Josh Shear

Assault City Roller Derby hosted its final home bout of the 2010 season on Saturday, falling 161-57 to the Tri-City Roller Girls of Waterloo, Ontario. Which is in Canada, by the way.

• What I love about roller derby »
• Roller derby in the context of a derby girl's life »

This to love about this bout:

Canadian national spirit. I've often taken the "grateful, not proud" stance on being an American. We have some great freedoms here, but (and forgive the brief foray into politics) we do some pretty crappy things to our own people and to the world. And we all stand respectfully and take our hats off when our national anthem is sung before sporting events, but Canadians actually sing along. Loudly. [Maybe it's because their anthem wasn't written by a prisoner to the tune of a drinking song popular among the people imprisoning him, but still.]

Announcers. DeafGeoff (aka Funk Roll Brother) and Jason (aka Rebel Without a Pulse) called the bout. Geoff is a radio guy and Jason is an actor. They are both also part of the Quadfathers, a men's roller derby team out of Utica. And they're friends. So the personalities are great, the banter was hysterical, they know derby and can explain it, and just all-around they enhanced the experience.

Solidarity and Bad-Assitude. About three minutes into the bout, Assault City's Deb Crush leveled Lippy Wrongstocking. Deb makes her living in the penalty box (though this was a clean hit) and is known for, er, not being gentle. When someone gets hurt, everybody (both teams and the refs) immediately takes a knee – it's the best way to ensure there's no further damage and it shows some solidarity – but any time the EMTs have to make their way out, it's scary. After about five minutes (which is a long time to be down), Lippy managed to skate off, and Deb made a bee-line for the Tri-City bench to check in on her. And while Lippy didn't skate again in the first half, she was right back at it in the second half, making up for lost time.

Wedding! Ref Otto A. Linement and Assault City skater Krispy Kremya renewed their vows at halftime (that's the photo up there at the top of the post). And about time, since apparently the first time they ran off and got married, then had a lot of phone calls to make and splainin' to do.

No more derby in B'ville this season, but Assault City skates in Utica on Sept. 19 and in a double header at Utica on Oct. 9. We'll also have some skaters at the October meeting of the 40 Below Civic Engagement Task Force.