Hellcats

On Saturday August 17, 2013 the Harbor Hellcats of the Santa Cruz Derby Girls played the Atomic Assault from Fresno, CA of the Central California Area Derby at the Kaiser Permanente Arena in Santa Cruz. What is roller derby?  Roller derby is a contact sport played by two teams of five members roller skating in the same direction around a track; in this case, a flat track.

 The girls all have wonderful roller derby nicknames and are introduced by those names.  Roller derby is full of jargon, and I found a blog that explained a lot of it.

There are almost as many creatively named referees as there are players on the track.  It is confusing to the spectators so especially marked helpers are equipped to help out with explanations and a reference card.

Basically the girl with the stripe on her helmet calls a jam.  She also can stop a jam.  A lot of jamming went on as we watched the game. A girl with a star on her helmet tries to work her way past her opponents to score points. This happens quickly and points mount quickly.

After the first period of 30 minutes, the score was Hellcats 195, Atomic Assault 30.

 

At the end of period 2, the Harbor Hellcats had tromped the Atomic Assault 303 to 119.  This projected scoreboard has a bit to be desired by the arena. Apparently only the D level Warriors can use the real one. Somehow it just wasn't as exciting as the roller derby we used to watch on television years ago.  We wished there was less set up for jamming and more actual skating.  All in all it was an entertaining evening, and we learned a lot about women's flat track roller derby.