Even with fans standing and shouting at full volume, head referee Luke ‘Happy Bones’ Prince nevertheless flapped his arms up and down, palms to the sky, to hopefully draw out even more sound suitable for the heated 30 seconds to come.
With Saturday night’s flat-track action reduced to the final jam session and the Durango Roller Girls clinging to a slim 152-150 advantage about as hard-earned as possible against the rival Arkansas Valley High Rollers, there was no doubt which two skaters would attempt to determine a winning side.
After the officials conferred to confirm the score prior to the last restart concluding the second 30-minute half, Durango’s Kelsey ‘Eager Beaver’ Beaver and ArkValley’s Amanda ‘Swiss Missile’ Sharpless – nearly 30 years experience between them – accelerated with Prince’s whistle. Both jammers struggled to initially break through the pack, but Sharpless ultimately did so first and managed to complete one lap of the field as time expired – earning four points and securing the visitors a wild 154-152 victory inside Chapman Hill Ice Arena.
“This is probably the closest that we’ve played them!” said Durango’s Stephanie ‘Quad-ess of Pain’ Roberts. “It really came down to the wire this time, so I feel that we Roller Girls can be proud and hold our heads really high that we performed so well against such a tough team.”
“Both teams really wanted to win, and we gave it our all to try to stop Swiss,” she added, “but she’s just a beast.”
Having trailed the home team ever since an emphatic 20-point Beaver jam put the Roller Girls up 77-61 with 2:09 left in the first half, the High Rollers – who’d routed DRG 163-106 back in June at the Chaffee County Fairgrounds in Poncha Springs – finally regained the upper hand, 128-125, with just 5:24 left in regulation thanks to a 20-point Sharpless burst countering a Beaver 14-pointer.
Pushing herself toward exhaustion, Beaver struck back and outscored Katy ‘Obsidian’ Kellogg 23-4 during a full two-minute pull as the Roller Girls pressed ahead, 148-132, with 3:00 to go. Still, the High Rollers weren’t done and Stacy 'Ramp' Falk – back from right-shoulder surgery which kept her out of the teams’ previous clash – outskated two Durango jammers 18-4 during the last full two-minute session as ArkValley fought to remain in contention.
“They’ve been practicing a lot more than us – they have an awesome coach who works really hard with them – and coming in I was like ‘We’re going to have to work for this,’” Falk said. “And we did.”
Energized by Shook’s early 14-point jam, ArkValley raced out to a 36-13 lead during the opening 10:47 of the first half, but the Roller Girls slowly rallied and took the lead – their first – at 57-55 with roughly 6:50 left until intermission. As the bout became more and more physical – DRG jammer Kelli ‘Atomic’ Henry was lost to an apparent knee injury (while celebrating her birthday, no less) with 5:23 left – the 15-minute pause couldn’t come fast enough.
But with Katie ‘Skidmark’ Moody and Tatum ‘Noodle’ Schmidt each cranking up her own game to pick up for Henry, the Roller Girls not only went into halftime leading 77-65, but increased their lead after the break to 95-71 with 25:00 remaining.
“I feel like I’m our weakest jammer,” said Moody, “so … without Atomic … we were switching back and forth between me, Noodle, Beaver to try to keep everyone fresh. We had a little bit of an advantage in the sense that we had a larger roster, so we were just trying to pace ourselves.”
Able to soldier through the closing 14:32 after a brief lower-back injury – resulting from a Roberts hip/shoulder check while in the backstretch of the track – Kellogg wasn't surprised by the narrow outcome.
“Both our teams work extremely hard to improve; we both care deeply about the sport and just put in so much time to improve ourselves,” she said, having been voted ArkValley's Best Overall in the bout. “I think both teams played phenomenally … some great strategy happening out there. All the jammers were strong, and it was just an overall fantastic game to play in.”
