I was in my first bout this past Saturday. It was in Stockton, CA, against the Port City Roller Girls. I sucked, but my cherry was popped and I am no longer a bouting virgin. Hooray for that.

I'd never been to Stockton, and if fate smiles down upon me, I will never have to go to Stockton ever again. Is there anything good about that city? If so, I didn't see it.

As for the bout, well, it was a joke. When we arrived at the venue, the girls from PCRG were really nice. They directed us to our tent, and when we got there, we saw that they'd placed welcome favors for us. We each had shot glasses with mini apple vodka and some PCRG swag, pins and stickers. Nice, right? I ran into one of their girls in the restroom, and she was equally as nice. We chatted, smiled, all that good stuff. All of this, mind you, was before the bout. Once the bout started, it was a totally different story.

Now, there is a back story with these girls. The last time our team played them (last season, before I'd joined), Port City lost and they were apparently upset about it and griped and yelled and then skipped out on the after party. Whatever, let bygones be bygones and give them another chance.

So the bout started, and it was obvious from the beginning that their refs were not going to be impartial, as they should be. During one jam, their jammer was in the penalty box, and even though she was lead jammer, she could not call of the bout because of being the in the box. Our jammer was scoring points, but as soon as their refs saw that, they blew the whistle and called off the jam. They said it was, oops, a mistake. Whatever. Then they did something similar a couple of jams later when our jammer, again, was scoring too much to their liking. They called our girls out on everything, even saying our girls had done things that they obviously hadn't, but didn't call their girls on anything, even though their girls were blatantly grabbing our shirts, throwing elbows, the works. It was disgusting.

The final jam, our coach (Coach Kraven, he's awesome, hasn't been with us for very long, but he's kicking our butts in major shape) said since there are only two minutes left on the clock, he was putting our fiercest girls out there to just hurt people. He said do nothing but hit (not illegally, mind you) and hit hard. So it started, and shortly afterward, one of their blockers illegally knocked our jammer, Short Fuse, and Fuse said something along the lines of 'Fucking whore' to which that blocker turned around and tried to hit Fuse. She jumped on top of Fust, but Fuse somehow got on top of her (Fuse is the tiniest girl ever, but she's tough) and hit the girl in the face a couple of times. Their team saw that, and even though their girl had deserved what she got being that she had thrown herself on top of Fuse, they all skated over, including those on the bench, and tried to jump on to of Fuse. Our girls ran over and started pulling people off, and yes, a couple of our girls threw punches, but for the most part, we were just trying to make sure Fuse was okay. Their head ref finally did something smart; he scooped over Fuse, folded her in half, and blocked her from their girls with his entire body. Her boyfriend ran up, the ref handed her over to him, and she got out of there, and we all left, not bothering to stay for the end of bout announcements or anything.

We won't be playing them again. Ever.

We skipped their after party, but our hotel opened the pool for us even though it was late and we had fun hanging by the pool.

Oh, I got a couple of good blocks while playing, but I suck, suck, suck as a jammer. Our next bout is the 30th here in Reno, but I most likely won't be playing since I've skipped the last few weeks of practice due to school stuff. Ah, well.