the greatest night of my life

(top left to right: Miss Creant, Daisy Cutter, Patty O'Mean, Punchy O'Guts, Olive Spankins, Jones N; Bottom left to right: Lois Blow, The Mom Bomb, Killer Quick, Terror Byte, Jacked Rabbit, Breezey)

The Port Authorities won our first bout of the season against the Rhode Island Riveters, ranked 14 by Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). The most we were hoping for was to lose by no more than 50 points. Seriously, we thought we were going to get spanked.

After a 30-minute exhibition bout with the Boston Massacre last month, the Port Authorities took some hard-learned lessons and pulled the team together to victory. The Massacre creamed us. Hard. And we all walked away knowing exactly what we needed to work on.

We had one month to do it.

Let's back up a few months to when we first scheduled the bout. The majority of us were crapping our pants when we found out our first bout was against the Riveters. "The Riveters? Oh my god - they'll crush us!" was the sentiment. We were absolutely terrified.

But, after playing the Massacre, who were adept at the old divide-and-conquer maneuver, we smartened up learned how to play derby. Even after playing for over a year, many of us felt that we'd really just learned the game. Up until recently, our blockers were just knocking girls around and the jammers were just clawing through and hoping for the best.

We just realized that we have to get lead jammer in order to control the points. We have to strategically hit. And we need an actual strategy for playing the game. I'm not going to give away our strategy, of course, but we do have one. Finally.

Back to the Riveters... Although we were shaking in our skates months ago, come bout day, the team was zen. We've never been so calm and collected in the face of adversity. Maybe it's the home-town advantage, but the team was, for the very first time, a team. A unit.

Playing strategically as a team won us the game. Staying calm - even when the score was so close it was anybody's game - won us the game. After the first period, we were so proud of ourselves for "winning the period" that we didn't care what the outcome was. We personally won even if we lost.

Having a coach made a huge difference as well. We've never had someone challenging us and encouraging us, and it was HUGE! Coach Bomb is an integral asset to the team. When he came over to the Mom Bomb and I, after a particularly good jam, and said something like "that was awesome! I want to see more of that," I was elated, confident and driven to succeed again. I wanted to win for my team and my coach, not for myself.

We played our hardest and our best and were rewarded with our first win. The most shocking aspect of this is that never in the history of WFTDA has an unranked team (ie -us) ever won against such a highly ranked team (ie - the Riveters). Maine is on the map, my friends! And the derby community will be watching us closely. We don't plan to let them down.

photo by Matthew Robbins

Not only is this a glorious photo of Killer Quick going up against Craisy Dukes on the jammer line, but check out the crowd. We rolled 1055 deep!