Minnesota RollerGirls Trick or Beat, Roy Wilkins Auditorium: St Paul, MN

October 21st, 2007 in Metro, St Paul

Yesterday was the first Minnesota RollerGirls bout of Season 4, something which Kim and I have been looking forward to for quite some time.

After geocaching in and around Winona earlier in the day, I got home at 4:15, took a shower, ate, changed into my MN RollerGirls stuff and we headed up to St Paul for the match. We have season tickets and season parking passes and thus this limits me to where I will be parking. Unfortunately some crazy group was being let out of the Xcel Energy center (women’s prayer group?) and the St Paul Police, in their infinite wisdom, decided to block off Kellogg in front of the Xcel and thus creating an unnecessarily nasty traffic jam that held us queued on the 35E exit for 7 or 8 green lights. Once I did finally make it onto Kellogg, I found that I could not head straight to the RiverCenter parking ramp and instead had to turn left and go the long way around. The entire trip from exit from 35E to the ramp took just under 40 minutes. Thanks for your hospitality and kindness SPPD, your officer at the corner of Kellogg and 7th St displayed a level of understanding, intelligence, and professionalism that I have yet to experience anywhere — lol.

I must admit that I wasn’t sure about paying for the parking in advance but after walking under cover and remembering the several -20 degree walks to our cheaper parking several blocks away last season, this seemed like a bargain ;)

I walked in to the hallway leading to the Roy Wilkins and found Kim, Kevin and his family right at the front of the line. We patiently awaited our free t-shirts and were soon rewarded with two Large shirts. Thankfully losing nearly 60 lbs since August 1st has allowed me to fit comfortably into my shirt but I’m at a loss for why they would stock such small sizes. Looking around last night, I didn’t see that many individuals that would find a L shirt to be anything but extremely “form fitting” and I know I certainly would have ripped the seams trying to find into it last season :)

The season started with Universal Dance Destiny doing their thing. I have a video of part of their routine but I probably won’t post it because where we were sitting was great for RollerGirls but not so good to see them do their thing.

The first thing we noticed was the distance between the trackside seating and the track itself. By talking with Aaron before the match started, we found that they had to make the distance greater for insurance reasons. Aaron mentioned at half-time that he felt this took some of the wind out of the sails of the crowd. I agreed that the crowd was less excited than usual but I felt it was because the venue was nearly empty compared to bouts we had attended before. I’m sorta glad we didn’t end up with trackside season tickets but we still need to get there way in advance to get actual chairs close to the track now that they’re even further away than they were before.

Last night’s bout was not an All-Stars match vs All-Stars match as we’ve seen in the past. This time it was the Dagger Dolls vs the No Coast Derby Girls (out of Nebraska) and the Garda Belts vs the Cincinnati RollerGirls (who were so physical that I believe it shocked the Garda Belts a little).

I was actually yawning (partially because I had been up since 5 AM to go caching) during the second half but it was partially because the quarter lengths had been increased by 10 minutes to 30 each and the fact that it just wasn’t as exciting as it had been last season. I’m not saying it wasn’t fun, it just wasn’t what I had become accustomed to.

I’m looking forward to the All-Stars vs All-Stars matchup on December 8th but there’s one more bout in between. Perhaps the crowd size will increase for the next bout now that people will know the RollerGirls are back in action and that will help the atmosphere.

Here’s a video of Rebel Stella of the Dagger Dolls out skating the No Coast Derby Girls: