last night was the inaugural match for smog city. well, sort of. many of the team members were on smog city, a team i loved to go and watch. would notown measure up? i had to go and see.
along with the team change, there was also a venue change. smog city had played it's last couple of seasons at valdez hall downtown, and now they were playing over @ the fairgrounds. location wise this wasn't a big deal. building wise it turned out to be. the commerce hall @ the fairground sucks. really sucks. the building is all sorts of angles inside, so you don't get as good of a crowd feel because it's very broken up. and, the angles and low ceiling contribute to crappy sound. so, the "announcer" was unintelligible. which honestly wasn't bad because the reverend, as he goes by on the radio, was just babbling useless crap all night long. to all that bad sound, throw in a dj who is playing loud music, and you just had a sound mess. another issue with this new venue was that they had less bleacher seats than before. this meant more people were sitting @ floor level, trying to look through other people. which actually meant i spent the second and third periods standing up to really watch the match. not terrible, and there was only one row of people behind me and they were also standing. finally, and this isn't actually a venue issue, but the numbers they were using for the scoreboard were highly stylized and very difficult to read. here's a suggestion: use numbers that are easy to read at a distance so people know what the score is. fans want to know what the score is.
okay, i've got those venue gripes out of the way, onto the match. the good thing about the match was that there wasn't a huge drop off between smog city and notown. the notown girls need some work, especially in their blockers, but overall they were still very good. some of the people that weren't that great when they played for smog city had really stepped up their game and played great last night. some of the newer players were good additions to the team. and notown needed it last night because battle born derby demons, hailing from reno, came to scrap. it was a very aggressive match with a lot of people hitting the floor. hard. their blockers were well organized and they had their own little star jammer named short fuse who seemed to just fly through the crowd with ease. battle born was tough, but they just couldn't keep up in the long run. notown skated to the victory, and i think the final score was 105 to 87. i'm not sure, because the numbers were hard to read (just kidding, i forgot the final score).
one other difference between notown and smog city is that the girls seemed to interact with the crowd a whole lot more. in the past, they did some stuff, and worked to get the crowd fired up. many of these same girls were now really working their butts off to get the crowd involved. they're dancing, they're skating with props during the introductions, they're getting cheers started for players. some of this may have happened before, but it really stood out last night. and betty rocker, already a star to fresno dergy enthusiasts, was really working the crowd. a couple of times as she was jamming after whipping through the other team she signaled to the crowd as if to ask, "should i call off the jam. no, don't call it? i should whip through them again? okay. done and done." really good showmanship.
for me, there was no let down between notown and smog city. i'll be back. specifically, may 30th for their next home match.
