The Ohio Roller Girls may be fresh back from a 2 and 1 charter team showing at the Quad Cities Chaos tournament in Toronto, but Canada pursued. The Tri-City Roller Girls from Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario traveled South to feel the warmth at the Lausche building in the Ohio Expo Center on April 5. A hot reception from the crowd and two very physical bouts was what they got. Their charter team, Tri-City Thunder, faced OHRG's All Stars while their B-team, Plan B, faced Ohio's Gang Green. In the end, Tri-City's Thunder was stolen and their Plan B was not a backup as OHRG claimed two definitive wins over the forty-first ranked division two team.
OHRG All-Stars Vs. The Tri-City Thunder
The All-Stars got off to a slow but solid start. For the first 5 jams of the first half Ohio jammers Smacktivist and Kitty Liquorbottom alternated duty picking up single digit scores each jam while Ohio's defense quieted the Thunder, holding the score to 20-4. Then Ohio jammer Big Rig opened the flood gates, literally blasting through for 3 grand slams and turning the bout into a showcase of offensive play.
Big Rig's big play seemed to wake Tri-City up. The seventh jam ended with an injury for a Tri-City skater and the eight saw Smacktivist and Tri-City jammer Freudian Whip trade pairs of grand slams bringing the score to 48 to 19. The lead changed hands twice before Smacktivist brought the score to 81-74 with a pair of slams in the eighteenth. The All Stars held and extended the lead to 99 to 91 at the end of the half.
The second half of the bout again started off slow with Ohio picking up only two points while holding the Thunder to four in the first three jams. In the fourth jam good defensive work got Ohio a power jam, which Lora Outta My Wayman exploited for 3 grand slams, the power jam did not end the jam nor slams. Outta My Wayman gained two more for total of five and 29 points. This would be the first of two quintuple grand slam jams for Wayman, who would lap the Thunder with lighting speed a total of 13 times in the half.
Ohio's iron walled defense held the Thunder to a total of 51 points in the half while the All Stars offense gorged itself on a buffet of scoring opportunities picking up more than twice the points of their opponents. Ohio won the bout handily with a final score of 225 to 142.
OHRG's Gang Green vs Tri-City's Plan B
After their charter teams loss to Ohio, Tri-City was hoping for better results with their Plan B. Their b-team caught itself a bad case of Gang Green which spread all over them almost from the start. The second bout was high scoring and very physical, but Gang Green's offense displayed finesse, stepping and sneaking through Plan B's walls like wheeled phantoms more often then blasting them down.
The first two jams looked good for Plan B, as they picked up four points in each. The third jam brought a big pile up in the first turn and a five point pickup for Ohio jammer Lita Fuse. Then Blitz Lemon blitzed her way to 3 grand slams and Hop Devil followed her with two more in the fourth and fifth jams respectively bringing the score to 42 to 12.
Gang Green's offense seemed content to inch the lead ahead until the tenth jam when lighting struck again. Blitz Lemon took advantage of a track cut penalty to pick up four grand slams and continued her fast pace lapping for three more slams after Plan B's jammer returned from the pine bench. Lemon totaled 13 grand slams on the half as Gang Green kept her in the rotation with three other jammers, Ally McSqueal, Elektra Magneto, and Hop Devil. The speedy quartet combined to create a nearly triple digit lead of 145 to 49 by the end of the half.
The locker room pep talk gave a temporary boost to Plan B's effectiveness as Tri-Cities held Ohio to small pickups while inching forward until the sixth jam. That's when Ally McSqueal knocked through the defense hard to pick up a grand slam and set the tone for the half.
Ohio rotated a full set of five skaters every jam, never letting Plan B get a comfortable read on what or who they were facing. Gang Green combined this full team rotation with rotating no less than seven skaters through the jammer position during the half. This exhausted Plan B's defense while Ohio's endurance training paid off. All but one of the Ohio jammers scored while McSqueal, Sara Bruce, Texas Chainsaw Sasskicker and Hop Devil combined for a total of ten grand slams.
Gang Green's jam by jam rotation was obviously well planned, disciplined and orderly. The teamwork, physicality and offensive maneuver tactics propelled Ohio's b-team to a lopsided 247 to 94 win as our hometown heroines look forward to their next bouts against the twelfth ranked Naptown Roller Girls in Indianapolis on May 3.
