Playing with Boys

The LA Derby Dolls had the opportunity to beat up boys for charity.

How does a dream like this happen? Well...

Every year the LAFD has fundraisers for their widow and orphaned children fund. One of their fundraisers is having broomball games against outside teams. Last year they went up against some of the LAPD. And won, I do believe. This year they asked to go up against the Derby Dolls.

















The way the request was posted to the league gave a general response of,

Broomball? What the hell is that? Wearing shoes and a helmet? On ice? In downtown LA? Sounds stupid. Oh wait, did you say something about firemen? I'M IN!

Needless to say, we had an enthusiastic team going in to this sport that we didn't know diddley about.

Broomball is essentially ice hockey in shoes, with brooms and a small rubber ball all wrapped up in duct tape. You're not supposed to touch the ball with your hands unless you're the goalie. No throwing of the ball. No checking, hitting, or unsportspersonlike behavior against the other team. So NOT LIKE derby. OK, got it.




















At first, everyone was very cautious and nice to each other. We were getting beat, but it was kinda fun to run around on the ice and try to scoop up the ball with the brooms while avoiding smashing into firemen.

Then the cheating started.

First off, WE DIDN'T START IT.

The firemen were obviously better at broomball than we were. Duh. But they decided to get all silly on us. First, they'd manage to wrangle our brooms out of our hands during the game. Annoying. Then, they'd "accidentally" bump into us. Repeatedly. Eventually they started to actually pick up any Derby Doll that was in their way, and swing her to the side while they hit the ball with their brooms. WHAT?! The final insult was when we'd almost hit the ball into their goal, and they'd move the damn net so that we failed every time.

OK, fine.

We can deal with that.


















So we started to grab the ball whenever we could and throw it across the rink to their goal. Some girls tried the "hit and hug" technique of trying to hit the ball with the broom, and then abruptly hugging the nearest fireman. We snuck in an extra ball and repeatedly kept hitting it into their goal(we should've ended up with a tie score for that manoever alone, but the officials wouldn't count them). We started flailing and falling onto the firemen. I got really good and body-checking them when they weren't looking. At one point, I jumped on the back of one of them, and he just carried me around piggyback-style. And he still hit a ball into our goal. DAMMIT.

















We won at cheating by actually carrying out our goal off the ice so that the firemen couldn't rack up any more points against us.

Suddenly, the game was called and the firemen won.






















Whatever. We're more fun to play against than the cops were.

And of course, we won the Morning Beer Afterparty at the Biltmore Hotel across the street. Security got called on us and everything.

Ah, derby!

Here's the DH's video of the event. Enjoy: