This Friday night serves up a potentially revealing matchup of two of WFTDA’s newer members in Lincoln, as the No Coast travel team, the Mad Maxines, host Northwest Arkansas. Neither league is yet ranked, so the outcome of this one will likely have a significant effect on where each league debuts in the next WFTDA rankings.
No Coast has been interleague bouting for a bit longer than NWA, with bouts against Omaha, Minnesota, and (the late, lamented) Chi-Town Sirens in 2006, but the Mad Maxines were fairly quiet for the first part of 2007 before getting back into interleague action in the late summer. They opened up with two tough losses against two established leagues — 113-47 to the Denver Roller Dolls in August, and 108-20 to #17-ranked Rocky Mountain in September (bruisednews has a short recap of the Rocky Mountain bout here) — but bounced back admirably by taking down the Sac City Rollers 93-63 in an away game.
Meanwhile, NWA had their interleague debut in June of this year with a 112-77 loss to #26-ranked Assassination City, and then started a regional rivalry with nearby Tornado Alley Roller Derby at July’s Route 66 Rebellion Tournament, hosted by Green County Roller Girls. In a round-robin bout, NWA fell to Tornado Alley 51-48, but when the two faced each other again in the championship bout, NWA managed a narrow last-jam victory, 32-31. However, it seems that NWA learned a lot from their tournament experience — when they met Tornado Alley yet again just one month later in August, they skated away with a comparatively easy 154-60 win. Now they’re looking to extend that momentum with their first WFTDA win … but No Coast would like to do the same!
UPDATE: No Coast comes out ahead in what appears to have been a close one, 90-83.
