Battle for the Coast 2007

Hooray to the Ventura County Derby Darlins for putting on a great event on Saturday. Other than some minor quibbles with Anacapa Hall that weren’t their fault — the plastic chairs on a flat surface made it difficult to see the action — they did an excellent job of putting on a fairly professional sporting event. As someone who worked in sports and still goes to games and events and notices and critiques the little things that event planners do, between the non-​stop, fast action, the entertainment, the vendors and the services, I was very impressed. There are some minor league operators that should’ve been taking notes.
Cagey B has already covered most of the details. I do agree that the format wasn’t the best. I would’ve preferred a first round, a second round, and a championship round where the winners of each game move on rather than taking the two teams with the top scores, but I’m sure time was an issue as was whether or not teams could play that long, they do take a beating and get very tired. But it was obvious that the two best teams competed for the championship, so it worked out.
Seeing the success of The Battle for the Coast makes me want to build a small track somewhere with stadium seating for 500 to 1,000, organize all of these teams into a league with a weekly schedule, sell sponsorships and tickets and put on a great show every couple weeks. I think that’s the future of Roller Derby in Southern California. Someone is going to capitalize on the popularity sooner or later.

The Ventura County Derby Darlins set up an eight-​league roller derby tournament, which was, yes, all the way in Ventura, but totally worth it and well-​organized. Plenty of parking and clean bathrooms, too, which makes a huge difference. The Darlins had marked out two adjacent tracks, and although two (20-​minute) bouts happened simultaneously, the tracks alternated jams, which meant you didn’t really have to miss any of either bout (depending on where you sat, or you could run back and forth). There were ample refs at both tracks, and scores were updated immediately and shown to the crowd; the announcers were also very on top of what was going on, which must’ve been hard since they had to keep track of probably a hundred skater names. The event moved swiftly and smoothly, although it ended two hours later than the planners had intended. Thing is… it didn’t matter. I wasn’t checking my watch wondering what the hell was going on. There was always something to watch, always someone to talk to, always vendors’ tables to look at (and every league brought merch, of course). THERE WAS EVEN KIDS’ CHEERLEADING DURING HALFTIME. A couple dozen girls from 7 – 14, stunting and everything. Roller derby + cheerleading = Amy’s best day EVARRR.
Winners were determined by points earned, so the highest-​scoring winners moved on to the championship bout; not necessarily the best way to do it, because a mediocre league could beat a rookie league by quite a few points and make it to the finals even if the mediocre league was, well, mediocre, but it actually ended up pitting two leagues against each other that gave the crowd an excellent final bout, and the OC Rollergirls ended up the ultimate victors for the night. However, no one left a loser: there were trophies for every league, every league elected an MVP, and medals were given away for such categories as Most Fearsome and Best Brawler.
The night culminated with an after-​party in the same space, featuring Punk Rawk Elvis.
I am soooooo going again next year.