Rich Martin Memorial Benefit on Saturday

Richard Martin, drummer for WeLiveInSodHouses, died tragically in a car accident on August 30 of this year. His death left a hole in his band, his family, his friends and left his daughters without a daddy. Rich’s friends and family have organized a memorial benefit, the proceeds of which will go to his daughters.

The benefit will be held on Saturday, October 2 from noon to 2 am at The Chesterfield in Sioux City. There will be a $5 cover charge and another $5 donation for dinner. There will also be music, a silent auction and commemorative t-shirts.

The Sioux City Roller Dames will be at the benefit signing pictures and meeting people from 5:00 on. We all love SodHouses’  song “I Want a Girl in Rollerskates”, which can be found on WeLiveInSodHouses‘ Facebook page. We’d love to see all of our fans out on Saturday night to support this worthy cause.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About the Sioux City Roller Dames

Helloooooooeew, roller derby fans and other interested parties! Do you often find yourself thinking: “How can I know every minuscule movement of my local roller derby team, without all the hassle of stalking each member?” If so, then behold the answer to all of your troubles! It’s a blog!

Check this blog for scores, scene reports, player profiles, community events and bout schedules. You can also check out our links to other local and semi-local (because, after all, isn’t it a small world?) roller derby blogs.

Sioux City Roller Dames v. Muddy River Nightmares: a terrifying dream about a monster with 26 butt cheeks, 13 chins and 104 little wheels

Is there anything, anyplace, anytime better than roller derby on a Saturday night? Seriously. It has everything: beautiful women with their giant thighs, vicious hits, the real possibility that you will see someone get hurt and, of course, the soothing aroma of derby girls, a smell that calls to mind the safety and comfort of living inside a giant’s sweaty belly button. Yes, my friends, we had all of these wonders and more at the Roller Dames’ home opener on Saturday night. We hosted the Muddy River Nightmares of Clinton, IA, joined by one of the finest specimens in the derby world, Lolli Popya, of the Mid Iowa Rollers.

Lolli Popya going after Funsize’s hidden pirate treasure—BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY!

The Dames jumped out to an early lead, with Dubbs and Funsize scoring 17 unanswered points in the first two jams. While we all thumb-pecked “OMG we are sooo awesome” into our Droids, Lolli Popya and Syphiliz scored 12 points, while the Muddy River blockers shut the Dames offense down. Luckily PBR reminded us that we were playing roller derby when she scored 22 points in the next jam. Meanwhile, behind the façade of this innocent looking legal aide attorney, The Annihialatrix knocked the pee pee out of Muddy River jammer, Ooton.

Dames D-ttt (that’s a fence, y’all) kept Muddy River scoreless through the next five jams while Dubbs rung up a 20-point jam and PBR had another excellent 15-point jam. PBR and Dubbs were all over Muddy River like freckles on Dave Mustane’s bottom, outscoring the opposing jammers by 53 and 52 points, respectively. When they took their jammer panties off, these two were crushing (mostly legally) the Muddy River jammers.

PBR and Funsize make a jammer sammich.

For Muddy River, Ooton and Lolli Popya both scored 14-point jams. Lolli Popya scored a total of 72 points in the game, with 8 grand slams. Krystallica, who scored 37 total points, had her shoulder up in everyone’s business, blowing holes in the red wall. I named my blue-speckled butt cheek Krystallica Jr., after its daddy.

Dames had a comfortable lead at the half, with a score of 160-91. Maybe we ate too many bananas, maybe we didn’t get our underpants back on straight, whatever the case, we had a rough start in the second half, getting shut out 5 of the first 6 jams. Luckily, Dubbs, Felony and Spanky Bottoms took up the slack and kept the Muddy River jammers under control.

Bam Bam rides MRN jammer side-saddle.

We steadily stretched our lead through the second half, but Muddy River kept it competitive and exciting. Lolli Popya was everywhere and nowhere, blocking Sum Mo Payne at the back of the pack, disappearing, then reappearing at the front of the pack to block her again; it was like there was a wrinkle in the matrix.

Dames’ Lil’ Mizfit, who hadn’t jammed during the bout, went in as jammer in the final minute and put up twenty-m-f-ing-one points! Really! 21! It was nuts. It was insanity. It was the second-largest scoring swing in the entire bout. I sure hope Mizfit likes shiny stars, because I think she’ll be wearing them a lot more often.

No one quite understands the mysterious rituals of the ancient ref meeting.

The final score was 260-155, Dames. The Muddy River Nightmares, despite being a relatively young team, played clean and solid roller derby throughout. They are a team that will, no doubt, get stronger with every bout that they play and I, for one, can’t wait to play them again. Thanks to all of the ladies and gents of Muddy River for coming all the way out to our side of the state.

**You may have noticed that this blog was teeming with numbers and stats, despite the fact that mama’s little bumpkin can’t count to 20 with her shoes on. You can thank my husband and life-long abacus, who took detailed notes. Nothing is sexier than skillful note-taking.

La Crosse Planet Revels vs. Sioux City Roller Dames: Carbed, Banged and Set on Fire

When a Skating Siren gives you a sack filled with snacks, a condom and a lighter, what would you think? I was expecting to get carbed up, banged and then set on fire, but, alas, we just played some wacky-smackin’, awesome roller derby. The La Crosse Skating Sirens, playing as Planet Revels in memory of local author and derby diehard, Andy Revels, hosted the Dames at the swanky, lumpy and bumpy La Crosse Center. The duct-taped divots on the track were not the trip-traps that we expected, which was just perfect, since our very own Mo Payne tripped enough people without any additional help from the floor.

The Sirens came out swingin’, putting up 9 unanswered points in the first jam. We were like: “What?!”, and they were all: “Oh yeah! That just happened!” Dames hardly made any headway in the first three jams, then PBR reminded us all how to play roller derby, putting up 21 points in a single jam, while the Sirens’ jammer was held to one point. This gave us our first (and last and only) lead of the bout.

Make no mistake, Dames played our little hearts out, but with only 9 players and jammers who had just skated across South Dakota only seven days before, we felt like we were pushing a boulder up a hill. But push we did; we made Sisyphus look like a punk. T-vicious laid a monster hit on Siren, Tor Tor U Up. The Annihiatrix (or Anal Tricks, as some announcers call her) got a little too excited and kablammed a Siren blocker with her elbow, getting herself sent to the box. We lost the lead as quickly as we had snatched it up and soon were 16 points down.

Then within a few minutes of halftime, Dames blocker/pivot Spanky Bottoms took an awkward fall and didn’t get back up for a few really long minutes. We crossed all of our fingers and toes, hoping she was alright; we’ve never been so relieved to see someone drag themselves up off the concrete and limp away. Spanky is tougher to crack than a turtle shell, so we knew that if she could stand up, she would be back out on the track in the second half.

The score was 74-64, Sirens at the half, still well within reach. During halftime the Sirens shared a really heartfelt tribute to their late friend, author Andy Revels. We all stopped thinking about winning, losing, scoring and blocking for a while. The Roller Dames felt honored to be a part of the Andy Revels memorial bout.

After a halftime regroup in the locker room, we came back out and, with the Sirens’ jammer in the box, we brought the score back to within 5 points. But, alas, our three road-weary jammers were getting fatigued. Blocker Felony Convixxen was layin’ down the law on the track, punching holes in the Sirens’ 3-wide front wall.

By the second half, we had figured out the Sirens’ game: take the frontline and keep it fast when our jammer is on the floor; hang back, goat and keep it slow when our jammer is in the box. We unlocked the great mystery, just like Dan Brown! There was just one problem that even Jesus and Mary couldn’t remedy: we were 5 girls short of a full roster.

Sirens stretched their lead to 46 points. Luckily, we didn’t notice and just kept grinning and skating. Sirens’ triple threat, GNutz, was, like all of my Star Wars collectible figurines, never out of the box; and after seven trips to the naughty chair, she was ejected from the game.

With less than three minutes left in the bout, Dames were within 11 points of the lead. With 1:40 left on the clock, PBR takes lead jammer and calls it with enough time for at least one more jam. In the next jam, Dubbs takes the lead, and then calls it off quickly before the Sirens get a chance to score. With 27 seconds on the clock and the score at 154-135, we all know that the next jam will be our last chance. Mo Payne is our jammer and she takes the lead while Sirens’ jammer Giggity Giggity goes to the box. We could all see the sunshine peeking through the clouds. We held our breath. Then the great unicorn in the sky peed all over our sunshine and stabbed our hope with her great, sharpened horn. Mo Payne, bless her big ol’ heart, could only manage to eek out 11 points, which is a great jam, but just not quite enough to give us the win.

The final score was 154-146, Sirens. It was a competitive and exciting bout from start to finish. We were all impressed with the Sirens’ sportsmanship, athleticism and generosity, both on and off the track. Win or lose, we had a blast before, during and, as far as any of us can remember, after the bout. Thanks, Skating Sirens!

Roller Dames v. Road Warriors: Mel Gibson’s Got Nothin’ on These Gals

Last night in Lincoln, NE, two mighty warrior tribes locked in battle, only, unlike thunderdome, there were refs everywhere, whistling, pointing and just generally taking all of the fun out of anarchy. The Dames hit the taped track hard…and quickly fell down; the floor was a slippery as a greased-up catfish, but that made for some crazy fast skating and some mighty entertaining hits and dog piles.

When nothing else will work, Dubbs decides to fly.

In the first jam, the Roller Dames jumped out to a quick lead with Funsize scoring 15 unanswered points. Well, we were just so tickled with that early lead that we decided to celebrate by throwing some elbows, blocking out of bounds and tripping a few people. There was quickly a waiting list to get into the Dames’ penalty box, which allowed the Warriors to make up some ground, and then some. Between Dropkick Muffy, Crazy Cooter and Anna WrecksYa, the Road Warriors scored more than the cute janitor at the all-girl Catholic High School. By the halftime buzzer, the Warriors had 15 points on the Dames and we retired to the locker rooms with the score 63-48 (for those of you who don’t have a calculator handy, that’s a 30 point swing in less than 20 minutes).

Funsize jukes around Anna WrecksYa. You better eat a sandwich if you wanna catch her!

The Dames regrouped. We all took off our naughty pants. Someone looked up “Strategy” with their Wikipedia app, and we were ready to go. We went back at it hard, keeping the pack fast and making the jammers work for every point. Of course, when the jammer is in the box, it’s pretty easy to keep them from scoring. Apparently we looked like we were having sooooo much fun in our penalty box, that the Road Warriors decided they’d like to spend a little more time in their own box, and the refs were more than happy to oblige.

It was almost like there were three teams out there: Dames, Warriors and Refs. There were a total of seven officials, meaning that each skater had, on average 1.4 eyeballs on them at any given time. Let me tell you, those 1.4 eyeballs didn’t miss a thing. The crowd had a really good hate going on and it was all pointed at the officials. All those screaming, belligerent derby fans were enough to make ref Kilgore Trout long for Lingo-Three, the planet of dying car-bots. The penalty officials could hardly keep up with the traffic in and out of the boxes; skaters were getting waved off from the full boxes, called back only to meet another player reporting for their penalty. It was quite the, well, in order to keep the language here at a PG-13 rating, I’ll call it a frottage-barrage (look it up).

As Rainbow Spite shepherds an errant player to the box, Kilgore Trout wonders if she’d notice if he touched her boob…softly, gently, just for a moment.

Almost everyone made at least one trip to the penalty box except, our own PBR. Mad props. I don’t mean to brag, but I committed my very first major penalty: tripping—please, please, hold your applause until all of the winners have been announced. Dames’ triple threat, Dubbs chucked a Road Warrior into the suicide seats in a Royal Rumble-style move, which, while fine in the pro wrestling world, is frowned upon in roller derby. Then, in a classic tiny vs. skinny clash, Funsize got all tangled up with Anna WrecksYa until they resembled a pretty two-headed spider on roller skates.

Anita Spur gets a HUG.

Road Warrior blocker, Hugs, whose name is very misleading, by the way, dominated the front of the pack, taking out Dames left and right, and, along with Celia Doom, Boom Boom Brooklyn and the rest of the Warrior’s blocking assassins, made the Dames’ jammers battle for every single point. But battle they did. The Dames played like we were still 15 points behind, and the next time we looked up, we were a jaw-dropping 72 points ahead. The score was 82-154 at the buzzer, giving the Roller Dames a W for the first bout of our season. I want to give a big THANK YOU to all of the No Coast Derby Girls for being great hosts, showing us an awesome time and playing a helluva good bout.