The Bow Valley Lady Macs drew first blood and gained redemption on home turf against Wetaskiwin’s Rez City Rollers at the Canmore Recreation Centre for the Momma’s Mayhem roller derby bout, Saturday (April 26).
The two teams didn’t disappoint fans by offering a physical, nail-biting bout with a final score of 169-124 for the Macs.
The Lady Macs lost a close match to Rez City back in October and immediately demanded a rematch on a home track. The Macs quickly took the lead on Saturday thanks to the speed and agility of their jammers getting through Rez City blockers. But the action came to a screeching halt when a Rez City player received a bloody nose during the first half.
“Pretty amazing, pretty fun and awesome,” said Bow Valley Lady Mac member Miyoshi “Duchess Von Doom” Dukic after the bout. “We just wanted to hold our walls and keep their jammers from getting through,” she added on the team’s strategy of staying and coming out on top of the match.
The Lady Macs were able to rack up an impressive 91-49 lead by the end of the first half, but the pressure was laid on thick by Rez City in the second half. When Lady Mac coach Misha “Wolfman” Dukic saw a score of 134-107 with seven minutes left on the clock, he called a timeout to get the Lady Macs back on track.
“When Rez City came back for the second half they upped their game and we didn’t respond to it much, so I had to call that timeout because things were slowly giving away, we were leading by 60 points and then next thing it was only 20 or 30,” Dukic said.
“I just had to give the team a bit of a break so they could catch their breath and remember why they initially started to play roller derby and said, ‘use that to come back.’ ”
The Lady Macs did just that and maintained their lead to hang on to a home track win for the new season.
Lady Macs jammer Sonya “Creeps Up sOnya” Chrastina played a pivotal role in getting the numbers up on the scoreboard over the bout. “We were definitely looking forward to showing what we had and we knew them a little bit better having played them before and I think we really played on what we needed to,” Chrastina said. “We came through and it worked for us, and the whole team is proud of each other.”
The Lady Macs will next host the East Side Wheelers of Indus on June 10 at Banff’s Fenlands Arena.
