The Rated PG Rollergirls skated away from their 2nd “Northern Exposure” tournament with the 3rd place trophy.
The tournament, hosted by PG at the Roll-a-Dome from Friday to Sunday, brought in seven teams, from as far west as Terrace’s North Coast Nightmares to as far east as The Saskatoon MindFox of the Saskatoon Roller Derby League.
The Tournament City Derby Dolls’ Deadlies squad out of Kamloops took first place, a Golden Skate trophy (pictured above), while Saskatoon took second in the final, with a score of 212 – 142.
The Rated PG Northstars battled hard and actually defeated Saskatoon early in the tournament, eventually taking 3rd in a 188 – 147 loss to Tournament City.
With around 200 people cramming into the Roll-a-Dome at its peak, Team Coach Jen “Loki” Herkes (pictured above, at right) calls the tournament a success.
“We definitely grew on our outcome last year and we’ll come out with things to make next year even better.”
Herkes was especially impressed with how Rated PG performed, given stiff competition from higher-ranked teams like Saskatoon and Tournament City.
“We played a strong game, we beat Saskatoon, who was ranked 17th, compared to our 46th [in Canada], we held our own with the Deadlies, we only lost by a marginal amount of points to them, we performed better than I ever could have expected.”
Herkes’ strategy coming into the tournament was to have as small a difference in score as possible, win or lose, because even a loss can improve their standings while reducing another’s team, which is exactly how the tournament played out for Rated PG.
“It’s an algorithm that has to do with predicting what the point-spread should be, so I can go online and see each team and how much they’re supposed to beat me by, if they beat me by those amount of points, they won’t necessarily change in the standings, that’s just to maintain, that’s based on the mathematical prediction. If you win by more than that, you’re going to go up, or if you lose by more than that, you’re going to go down.”
Following the successful tournament, Herkes thinks the team can now be considered more of a legitimate contender among serious teams that literally would have done laps around them in previous games.
“I think that we have genuinely stepped-up a notch in our derby, I hope that we can have the opportunity to play some more really good teams, which is coming up as we head to Calgary, next month. I only see bigger and brighter things for us.”
Like any contact sport, roller derby has its share of danger beyond bumps and bruises, with one player for PG sent to hospital after a mild concussion against Kamloops.
“We had a lot more injuries when we first started playing,” Herkes said. “Before we started focusing on the physical strength of players. When we first started, it was all about the fish nets and the makeup, now it’s about being physically fit. Our girls on the Northstars (the A-Team) work out outside of derby, at the gym at least three times a week, on top of their three practices a week. We’ve found that our incidents of injury have decreased immensely.”
Herkes admits injuries still happen, “It’s a full-contact sport, but in my experience, I’ve never seen other skaters out to hurt other skaters on purpose, they [injure players] by following the rules, but with a full-contact sport, just like football or hockey, you’re going to get some injuries … it happens.”
Rated PG’s house team skates at the Roll-a-Dome Saturday, April 4th and Sunday the 5th against Gold Pain City from Quesnel.
The Northstars head to Calgary for a bout on Saturday, April 18th against the Cut Throat Car Hops.
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