For our April 16 bout, the Rat City Rollergirls are bringing you something special–our first interleague double header at the Key Arena! Our two travel teams, the Rat City All-Stars and the Rain of Terror will be facing up against regional rivals in Bay Area and Denver. Get to know our ambitious travel teams a little better before seeing them on the track! Rain of Terror Co-Captain Foxy Throwdown took a few minutes to tell RCRG fans a little more about the the league’s secondary travel team. Rain of Terror plays Denver Roller Dolls’ Bruising Altitude in the early bout of our April 16 doubleheader. Get your tickets now!
Rain of Terror, Rat City’s secondary travel team, has existed for a number of years and been evolving ever since, but this is the first bout in front of a big Seattle audience. Can you tell us a little more about the 2011 team?
Rain of Terror 2011 (RoT) is possibly the most diverse team Rat City has had to date. Our group has skaters ranging all the way from Season 7 fresh meat (Grave Danger’s Stella Borracha) up to long-standing veterans (Sockit Wenches’ Moe YaDown, Throttle Rocket’s Fighty Almighty). When I look at the skaters and their skill level, I’m honestly dumbfounded at the ability we have as a team and as a league to be lucky enough to put together a team of aggressive, hard-working skaters who are ready to represent Rat City.
We have former All-Stars, future All-Stars, and hands down hard-working, aggressive skaters who have dedicated themselves to the sport. Most of the team has not stopped skating since September 2009, and that is something to brag about! You know the names and faces of the Rain of Terror if you’re a Rat City fan. Missile America, Sevier, and Muffstache are just a few of our current stand-outs. I feel that this team is where fans will see their favorites playing both familiar and unfamiliar positions on the track. RoT has definitely allowed some of the home teams’ better and lesser known players to stand out and step up; and they have. It’s been amazing watching my teammates’ growth.
As a new captain, can you share a little about the team’s training plans and goals for the season?
We’re fortunate to have a strong group of leaders that work together very cohesively. I’m just the co-captain. My Captain, Nikole Plated, Head Coach Sheeza Brickhouse, and Assistant Coach Mona Agony (all Grave Danger) are instrumental parts of what keeps RoT running. Since we are transitioning in the derby community beyond an ad-hoc team and into a formal travel team, we’re taking our first year in stride. Our goals this year are more broad than your standard A-Team or even a longer-standing B-Team. We’ve discussed traveling as much as possible and playing as many competitive B-Teams as we can and on-the-rise A-Teams. We try to mix the level of competitive play with our general attitude and outlook for having an outstanding time on the track as individuals and a team and growing and building Rain of Terror to be a force within Rat City, the West and eventually the WFTDA.
In a lot of ways, the expansion of secondary-travel team level play completely echoes the first burst of interleague play back in 2006. For example—B-Team games aren’t covered as widely as All-Star games, there isn’t a WFTDA-initiated requirement for roster consistency, and each league approaches their B-Team makeup differently. How do you chose your match-ups to ensure a good, competitive experience for both teams and for fans?
Honestly, we’re still feeling the system out. Several of the West’s surrounding leagues have more established B-Teams than we do. Some only have A-Teams. We are doing our best to mix up our games and scrimmages with anyone and everyone within our reach. What you’ll notice on RoT is that some of our primary jammers and blockers may not play the same positions on their home teams. This is their opportunity to hone their skills and not only improve their skills on RoT, but bring their increased ability right back to their home teams for an even more diverse style of play.
Who knows where we’ll end up, but we have begin talking about our desire to help B-Teams maintain a strong presence withing WFTDA very soon. Stay tuned…
So yeah, Denver. What are your expectations going into this game? How has the team prepared for the big Key Arena debut?
We expect a challenging, hard-hitting, strategy heavy game. Denver’s program is known for finding and honing new, loophole strategies to keep ahead of their opponents and smart game play, and we don’t expect anything less. We’ve increased the number of practices our skaters attend each week, extended the length of practice times, have been scrimmaging the Rat City All-Stars and any other teams we can schedule time with, and have been working on specific strategies for some time. We’ve been anticipating this game for months and we’re ready to lay it all out in KeyArena.
The April 16 bout is Rain of Terror’s first big bout in Seattle, but can you tell us a little bit more about your games thus far this year? Also, what’s the rest of your season looking like? Any big games on the horizon?
Our schedule has been insane—in the best possible way! We’ve been packed full of games since the start of the year. In January, we went to Fairbanks, Alaska to play Fairbanks and Rage City (Anchorage). That trip was epic. We had an amazing time with amazing girls. And the following weekend, we went up to Vancouver for a bout against the Terminal City All-Stars. In February we played Dockyard Derby Dames’ Wave of Mutilation. Those were all bouts against other leagues’ all-star teams.
The morning after our February Key Arena bout with Rose City’s home teams, we scrimmaged Portland’s Axles of Annihilation. In March, we played Jet City’s B52s and an All-Star mash-up team, High Octane at Wild West Showdown. In June we’ll play the B52s again, likely twice, and we’ll go down to Portland to play the Axles. This summer we may also travel to Eastern Washington. I think that’s all that’s officially on the books, but there’s always more around the corner. We like to keep busy and train hard.