All Star Reserves British Champs Campaign. The story so far..
August 1st, 2017Captain of the All Star Reserves, Cirque Du Slay, has written us a round up of ARRG’s All Star Reserves British Championships campaign and some great info about their secret weapon for the upcoming game on the 12th August at Meadowbank Sports Centre. Here it is with some excellent photos.
This is the Reserves’ first year participating in British Champs and it’s been an absolute cracker. Our journey through Tier 3 Women’s North has been an exceptional development opportunity for all of us as individual skaters and as a team, as well as a ton of fun, and we’re doing pretty damn well! As we approach the final games of our tier on August 12th with one eye firmly on British Champs playoffs in September (fingers crossed!), it seems like a good time to look back on all we’ve achieved so far.
We kicked things off back in Aberdeen in April with an absolute nailbiter of a game against the hosts, and our tier’s current leader, Granite City Roller Derby. Top hosting prize for providing blowing bubbles and smiley face balloons, pals! Granite ultimately took the win with a heart-stopping scoreline of 201-199, with both teams playing some pretty epic roller derby along the way.
For our next challenge, we took on Spa Town Roller Girls in Halifax. We prepped good by fuelling up on noodles the night before at a hotel in Huddersfield, to take on a team from Harrogate in Halifax (Reserves’ English geography is coming on in leaps and bounds).
Obviously this was an excellent strategy as we won by a comfortable 453-58. Here we are celebrating. Aren’t we just sickeningly adorable?
After that we got to host our Tier 3 North pals in sunny Edinburgh, sharing our venue with a wee Iron Man competition, just in case anyone lacked for sporting inspiration that day. The crowd was full of cheering friendly faces from the rest of our incredible league and their support carried us to a second convincing win of 290-77 against Halifax Bruising Banditas.
Our fourth game took us back on the road (karaoke may have featured) to our third country of British Champs so far, taking on Furness Firecrackers in North Wales. Furness came out all guns blazing and there was a tense series of lead changes at the beginning, but we pulled away decisively to take yet another win of 308-134.
Next up, we are hosting all six teams for an exciting final in which we will take on North Wales Roller Derby for the chance to make it to British Champs playoffs in Stoke-on-Trent in September. There is everything to play for and we are sure of a great day for not just our team, but all of our wonderful opponents, officials, volunteers, fans, organisers, announcers, bout crew, designers, track layers, PA operators, social media updaterers and videographers who make all the good fun roller derby happen.
The Reserves are feeling pretty confident about this game, cos we have a secret (?) weapon and her name is Big Shirl. Big Shirl may be two-dimensional, but she knows how to make the most out of life (pictured below on a casual intergame fashion shoot), and she is the ultimate teammate. She is made up of every single Reserve who has played for us in this tournament, and of the combined strengths that every single one of us contributes to the team. She contains our goals, our successes, our best bits, our in-jokes and our reasons to be proud. She has been with us in Aberdeen, in Halifax, in Edinburgh and in North Wales and soon she will be back with us for our final game, cheering us on and reminding us of how hard we have worked and how much we’ve improved and all that we are capable of together. Come see.