Roller Derby = Good Times

Check it out! A blogger for the Saratogian Newspaper, Honest Matt's Discount Sports Blog, recently wrote an article about roller derby after doing an interview with Eddie Krueger of the Oz Roller Girls. OZRG will travel to our home turf at Rollarama on Saturday, February 5, 2011.

Matt, a fan of the Boston Derby Dames before moving to the Capital Region, describes roller derby as an "unadulterated good time" and "the world's friendliest rock concert".

Check it out!

http://mattdiscountsports.blogspot.com/2011/01/roller-derby-worlds-friendliest-rock.html

Next bout: Saturday February 5, 2011

The Hellions are excited to welcome the Oz Roller Girls to our home turf in just two weeks!

I've met the Oz Roller Girls on a couple occasions, thanks to the Assault City scrimmages. I think I just discovered I went to college with one of their skaters?!  Thank you Facebook.

Advance tickets are available online at brownpapertickets.com or from your favorite rollergirl.

As usual, we're offering a special derby discount to local roller girls: where your team jersey, scrimmage shirt, or other artifact with your team logo/image on it and get into the bout for only $5 at the door.

Definitely attending the bout? Say so on Facebook!

How to Wash Your Roller Derby Pads and Mouthguard

Smelly.

Sometimes I open up my gear bag and am overwhelmed by the stink. Yuck! We work hard during practice, and some of us sweat a lot. I'll be honest: for a while, I didn't really bother washing my pads. I actually just left my gear bag in the car because I was too lazy to bring it inside. Once in a while I'd wash them, but not regularly.

I've turned over a new leaf. I'm sick of smelly pads! I try to make it a habit to always bring my pads inside and at least open up the bag to let them air out. That's a good start. I now also try to wash them once a week.

Washing your pads can be as simple as throwing them in your bathtub and letting them soak in hot water and color safe bleach. I prefer to just throw them in the washing machine.

Make sure when you wash your pads in the machine that you pre-velcro everything so the pads don't stick together and get stretched out.

Next, I put my pads in a zippered mesh bag so they don't get tossed and tumbled around too much.

Washing machine settings
+ Hot water;
+ Not too much detergent. I use the same stuff I wash my clothes with, but you can also use color safe bleach;
+ Gentle cycle;
+ Soak option, if available.

Drying instructions
Hang to dry! Don't put 'em in the dryer (at least according to all the internet research I've done.) A word of caution: pads can take 1 - 2 days to dry completely...so don't wash them the night before you have practice!  When it's nice outside, you can also hang them outside to dry.
I hang my pads up to dry in our laundry room, which is pretty warm so they do dry rather fast.

So fresh and clean!

My custom mouthguard...the case has small holes
in it to allow it to dry. But I still need to wash it!

OK, so...what about your mouthguard? Again, I've been guilty of just tossing it in my derby bag and letting it sit. Then I upgraded to a mouthguard case with air holes, so it wasn't exposed and could properly dry out. A quick google search of "bacteria mouth guards" yields some scary results, including this article.

There are a few options for washing your mouthguard (note, these are just recommended methods, but not anything approved by medical professionals or whatever):

+ pure lemon juice soak
+ listerine before and after use
+ solution of water/ bleach
+ a scotch/ whiskey bath
+ brushing your mouthguard with a toothbrush and toothpaste... which is what I do!

Brusha brusha brusha. Kinda messy, but getting it clean!

How do you wash your gear? How often do you wash it?

In Case You Missed It - AOA Article on Roller Derby

AllOverAlbany.com, which I seriously love to pieces, recently posted an article by Liz, a new member of the AOA team. Liz also played roller derby in Illinois under the name "Bear Kylls".  !!!

The articled is called "How to behave (or not) at a roller derby bout", which includes some great advice. I also helped contribute to the article... just sayin'.  Make sure to check it out!

http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2011/01/12/how-to-behave-or-not-behave-at-a-roller-derby-bout

Queen of the Rink! January 15 Bout Recap

We won our bout on Saturday! It was so fun and amazing - the team worked so well together. We were pushed to do so because we knew that Nickel City would be a very big challenge.

After the first few jams I knew the bout was not going to be a blow out. I saw so much impressive derby from both sides, but especially the Hellions!
All photos below by Andy Kainz unless otherwise noted!

Shockratease and Deadlie Mercury working together to stop the jammer.

Pork Slap sends a jammer flying.

Epic Kate-tastrophe jamming against one of KCNO's best jammers, and team captain, Addy Rawl.

Hanna Solo using the Force.

I think I actually landed this hit. Wooo.  Photo by Pete Rodriguez.

For this bout we also introduced to brand new skaters: Valerie Valkyrie and Disharmony! Both girls have previously written guests posts (Val 1 | 2 and Disharmony). Anyway, these two have been KICKING ASS at practice so I knew they were ready. Disharmony is always where I need her to be when I'm jamming - up in the front clearing me a path! She's got great endurance and always gives 100% on the track. She rules.

Valerie is amazing at holding the line and not afraid of giving a hit. In the two pictures on the left you can see that we were working together in one jam. The KCNO jammer managed to get by me, but within seconds Valerie was able to race ahead to booty block her and slow her down, allowing Mathundra Storm and myself to catch up and form a strong three person wall. YEAH!!

I am SO PROUD of these two girls. And we have a couple more coming up in the ranks so expect to "meet" a couple more new Hellions soon!


What I really think pulled this game together for our team was our constant team work and remembering the drills we had worked on in the past month or so. I've never seen us work so tight together. We were constantly in the front of the pack holding walls and recycling when necessary.

NCKO had a few fast jammers which we had to adapt too.  In the first period they were up 78 HoT  - 90 NCKO. The game wasn't quite this close for the whole period however... Pork Slap scored 20 points in the last jam of the period to lessen their dominating lead.  That's when we really started gaining momentum.

In the second period KNCO caught on to our walls and were able to fight fire with fire. But we just kept up what we were doing and we caught up and took the lead with only a couple minutes left in the game. It was very close at the end, the last few jams really decided it. In the end, the Hellions won the bout 130 - 121.

NNKO were pretty amazing. I'm so glad they came out and was honored to play them. We may have won the bout, but they won the after party. I got to talk to a few afterwards, including Beauty School Knockout, who is totally freaking sweet and nice. After parties are always crazy socially overwhelming for me, but I'm glad I got to talk to a few of their girls.

Thanks again Nickel City Knockouts for coming out and pushing us hard!

A few other people I need to thank:
Kitty and Flexi, who served as alternates for this roster, allowing Valerie and Disharmony to show us what they're made of.
Missy and Beefcake, our coaches.
Members of Albany All Stars Roller Derby, Capital District Men's Roller Derby, Central New York Roller Derby, Utica Roller Girls, the Quadfathers, Ithaca League of Women Rollers, and other leagues who made it out to see the bout (let me know if you were there and I missed your league!). Thank you all so much for supporting Local Derby!!
All the fans!  Thank you for your support! Derby!!!

$2 Off Coupon in the Metroland

If you don't trust your luck to win the All Over Albany or Nippertown ticket giveways, you can always rely on good ol' Metroland.  There's a coupon for $2 off an adult admission at the door in last week's paper as well as the issue which is out today.

The coupon looks like this. Kinda.

Win Tickets to our Bout!

Our friends at Nippertown and All Over Albany (seriously, we love these guys) are giving away tickets to our next bout on January 15.  Check out their posts to enter to win!

http://www.nippertown.com/2011/01/10/win-free-tix-to-see-the-hellions-of-troy-on-saturday-11511 (winners selected and notified on Friday)

http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2011/01/12/tickets-for-next-hellions-roller-derby-bout (You must submit your comment by noon on Thursday January 13, 2011. Winners will be notified by 5 pm on Thursday and must respond by 9 am on Friday.)


Good luck!  And stay tuned tomorrow to find out how you can save on tickets at the door on Saturday....

Help Downtown Troy Win a Pepsi Refresh Grant

Downtown Troy is in the running for a $250,000 Pepsi Refresh Grant.

You can vote once per day to help Troy gain the lead for this grant.  Funding details are available on the Pepsi Refresh website:
http://www.refresheverything.com/downtowntroy

Hellions at Troy Night Out, June 2010

A portion of the funding will be used to support "Programming monthly art night" ... that must mean Troy Night Out, an event the Hellions were able to participate in a couple times this summer.

You can either vote at the website listed above or by sending a text message:
TEXT: 105518 | TO: PEPSI (73774)

Capital Region: Rich in Roller Derby

Enjoying some local roller derby.

Tonight some Hellions headed to the Armory to check out the Albany All Stars home opener. AASRD has expanded to three teams this season - their first four home bouts will be intraleague matches ending with a championship. Tonight, the Empire Skate Troopers took on the newest team, the Capital City Legislayers. Shout out to KCDC of CCL who made her derby debut tonight!  KC invited the Hellions to start blogging with the Times Union for a Capital District Roller Derby blog, which I contribute to along with Flexi Wheeler, Mathundra Storm, and members of AASRD and Capital District Men's Roller Derby.

As you can see, Mr. T is repping is CDMRD t-shirt, and I was rocking my New Orleans Saints gear (who sadly lost this evening).  I also got to buy my own CDMRD t-shirt.  I wanted to wear it, but since I was hanging out with Mr. T all night, I thought it would be a little too much.

Read more about the bout after the jump!

CNYRD Announces Season Schedule

Our friendly roller derby neighbors straight down I-90, Central New York Roller Derby (CNYRD) have announced their 2011 season schedule, which you can view after the jump.

Short and Disharmony

Here's a picture of me and Disharmony from practice last night. I was practicing jamming a lot, which is great because that's part of my goals for 2011. Oh, and notice I am wearing my *favorite* bright green HoTRD shirt.

We got to scrimmage a bunch tonight, which is always fun and a great learning experience for our new girls who are up and coming.

Disharmony, formerly Road Kill, is rostered for our next bout - woohoo! You might recall some of her fresh meat musings from this blog: a mini series called Meat Locker Missive.

Snausage got a chuckle from our juxtaposition lined up on the jammer line together. Yeah yeah, same old story: I'm small, she's tall. But I just wanted to capture this memory to look back 6 months from now when Disharmony's a killer skater and remember the fun scrimmages we had before her first bout.

Black/White/Pink/Green

Check it out!  I crack up when people wear almost the exact same outfit to practice. Unlike a normal team that requires you to bring a both black and white scrimmage jersey to practice, we mix it up and require pink and green.  Almost everybody on the team has our standard HoTRD bright green tank.  Epic Kate-tastrophe and Deadlie Mercury also happened to wear that very similar hot pink shorts on Monday night! Thank you Epic and Deadlie for letting me snap this precious picture after practice, despite how sweaty y'all are.

Also, can we talk about how Deadlie is a towering giant?  She has her skates on in this picture, but don't let that and her slouched posture fool you.  I think she's probably 6 feet tall. One of my favorite pictures of her is in this blog post from back in the summer.

Flexi is definitely crazy about pink and green.  Read her crazy post about our colors on the Times Union Roller Derby blog.

Not too much else to say.  Here's a picture from when we debuted our bright green tanks. They definitely stand out.

Empire Skate Showdown, September 2010

Next Hellions Home Bout: Saturday, January 15

Advance tickets are available online at brownpapertickets.com or from your favorite rollergirl.

As usual, we're offering a special derby discount to local roller girls: where your team jersey, scrimmage shirt, or other artifact with your team logo/image on it and get into the bout for only $5 at the door.

Definitely attending the bout?  Say so on Facebook!

For this bout we're playing the Nickel City Knockouts, one of the Queen City Roller Girls teams from Buffalo, NY.