This weekend is the Governor’s Cup Tournament, a WFTDA sanctioned tournament. This year it is being hosted by the Assassination City Rollergirls in Dallas, Texas. While it was traditionally a Texas state championship tournament, in the last year or so it has been opened up to teams from surrounding states. This year teams from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and New Mexico will be participating.
The structure of the tournament is a bit nontraditional, pitting teams of similar ranking against each other as opposed to a highest vs. lowest system. While I don’t think this will have a huge impact on the outcome, it will make things interesting and a little more difficult to predict. Lets take a look at each of the seven teams participating, and try to get a quick feel for how well they are likely to do.
Teams from Arkansas: Northwest Arkansas Rollerderby will be the sole team from their state at the tournament.
Teams from New Mexico: Distant Duke City will travel from the western half of our great region to participate.
Teams from Oklahoma: Oklahoma Victory Dolls and Oklahoma City Roller Derby will both travel from the Oklahoma City area. Though once team mates, they are now separate and competitive leagues.
Teams from Texas: This year Texas is being represented by the Alamo City Rollergirls, Texas Rollergirls, and the host, Assassination City Rollergirls. Notably absent are Dallas and Houston; though they are likely to show up at the Clover Cup held in Dallas later this year.
Texas Rollergirls (1SC/8FTS): I could say a lot here about how powerful Texas is, but I won’t. Texas has every reason to believe they will win this tournament, and I’m right there with them. After coming in third place in the 2011 WFTDA Championship Tournament just a few months ago, they are going to tangle with six teams who didn’t even qualify for the 2011 South Central Regional Tournament.
Expected Finish: First
Oklahoma Victory Dolls (17SC/63FTS): The last time the Victory Dolls played a team participating in this tournament was against Alamo City back in May, where the Victory Dolls won soundly 184 – 32. They had another notable win against former regional contender Dallas (14SC/55FTS) 129 – 109, which gives them some clout in this tournament. Their only real threat comes from Assassination City (ignoring the obvious Texas). Despite being ranked lower than Duke City, the Victory Dolls have had a solid season in 2011, and their 2012 season looks bright as well. If they can continue their upward growth they may see themselves in the South Central Regional Tournament; however, there is a lot of time and games before that happens.
Expected Finish: Second or Third
Duke City (13SC/71FTS): The only recent participant win for Duke City came when they beat Alamo City 199 – 96 in July. Other games to consider are their 102 – 85 loss to Green Country (7SC/45FTS), and 134 – 102 win over Dallas; nearly identical to Oklahoma Victory Doll’s. These two teams are so close it is a shame that one of them will get pushed into the losers bracket on the first game, but the loser does have a chance to fight back and win the hard way. While Duke City was once a feared team, even defeating Kansas City, they have fallen on tougher times since they were moved to the South Central region. I can only imagine being so isolated and far away from other teams cannot help this problem.
Expected Finish: Second or Third
Assassination City (19SC/77FTS): Against teams in this tournament, Assassination City has only beat OKCRD, which they did in late November 176 – 54. Back in September they also played a solid game against Houston (5SC/29FTS) losing only 182 – 75. They appear to be a solid team, and are likely to finish in the top half of the tournament. Assassination City is often overlooked due to the close nature of the teams in the South Central and their traditionally low standing, but that would be a mistake for any of their opponents. They have been a team building strength and may make a run up the rankings this year.
Expected Finish: Third or Fourth
Alamo City (22SC/88FTS): We already talked about how Duke City and OKVD already beat Alamo, but it is worth noting that they defeated Springfield (25SC/83FTS) 161 – 127, something North West Arkansas failed to accomplish. While this won’t get them very far, it does keep them from the bottom of the heap. Like many of the teams below them they don’t play a whole lot of games, but Alamo city remains active and plays tough games against teams above them with regularity.
Expected Finish: Fourth through Sixth
Northwest Arkansas (20SC/87FTS): These ladies haven’t played a tournament participant in the last year, so they will be a bit tough to gauge. Though they used to be a qualifier for the regional tournament, they have slowed their pace down only playing about 3 or 4 WFTDA games a year. Games of note include a 128 – 125 win over the ICT All Stars (23FTS/90FTS), and a 188 – 95 loss to Springfield. (25SC/83FTS). This tournament is a good sign for NWA and OKCRD, as it appears they are really looking to get a lot of tough games in and improve themselves.
Expected Finish: Fifth through Seventh
Oklahoma City Roller Derby (27SC/115FTS): OKCRD’s loss to Assassination City was already touched on, but since playing Springfield is such a common theme among these teams, we would be remiss to not mention OKCRD’s somewhat close loss to them 152 – 110. While this is better than NWA, OKCRD is rather new to WFTDA, and has mostly played B-Teams or other non WFTDA teams until recently, so it is hard to gauge their level of expertise. Until I see more they remain down here.
Expected Finish: Sixth or Seventh
Though I will not be there in person I’m sure it will be a great tournament, and I wish all of the teams the best of luck.
King James
SouthCentralRD@Gmail.com
I kinda wonder why Texas is even bothering to participate in this tournament, especially since Houston and Dallas aren’t in it. I’ll be shocked if Texas wins any of their bouts by less than 300.
I don’t think they will get much out of it, but my impression is that Texas will go to any Tournament they can.
I think they didn’t register for the tournament until the very last minute, which gave us all hope that it was anyone’s Cup, then our hopes were dashed :) Not entirely though, because it’s never a bad thing to get your ass whooped by a great team.
It might have something to do with them not quite making the deadline for the Clover Cup as well.
Let us know if you need any updates or news from the tourney, though I’m sure Phil Arnold will be all over the place with up-to-the-second scores and detailed recaps.
Thanks for sharing your predictions, I think you’re right on – we’re all pretty excited, this is OKVD’s first big tournament aside from tiny one a few years ago before OK had that many teams. It’ll be a test of a lot of us, I think! We haven’t played NWA in forever, so if we get a chance to play them I think that will be my favorite part :)
x Sass
First of all let me complement you on your efforts here. Love them, keep them coming. Now on to the bitching …
1. There’s really nothing special about a tournament being WFTDA sanctioned. A WFTDA sanctioned tournament is a paperwork streamlining feature that allows any game of that tournament that meets WFTDA sanctioning standards to be automatically sanctioned, otherwise every game would have to be individually sanctioned. And what a headache that would be for the WFTDA sanctioning committee and the tournament organizers.
Pointing out that a tournament is WFTDA sanctioned is like saying, “Governor’s Cup 2012! Now with better paperwork!” I can do without that. In fact, any event that involves several WFTDA members would benefit from being WFTDA sanctioned. What would raise an eyebrow or two would be that such an event was not WFTDA sanctioned. Oops! What happened?
2. This tournament appears to be a double elimination tournament, and I dislike double elimination tournaments, largely because they produce a last day derby death march. Taking a look at the runners up in your selection (Duke, OKVD), they first play each other, the winner then plays Texas, then they play each other again, in which one of them is eliminated. That sound right to you? Not to me. Also for the winner of this match this is only the first of three games played virtually back to back to play the fourth game of the day against Texas again, who’s only played one game that day. If by some miracle they beat Texas, and they’re following double elimination rules, they’ll play yet another game, five full games Sunday for either Duke or OKVD, and the other only plays only two games for the weekend. Hardly a good recipe for producing high quality roller derby, thus my distaste for double elimination tournaments.
3. Last is not a bitching point, but a hope. Hopefully Texas will take this opportunity to not show up in full force, but to let their alternates play and perhaps a few travel team prospects play as well (this can be done with some clever roster manipulation), so their coaching staff can have I look at a few people and we get to as well. That would be fun.
I think the WFTDA sanctioned thing is just an old habit from when WFTDA used to “endorse” certain tournaments, though they have long since done away with that now that it is just the games that are sanctioned. The term “WFTDA Tournament” is meaningless now outside the Big 5. Point taken.
I will say that I like double elimination because it provides for a better outcome… if seeded correctly. This one is not seeded correctly from what I can tell, so that odd situation you bring up will occur.
And I agree about Texas, but I don’t think it will happen. Texas is a nice enough group of people, but I don’t often see them slow down. This is the team who beat Big Easy 384 – 7 less than a year ago. And truthfully, if they did, it would affect their FTS ranking for not winning as expected. Tough situation to be in since many, leagues and skaters use FTS to assist with their WFTDA rankings.
Thanks for the well though out comment!
Texas! Screw the ranking!
I say it’s good information to point of that it’s a WFTDA sanctioned tournament. You do also report on non-WFTDA league and teams, which I appreciate. Like Sass mentioned, there have been tournaments in the past in Oklahoma or the Southern Belle you covered last year, which included WFTDA and non-WFTDA teams. Those tournaments would not be sanctioned obviously, but it’s worth noting the difference in your reports!