“A Boost of Soul for the Sucias”
There’s nothing better on bout day than to have that realization of stands filled with people who love the sport and the athletes who play it and another bench filled with another team. It’s that split second when you look around, see the CCD fans, see the other team and feel a million butterfly wings begin flapping all at once in your stomach; the mixture of nerves and excitement that pumps through your veins. The background noise shuts off when the head ref calls for the start of the bout and ten women wait for a whistle.
CCD kicked off its home season, with an exciting opener against San Angelo’s Soul Sisters (SASS). While the score may have seemed lopsided, the Sucias beat SASS 333-59, it was anything but an easy win. The first jam whistle blew and their blockers were ready to attack our jammer. At the same time, our blockers were ready for our first hits of the season. We came out strong and knocked their jammer out of bounds right away. She attempted to re-enter the track quickly, but we had our strategy down: hit and retreat. She was penalized for a track cut and Sucias had their first power jam of the night. General Grant Slam worked through the pack time and time again with the help of her blockers and racked up a quick 33 points.
Every jam start was a new two-minute opportunity to follow through on weeks of drills, strategy and endurance. While we always want to make sure our fans see the most amazing aspects of our athleticism, sometimes all it takes to win a bout is implementing the best overall strategy. We had been working hard on hitting the jammer out and retreating. This strategy was two-fold: it lengthened the track for the SASS jammer and shortened the track for the Sucia jammer; therefore our jammer had less skating to do to get around the track before she would score points. This boils down to us being able to control the pack. We don’t always have to knock all the players around like bowling pins to win. Several of our blockers have proven they can knock a blocker off the track, but as a team we also need to prove we can control the pack and not allow an opponent to be successful with their strategy.
SASS blockers were a force to be reckoned with. Their hits took a bite out of our players so we had to change how we would deal with them: juke instead of hit. Juking is when you combine sneaky ninja-like skills with Hollywood acting – act like you’re going one way and then pull a switcheroo and sneak around the blocker like a ninja. Our work with agility really paid off! The win against SASS gave our fans what they were hungry for: seeing CCD’s growth since last year and a great kick off to our 2013 home bout season. Our next home game is against Taos Whiplashes on May 4th and we would love to see you all come out and watch us continue the successful play we started with SASS.
-Hell Paseo #7 & Goldy Blocks #3brs
There’s nothing better on bout day than to have that realization of stands filled with people who love the sport and the athletes who play it and another bench filled with another team. It’s that split second when you look around, see the CCD fans, see the other team and feel a million butterfly wings begin flapping all at once in your stomach; the mixture of nerves and excitement that pumps through your veins. The background noise shuts off when the head ref calls for the start of the bout and ten women wait for a whistle.
CCD kicked off its home season, with an exciting opener against San Angelo’s Soul Sisters (SASS). While the score may have seemed lopsided, the Sucias beat SASS 333-59, it was anything but an easy win. The first jam whistle blew and their blockers were ready to attack our jammer. At the same time, our blockers were ready for our first hits of the season. We came out strong and knocked their jammer out of bounds right away. She attempted to re-enter the track quickly, but we had our strategy down: hit and retreat. She was penalized for a track cut and Sucias had their first power jam of the night. General Grant Slam worked through the pack time and time again with the help of her blockers and racked up a quick 33 points.
Every jam start was a new two-minute opportunity to follow through on weeks of drills, strategy and endurance. While we always want to make sure our fans see the most amazing aspects of our athleticism, sometimes all it takes to win a bout is implementing the best overall strategy. We had been working hard on hitting the jammer out and retreating. This strategy was two-fold: it lengthened the track for the SASS jammer and shortened the track for the Sucia jammer; therefore our jammer had less skating to do to get around the track before she would score points. This boils down to us being able to control the pack. We don’t always have to knock all the players around like bowling pins to win. Several of our blockers have proven they can knock a blocker off the track, but as a team we also need to prove we can control the pack and not allow an opponent to be successful with their strategy.
SASS blockers were a force to be reckoned with. Their hits took a bite out of our players so we had to change how we would deal with them: juke instead of hit. Juking is when you combine sneaky ninja-like skills with Hollywood acting – act like you’re going one way and then pull a switcheroo and sneak around the blocker like a ninja. Our work with agility really paid off! The win against SASS gave our fans what they were hungry for: seeing CCD’s growth since last year and a great kick off to our 2013 home bout season. Our next home game is against Taos Whiplashes on May 4th and we would love to see you all come out and watch us continue the successful play we started with SASS.
-Hell Paseo #7 & Goldy Blocks #3brs
