Day 52/365 - At the Roller Derby

I went to my first ever roller derby tonight and had a great time. I had a suspicion I'd probably enjoy it; badass battlin' babes (on rollerskates yet) -- what's not to love? Plus the noms de guerre under which the women skate are awesome in their own right -- Skid Ho, Obitchuary, Condoleeza Slice, Camilla the Hun, and Crispi Ramahoochie to name but a few.

The amateur women's roller derby group in this area is called the DC Rollergirls and they put on about four matches a year. There are currently three teams that make up the DC Rollergirls -- the Cherry Blossom Bombshells, DC DemonCats, and Scare Force One. A former fourth team, the Secretaries of Hate, apparently folded earlier this year. This is the third season for the Rollergirls thus far and hopefully they'll stick around.

Tonight's match was held at the National Guard Armory and featured an exhibition between the Cherry Blossom Bombshells and a visiting side called the Northside Stranglers, who drew their members from various roller derby leagues in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Following that was the main event -- a matchup between Scare Force One and the DC DemonCats. Scare Force One came into the evening as champions of the past two seasons and holders of an undefeated record in league play. That all fell by the wayside tonight however as the DemonCats, cheered on by their mascot Beelzebubba, put a serious whuppin' on Scare Force One.

I unintentionally ended up wearing the DemonCats colors to the match tonight and once I noticed that fact I was pulling for them to win, so I was pretty pleased with the result. Plus the match gave me a great opportunity to work on my action and sports photography techniques. I used my flash for the exhibition bout and then when the batteries in it went kaput I switched to working on my panning technique with the second bout, so I got to polish up a couple different skillsets tonight.

There were loads of people there with cameras, including Erin from the DC Social group on Flickr. She and I both had a bit of lens envy over some of the set-ups people there had and we couldn't believe they would risk their uber-expensive lenses sitting right next to the track given the regularity with which the Rollergirls kept crashing and skidding into the first row of the crowd. I guess though that if you can afford camera equipment that pricey, then you can probably afford to replace it as well.

(Taken with my Nikon D80)