Auld Reekie Roller Girls at The Big O: Roundup

Following on from the Twisted Thistles’ success at the ECDX tournament in Philadelphia last year, the entire league pulled together again this year to organise and fundraise for a return visit to the USA: this time, to the cheekily-named Big O tournament in Eugene, Oregon (1st – 3rd May 2014). A valuable chance to watch the highest-ranked teams play and to check out new tactics and strategies, it also gave the Twisted Thistles the opportunity to go head to head against some tough opponents and see how we compared against teams ranked higher than ourselves.

Having all successfully made our way to Portland, Oregon with skates and kit intact, we kicked off our trip with an unofficial game before the tournament against the Rose City B team Axles of Annihilation. This gave us the opportunity to get our heads back into the game, and also to practice skating on a sports-cork floor, slightly more slippery and unpredictable than the wooden floor we usually practice on.

As the only European team in attendance, we were asked to sing O Flower of Scotland at the opening ceremony: having done some frantic last-minute practicing in a hotel room the night before, we decided to go a cappella and belt it out in finest Scottish tradition without musical accompaniment. It was quite a contrast to the respectful and beautifully-sung Canadian and USA anthems which preceded it!

Once the tournament kicked off, we realised we were up against some tough competition: nearly all the team we were scheduled to play against were ranked significantly above us in the WFTDA worldwide rankings. Our first game was against Arizona (ranked number 54), whose line-up included Team USA skater Atomatrix. ARRG put up a respectable fight, but the final result was a win for Arizona of 333-174. Saturday saw two games in one day, and two surprise wins for ARRG against number 42-ranked Tuscon (177-141) and number 39-ranked Sac City (169-151). Tournaments usually bring out the best in ARRG, and it was clear that all the hard work in the previous months – working on our strength, endurance and the ARRG ‘hive mind’ – were paying off. Our final game was against Emerald City, the hosts of the Big O tournament. Near us in the rankings, it was clear from the start that it would be a closely-matched game. Despite skating our hearts out, we lost to a solid and tightly-knit Emerald 193 – 142. Happy but knackered, we then headed to the bleachers to watch our own Admiral Attackbar skate as one of ‘Team MVP’ vs Team America. When Admiral pushed through the pack as the first jammer to put points on the board for Team MVP, her ARRG supporters went wild!

We had a couple of days in Portland after the tournament to decompress: a process that involved multiple visits to Whole Foods, hours soaking in the small pool in the basement of our hotel and a not inconsiderable number of cocktails. Returning to Edinburgh tired but happy, we’ve got plenty to work on to make our league stronger and better than ever.

Results:
ARRG vs Arizona: 174-333
ARRG vs Tuscon: 177 – 141
ARRG vs Sac City: 169 – 151
ARRG vs Emerald City: 142 – 193