Gridlock Assemble! The Bronx Send Message to League with Win over Brooklyn

By Thomas Gerbasi / additional reporting by Hewlett Smackard

Last season, the Bronx Gridlock were the hard luck gang of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league, always competitive but still in the position where the primary goal was to break a three-year losing streak. They did that last July, and in the GGRD season opener at John Jay College in NYC, they opened their 2018 campaign with a statement-making 185-136 win over the defending champion Brooklyn Bombshells.

That statement? This ain’t the same Gridlock anymore.

PHOTO SEAN HALE

“I think we were just ready,” said Bronx captain Fast and Luce. “Bronx was completely ready to be in that winning position. We've been training for many seasons now to get to that place and we all just came back to the season - even our new people we drafted - with the understanding that we were going to work with a single goal in mind and that was to really dominate the track.”

Mission accomplished, at least on March 17, when they led from whistle to whistle, buoyed by the scoring attack of GGRD All-Star Kate Sera Sera, a member who is rapidly emerging as one of the league’s top jammers.

“I come in expecting to make points with every jam,” said Kate, who logged a game high 101 points. “When you look at [our] defense and what it's been doing throughout — I didn't have any doubt in my mind that the defense was going to hold. We're going to make points. You know we're good at finding where the points are while holding back the others.”

PHOTO SEAN HALE

In such a high scoring contest, it’s easy to forget the defensive end of the equation, but the tight-knit defensive unit of the Cabbies was able to limit the high-octane Brooklyn offense when it counted, with only the always-dangerous Miss Tea Maven (99 points) able to find daylight consistently for the Bombshells.

Ultimately, what the game may have come down to was the cohesiveness of the Gridlock, something that was difficult to achieve in recent seasons due to injuries, turnover, and simple bad luck. But it appears that those days are in the past, and it was noticeable to the Bombshells even before the opening whistle.

“You know, it's kind of funny,” said Brooklyn co-captain Lady Fingers. “We anticipated this from having scrimmaged them for the last few months, and we kind of knew it was coming. But even when you know it's coming, they were just very good at it. They were really good at playing their game and playing their strategy. And it leaves the other team sometimes with having to, on the fly, change your strategy because they're really doing a great job playing their game.”

PHOTO SEAN HALE

Not surprisingly, the Bombshells fought tooth and nail throughout the bout, keeping it close in the early going as both offenses took some time to get into gear. By halftime, the Gridlock’s lead was only 18 points, but in the second half, they steadily pulled ahead, outscoring their foes in the first 16 jams of the final 30 minutes.

“I have to say we very much try to keep each other focused jam-by-jam and it keeps us moving forward and keeps us from zooming out into a big picture and thinking about things that we don't need worry about,” said Luce. “The margin is not something we want to worry about. We take it jam by jam, reset after every jam, and that, step by step, is how you win a game.”

By the time Brooklyn’s Sweets McBacon outscored Kate 2-0, the die had been cast, as the Bronx now led 162-62. Jams of 23 and 29 points by Maven down the stretch closed the gap slightly, but it was strictly cosmetic, as the Gridlock had already made their point. And as Luce puts it, the best is yet to come.

“We drafted our new people exactly a month ago,” she said. “The amount of work that we've done here is only been a few weeks of practice and that's a completely different thing to prepare a team in three weeks than it is to have two and a half months or three months. There is a lot that we plan on working on and it's just a different type of working.”

PHOTO MANNISH GOSALIA

BRONX vs. BROOKLYN STATS

           1  2  F​

Bronx75  110  185

Brooklyn57 79 136

Bronx MVP – Kate Sera Sera

Brooklyn MVP – D.A.R.Y.L.

Leading Bronx Scorers

Kate Sera Sera – 101 points (24 jams)

Sally Handsome – 26 points (3 jams)

Annie Mergency – 22 points (5 jams)

Leading Bronx Blockers

Caf Fiend – 25 jams (-40)

Fast and Luce – 24 jams (-9)

Cherry Napalm – 23 jams (+30)

Leading Brooklyn Scorers

Miss Tea Maven – 99 points (21 jams)

Space Invader – 26 points (14 jams)

Sweets McBacon – 6 points (12 jams)

Leading Brooklyn Blockers

D.A.R.Y.L. – 25 jams (-23)

Lady Fingers – 23 jams (-50)

Gut-Her Punk – 22 jams (-20)

Papierschnitt – 22 jams (-3)

Bronx Penalties

Minutes in Box: 26 Jammer Box Trips: 6

Brooklyn Penalties

Minutes in Box: 27 Jammer Box Trips: 5

Stats compiled via Rinxter

Brooklyn Beats Queens in OT, Leaves Classic with GGRD Crown

By Thomas Gerbasi / additional reporting by Hewlett Smackard

It’s the scenario you hope for in any championship game. Sudden death for all the marbles, and when the Brooklyn Bombshells and Queens of Pain met for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league title on Aug. 26, it was no surprise that 60 minutes weren’t enough to determine who would leave John Jay College in NYC with the Golden Skate Trophy.

158-158. Two minutes. One jam. An entire season comes down to this.

PHOTO MANISH GOSALIA

 "We were just saying, ‘Everybody sit down, everybody stay calm,’” said Brooklyn’s Raggedy Animal. “We didn't want to send the energy out to the track of chaos. We wanted the bench to be very Zen and sending a lot of positive energy, because it's already so intensely exciting we didn't want everyone on the track to have our energy be like, "Go, go, go." So, on the bench we try to keep it nice and calm and try to really feed the skaters that supportive, quiet energy.”

“We practice the two minute jams,” said Queens’s Suzy Hotrod. “We had a definite plan — Shorty would start, I would finish.”

Two minutes later, as the crowd roared, Queens had put 13 more points on the scoreboard. But Brooklyn scored 17. And the new champs wore blue.

PHOTO MANISH GOSALIA

 "When we were out there, we kept talking,” said Diva. “Stay smart, stay clean. And what was happening was that the other team went to the box a little more than we did. We just played what we did at the beginning to the end and just tried to finish that way. It was anybody's game, but our goal was to stay on the track. That's how we want to win the game.”

The victory marked the Bombshells’ third GGRD title and first since 2015. Queens, which saw its hopes for an undefeated season and a fifth championship, were crushed by the razor-thin defeat.

 "It's heartbreaking,” said Suzy. “I think about so many hours and hours and hours and hours of work, all the team, all the way down to the bottom of the bench every, every day. Every single thing we could have done.”

Yet that’s the beauty of derby, especially in Gotham, the reality that every team is so good that on any given night, any team can win. And while Brooklyn was a worthy one-half of this year’s title bout, Queens had defeated them in July and looked to be unstoppable heading into the final game of the season.

PHOTO MANISH GOSALIA

​But that’s why they play the games, and Brooklyn, a squad that was missing Diva for the Coney Island bout, had her back. And she delivered, scoring a game-high 92 points.

“I will play wherever my team would need me to be,” she said. “Just like any of our players, I couldn't score points if my blockers didn't contain or continue keeping their jammer locked down. So. I just played my game and tried to stay out of the box, but I can't say they leaned on me - my team did what they had to do.”

What Brooklyn had to do was dig out of a 43-8 first half hole that almost saw them put away by the Queens trio of Suzy, ShortStop and Beauty Andie Beast. But once the Bombshells settled down and got into a rhythm, they erased that slow start and not only pulled closer, but raced past their rivals en route to an 80-71 halftime lead.

Now it was Queens’ turn to make a run, and by the sixth jam of the second period, they regained the lead, 86-84. That lead didn’t last long, as Brooklyn seized the advantage in the next jam, and when Diva delivered a 22-point effort that put her team ahead 138-118, it looked like game over in NYC.

PHOTO MANISH GOSALIA

 But when it mattered, one of Gotham’s greats took over, with Suzy using jams of 17 and eight points to even the score and force overtime. It was a furious run that was ended by Brooklyn’s effort in the overtime jam, but competing in one of GGRD’s greatest title bouts has to be some consolation for a team that already has its sights set on 2018.

“We're going to wash our tears away in the ocean tomorrow,” said Queens captain Puss ‘n Glutes. “Then we'll come back.”

PHOTO MANISH GOSALIA

 QUEENS vs. BROOKLYN STATS

                          1         2        F

Queens    71   87158

Brooklyn     80       82162

Queens MVP – Suzy Hotrod

Brooklyn MVP – V-Diva

Leading Queens Scorers

ShortStop - 64 points (26 jams)

Suzy Hotrod – 59 points (17 jams)

Beauty Andie Beast – 33 points (10 jams)

Leading Queens Blockers

Puss ‘n Glutes – 39 jams (+6)

Livvie Smalls – 35 jams (-51)

Pinky Swears – 30 jams (-14)

Leading Brooklyn Scorers

V-Diva – 92 points (18 jams)

Miss Tea Maven – 56 points (27 jams)

Bellatricks – 7 points (2 jams)

Sweets McBacon – 7 points (6 jams)

Leading Brooklyn Blockers

Lady Fingers – 35 jams (+38)

D.A.R.Y.L. – 34 jams (-21)

Papierschnitt – 30 jams (+8)

Queens Penalties

Minutes in Box: 45 Jammer Box Trips: 5

Brooklyn Penalties

Minutes in Box: 31 Jammer Box Trips: 4

Queens Plans to Go Out with a "Bang Bang Bang" in Title Bout on Saturday

By Thomas Gerbasi

This is what captains do. It was a July 15 game that had no bearing on whether the Queens of Pain were going to get into this Saturday’s Gotham Girls Roller Derby league championship game or not, as they were already in the bout at John Jay College in NYC. But Puss ‘N Glutes hopped on a plane from Loveland, Colorado to New York to lead her squad to a victory over the Brooklyn Bombshells before heading back on a red eye flight to continue coaching the GGRD juniors.

The trip back and forth lasted 14 hours.

“We committed as a team to doing our best to make this an undefeated season and we’ve been preparing and working hard to make sure every game shows,” said Puss, who will be a lot more rested as she takes the track to battle Brooklyn once more this weekend, this time for the Golden Skate trophy.

PHOTO SEAN HALE

It’s the culmination of another season for GGRD, and one that has seen Queens dominate like few teams have in recent memory. Winning their three regular season bouts by an average of 73 points (for comparison, Brooklyn’s two wins have come by an average of 16 points), the ladies in black go into Saturday’s bout as a heavy favorite, and Puss would even go as far to say that in all her years with the team, this may be the best yet.

“I think that this is probably the strongest team that I’ve played on,” she said.“I think that Queens is an unstoppable force this year.”

The proof of that statement has been shown on the track, but the reason for the team’s dominance may come from an unlikely source.

“At the start of 2016, we had a lot of draft picks andwe decided that we weren’t going to pick the people that were ranked the highest,” Puss explains.“We decided that we were going to pick the right skaters for our team and pick the skaters that were going to be there every practice, busting their butts to get better. And so, coming into 2017, we had zero retirements, we are two years strong, and we’re a tiny team, size wise, but we have worked to be the fittest and the fastest and to make our gameplay really strategic. We are going to show no mercy this Saturday.”

To have the same team intact for two years in a row isn’t just a luxury; it’s the rarest of rarities in a league where titles are often won and lost by the teams that were able to weather the storms of team turnover the best. With Queens’ commitment to putting the right skaters on their team, a new blueprint may have been set for teams in future drafts.

“It’s a team preference and I think some teams will go into the draft feeling desperate for a jammer or a high level pivot / track leader type,” Puss said.“And we looked at last year as an opportunity to take skaters that we knew would grow and add to the culture of our team, which is all about hard work.We feltreally strong, really connected, and we were able to start working on new strategies from the first practice instead of getting people comfortable in our walls. We were fully ready and hit the ground running for 2017.”

PHOTO SEAN HALE

Three big wins have followed, with Queens refusing to rest on leads or their laurels. It’s a kill, kill, kill mentality for 60 minutes, and in July, they sent a message to Brooklyn with a 167-118 victory.

“We’re never a team that underestimates our opponents, and the upper hand that we’ve had is that we’ve known our team intimately for two years now,” Puss said. “We didn’t have to know each other; we just had to start practicing how to take down the other teams. So we’ve been focusing our practices on the strategies of each team that’s coming up and I think it’s shown on game day. We know that Brooklyn is strong, we know that they’ll have even more of their skaters skating at championships and that they’ll come out pissed about the loss and even stronger, but they should know that we’ve prepared twice as hard.”

And with a few Queens veterans calling it quits at the end of the season, there’s even more incentive for the juggernaut to kick it into an even higher gear tomorrow night.

“Queens has made this the year of K-Pop, and so, as one of our favorite songs says, we’re planning on going out with a ‘Bang, bang, bang’ this year,” laughs Puss.“The ones that are taking the track for the last time are going to leave it all out there.”

Brooklyn Shakes Off July Loss, Expects Redemption in Rematch with Queens

By Thomas Gerbasi

The task of beating the rolling thunder that is the Queens of Pain will be a daunting one for any team in the Gotham Girls Roller Derby League, all of which have come up short thus far in 2017. But if any squad is up for the challenge, it’s the one that will face Queens for the GGRD home team championship, the Brooklyn Bombshells.

“The team is excited for the game,” said veteran D.A.R.Y.L., who has never NOT been in a championship game during her time in the league with the Manhattan Mayhem and now Brooklyn.“We’ve been progressing a lot as a team this year, so I think a lot of our strategies are finally coming together, so hopefully we can bring all of that on Saturday.”

PHOTO SEAN HALE

Saturday’s bout at John Jay College is a clash of opposites in many ways, not the least of which is the roster composition of each team. Queens has had the same roster intact for two seasons now, while Brooklyn was hit hard by turnover after last season. That could have been a disaster for the Bombshells, but when the draft produced the likes of V-Diva, Donna Matrix, Sweets McBacon, Bellatricks and Girl Friday for the team, that can ease the pain somewhat.

Or not, as putting a bunch of talent on a team isn’t always the recipe for success. But in Brooklyn’s case, the newcomers transitioned nicely into the team’s system, and the result has been a chance to win their first title since 2015.

“We were fortunate to have a split with the new team members this season in terms of jammers and blockers, and they’ve been really great at jumping in and learning our strategies and asking questions and really contributing to how our team is developing,” D.A.R.Y.L. said.“So in terms of fitting in and meshing well with the team, it takes hard work and being there and working together day in and day out, and our new skaters have been able to do that.”

The Bombshells got off to a fast start with wins over Manhattan and the Bronx that earned them a spot in Saturday’s championship game, but there would be an initial battle with Queens in Coney Island last month. Queens drew first blood with a 167-118 victory, but it wasn’t a loss without some lessons for the blue-clad Bombshells.

PHOTO SEAN HALE

 “We learned a lot from that game in terms of what we could improve upon and tightening up our game so that we can beat Queens,” D.A.R.Y.L. said.“I think a lot of our strategies are actually very similar, so it’s just a matter of who’s executing them the best. Luckily we’re gonna have Diva and Punk back for the next game, and while there’s always something to learn from playing the same team consecutively, ultimately, I think it will be a very different game from the one in July.”

Different enough that Brooklyn expects to raise a third championship banner on Saturday night.

“We have so many games under our belts that we can now take what we’ve learned and the team leadership can be like, hey, we’ve done this in the past, we can take what we’ve done and move forward with it. We don’t need to be nervous, we can build off the great things that we’ve already been able to do and know that we can do that and then some. It’s a matter of having the confidence in ourselves, confidence in leadership to be able to lead by example so everybody else then has the confidence to say, ‘Yeah, we can do this.’”

Gridlock and Mayhem Fight for More Than Third Place on Saturday

​By Thomas Gerbasi

A third-place game never sounded so good. In other sports, seeing who comes in third is almost an anticlimax, a chance for the athletes to compete once more while making things tidy when compiling the final leaderboards or standings.

Photo Sean Hale

In Gotham Girls Roller Derby, yes, it’s a chance for the athletes to take to the home team track once more in 2017, but it’s also an opportunity to tie up some loose ends and / or settle some scores while laying the groundwork for 2018.

And maybe, just maybe, some of that wouldn’t be the case if not for the Bronx Gridlock’s stirring 138-119 win over the Manhattan Mayhemon July 15 at Coney Island’s Abe Stark Arena.

The victory was the Gridlock’s first since May 2014, which was newsworthy enough. But it also kept the defending GGRD champions winless for 2017, a development which has been shocking for Mayhem, as well as Gotham fans.

So now we’ve got some intrigue, don’t we? The GGRD home teams always give a supreme effort on the track, and the back and forth nature of the games is proof. But when the Bronx and Manhattan take the track Saturday at John Jay College, a lot more is on the line than just third-place in 2017.

It’s a chance for Mayhem, a team that had to introduce four skaters into the rotation this season, to end the year on a high note. As for the Gridlock, that high note was hit last month, so on Saturday, they have the opportunity to prove that the win wasn’t a fluke while picking up a two-game winning streak and setting the stage for a promising 2018 campaign.

Third-place? That’s just a bonus.