The Hump Closes Down After Being Caught Serving Endangered Whale Meat
Welcome, Spring! Cherry Blossoms Blooming at Lake Balboa
Eye Nosh: The Lazy Ox Canteen
LA Times Book Prize Nominees - Fictionally First
Hundreds of LAUSD Students Running LA Marathon Today
We've been covering the Derby Dolls since the Winter and now we bring you the Angel City Derby Girls (ACDG). You won't see a Derby vs. Angel match because they are in two different leagues, respectively as banked track and flat track. And like Derby, Angel City is made up of local teams such as the Berzerkers and the Shore Shots who played head to head last night.
Rules are also different with Angel City. A Derby Dolls game can usually end up with scores like 35 to 29 while Angel City can end its games in the hundreds (last nights match was 142 to 96, Berzerkers). That's because the point systems are different with each jam (a jam is one match of many within one of three 20-minute sets that make up the bout [the bout is the whole game]). For Angel City, jammers can score however many points they can in a jam while with Derby, you can only score a limited amount.
Angel City plays at a self-named space called Heaven's Gate (it's really a warehouse on West 31st St. abut the 110 Freeway near USC). The no-barrier flat track games are just as violent as the Derby Dolls, but with a little more taste of more blood for the audience: when a Derby Girl crashes and skids, it is usually into the audience (or sometimes on the lap of an audience member for extra special action).
Angel City's full season schedule is not announced yet, but with two Roller Derby leagues in town, you have plenty of ass kicking moments to look forward too.
Update: Hannah Grenade of the Derby Dolls schools us on our scoring errata: "The Derby Dolls are not limited in their scoring. They can score as much as they can within a 1 minute jam, while AC/DG plays with 2 minute jams. Our skaters rarely make it through the pack the second time because our jams are 1/2 as long."
Photos and Montage by KC Jones and from their MySpace Page.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
The scores are often higher in flat track for five other reasons (besides two minute jams).
One is that the effective size of the track is smaller (inner dimensions of 60 feet x 25 feet for flat track, vs 80 feet x 36 feet for the LADD banked track). This means that LADD skaters have to skate farther on average to lap the pack, and thus to score, than in the standard flat track configuration.
Two is that the length of the straight (42 feet for banked, 35 feet for flat track) and the bank on the banked track makes the speeds of the pack 75-100% faster, so jammers consequently also have to go much faster to catch the pack and pass for points.
Three is that one particular difference in rules makes it so that in flat track, jammers can't defensively call off jams early because it is possible for there to be no lead-jammer (a jammer must be lead-jammer to call off the jam). In the Derby Dolls rules, there is always a lead jammer if a jammer breaks through the pack.
Four, in flat track there is no solid track definition. If a jammer gets stuck in the pack, she can risk a penalty and pass several opponents outside the track boundary. She won't get the score for passing them, but she has the opportunity to keep moving until she has enough penalties to be grounded with a penalty box assessment. In banked track, the rail and a 3-4 foot drop discourages that kind of move.
Five, is that with the banked track, the maximum width of the track is 12 feet, but in the turns, since the 12 foot width is tilted up, it's less than that (about 10 feet at the steepest point measured strictly vertically). In flat track, the minimum width is 13 feet, maximum 15 feet, so the defense is a little more dispersed. It's far more difficult to keep a jammer penned in the pack, which means jammers can get out of a pack sooner to score, and can get through the pack faster on subsequent scoring runs.
It's this last point, combined with the one minute jams in banked track vs. two minute jams in flat track that are the main reason for the large score differentials. Many jams in banked track have a 0-0 score. In both flat and banked track, as teams get their defensive strategies more organized and coordinated, the final scores are much lower when the teams are at an equal or near equal defensive level.
There is one thing the games on both track configurations have in common: they're both a lot of fun to watch, and these are all ordinary women who have found their competitive athletic muse in the only contact sport that's dominated by women. You just can't attend a game and not be yelling for a team that becomes your team, even if you had no knowledge of even the team names before the event.
BTW, there is a lot of cross support between ACDG and the LA Derby Dolls. The announcer at the Angel City game is a Derby Doll, and a lot of Derby Dolls and crew showed up to support their friends on the two ACDG teams. A lot of ACDG skaters and crew show up to Derby Dolls events as well.
I also wouldn't say you will never see an ACDG vs. Derby Doll match just because the leagues (and the tracks, and the rules) are different. In the world of modern do-it-yourself roller derby, roller derby leagues are free to play whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want.
--
Busta Armov
general roller derby know it all and
head referee emeritus, LA Derby Dolls