[bout poster image courtesy of rideauvalleyrollergirls.com]

When I first imagined myself playing roller derby, I assumed there would be lots of training, and believe me there is. I also assumed however that I would be solely training and volunteering for at least a year, before I thought I’d see a game; silly me.

Last weekend I experienced my third full bout thus far against Rideau Valley’s Riot Squad, and on a personal performance level, I think I turned a major corner.

The road trip itself was something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. It was not as much a bunch of good times crammed into one crazy weekend, more like one long crazy awesome moment that didn’t end until the wee hours of Sunday morning.

The bout was unreal, the arena was packed right up to the suicides and everyone on both teams looked genuinely excited to be there. We (the Chrome Mollys) got off to a small lead but those Riot Girls are sneaky, jammers on both sides had trouble scoring points but they seemed to make bigger dents than we.

Lots of Mollys tried their hand at jamming, and even Debs Captain Splat Benatar kicked serious ass with the star. Nearing the halfway mark of the second I collided with another skater on my own team and that’s about all I remember, then a paramedic speaking to me in French. He switched over to english when he saw my face go from stunned to confusion and I soon convinced him I was alright.

I still think if we had of had two more jams we could have made up those fourteen points that ended up sealing our fate that night, but “ifs” and “buts” are certainly not candy and nuts so I guess I’ll just wait for the rematch.

I can report that we won the afterpaty 2-1, I say this because at 3:15am I had to convince a security guard to let me back into the club to find our last remaining partiers as they had locked GK, Natti and Death From Below in the now closed after party. As I see it, that’s GTAR 2 - RVRG 1