Muddy River Rollers Reines of Terror lay seige to Beast of the East

Reines of Terror were the first team from New Brunswick to make the trek to Montreal to compete in the 2012 Beast of the East tournament. Heads would have rolled that day if I had not made it home in time to watch the bout! Having attended the tournament as a spectator last year, I anticipated they would make some headway as I had seen several teams of comparable skill and experience attend before. Reines have been a dominant force in the Maritimes since they began and my home team (Scarlet Swarm, FCR) was closest to a win against them last year by 25 points and are soon to match up again! Unfortunately due to the merciless random selection process Reines first pairing was against the team that ultimately went on to win the tournament: Vicious Dishes (Kitchener, ON).

Brandy Swifter

Vicious Dishes doled out a shut out 139-0 bout. The usually good habit of building walls at the front proved to leave Reines jammers trapped and battered behind the Dishes superior rear walls until assistance arrived. Reines had started dramatically improving their defense and jammer assists by the end, but only enough to release their jammer moments after losing the Dishes jammer, ensuring a slower point leak by forcing her to call it quickly. The Vicious Dishes had a variable but good weekend. They moved on to a loss to Montreals Filles du Roi  with 47-30, another shut out win against Les Duchesses (Quebec City, QC) with 123-0, a win over Les Contrabanditas (Montreal) with 64 to 54 and a win for first place over defending champions: Slaughter Daughters (Ottowa, ON) with 118-63.

Burn'n Rub'her

Reines second bout, against Babes of Thunder (Thunder Bay, ON), was much closer with 71-34 for Babes. Had Reines been able to keep their jammers out of the box for the two or three power jams that made up that point spread, I have no doubt they could have made it to the second day and had a chance to test their mettle against the Thames Fatales (London, ON). In this bout though, their jammers got their opportunity to shine! Burn'n Rub'her, Brandy Swifter and Thora Thunder were the primary jammers who hit the track with surprising pep and agility considering the physical trial that was their previous bout of the day. Thoras footwork really stood out to me and she made very good use of sneaking through on the inside line. The Babes were showing very effective wall building but Reines offensive blocking was often sufficient in making way for their jammers. Babes of Thunder went on to beat the Thames Fatales with 77-20 and were eliminated in round four for by Chicks Ahoy (Toronto, ON) 83-22.

Thora Thunder

On a separate note, former Capital City Roller (Fredericton, NB) Amanda Pummeler was bouting for the Slaughter Daughters (who took second place this year) as one of their primary Jammers. Great Job Amanda!

I would have loved to see Reines of Terror match up against Thames Fatales, Les Duchesses and Derby Debutantes as I think their scores against the same or comparable teams suggest a more equal footing. There’s always next year, and maybe we’ll flood them with more NB teams too!

The images used above are not from Beast of the East but borrowed from Isurus Photography from previous local bouts.