn't have two girls in the box," Kilmore captain Betty LaRude said.

The teams continued to trade blows, with the Kilmores slowly working up to a lead throughout the second half despite grabbing lead jammer only half of the time. But they broke out with 2:15 left in the game while clinging to a 1 point lead when Rhea Lentless led a 13-5 jam that lasted the full two minutes with neither jammer taking lead.

Tin Lizzy led the winners with 46 points over 10 jams throughout the game, and with Rhea Lentless 's 24 the two scored the majority of the team's points, combining for a 23 point advantage over the Femme jammers matched against them.

The Violent Femmes had a much more balanced attack, with Block-n-Deck-Her scoring 22 points, Eda Mouthful 21, and Kat Scratch Eva 19.

Betty LaRude summed up the Kilmore strategy as "focusing on their jammers - our total focus was knocking them out of bounds… we were not helping out our jammers at all."

Despite a very physical game that featured a high number of penalties and, according to reports from players on both teams, a lot of combative banter on the track, both teams said it was a well-played game. "It was awesome, and I want to go again," Kili St Cyr said. "The Violent Femmes played hard, they played tough, and they brought a really good game," Betty LaRude agreed.

The victory moves last year's intraleague runners-up to 2-0, setting them for January 12th faceoff against the 1-1 Banger Sisters. The Violent Femmes will look to keep the Delta Delta Di winless in their next bout.

Game Notes:

• Kili St Cyr was ejected from the game in the sixth jam of the second half while the Femmes still had a 2 point lead. "I got three major penalties, but it's questionable what they were for… the refs are theoretically doing their best… sometimes we don't see what they see."

• After not playing the first bout or the first half of today's game, Rhea Lentless was very happy about the crowd reaction to her return. "The crowd remembered me! Spank you very much!"

• After two bouts, Tin Lizzy is second in the league with 101 points, trailing Delta Delta Di's Medusa, who has 116.