Back when Kyle and I ran the Twin Cities 10K run, Kyle and a friend of ours got free tickets to a Minnesota Swarm Game (Lacrosse). So this night was when we finally redeemed our tickets and headed over to St. Paul to catch a game.
We were there a little early which was good, because since our free tickets were seating based on first come first serve, we ended up getting really good seats! And we had time to walk around the Xcel Center for a bit. I found a peanut to add to my collection!
Here's Enoch posing with Linus :-)
You can see Linus' has hockey injuries :-(
After making a few laps around the arena, we found our seats and enjoyed the game.
It was a close game through, staying neck and neck. The mascot... not sure what he is or what his name is... helped to cheer on the crowd
Swarm is kind alike hockey, just without the ice skates and with a ball instead of a puck.... but they do have the fight factor the same... lots of hitting and ramming into each other.
I went up and got a picture from the corner so I could get the whole field in
And I even got a picture of where we were sitting. Here's Kyle, Enoch, & Michelle!!!
This Swarm game came with an added bonus. They were having the Roller Derby there right after the game. It was the Minnesota AllStar team up against a team from Madison... which we were a little confused as to why an allstar team was up against a normal team... but who knows it was still fun to experience. As you imagined most of the people were there for the Swarm game, so luckily they gave us a little run down of the rules before it started. None of us had ever been to a roller derby before. It was quite interested.
As they told us about the rules, people began to pull up the lacrosse field.
Roller Derby consists of two teams, there is a pack at the front of the 'race' called the blockers. This event was held on a flat track, where I think there are some that do it on slanted track. But I'm not completely sure about this.
Then two girls (one from each team) starting behind the blockers. These girls have stars on their helments and are called the Jammers.
The Jammers' goal is to get past the group, once the lead jammer makes it through she is ready to score points, she gets a point for each person (on the other team) that she passes as she goes around. Each 'Jam' as a round is called lasts for a certain amount of time or until the lead Jammer puts her hands on her hips and calls the round to end.
it was rather hard to get any good photos as it was pretty dark in there, and they were all skating around the rink going pretty fast.
A lot of people stayed to watch the derby.... but a lot of people left. Some people even showed up that you could tell were there just for the roller derby portion of the night.
These girls usually play at a place down the road from the Xcel Energy Center, but for some reason tonight was a special night and they were playing here.
We enjoyed it. Minnesota was ahead for a while, we didn't stay til the very end, but we did stay past the intermission mark.
If you're interested in a better description of the Roller Derby rules (and maybe a little more accureant than I gave) Here's the wikipedia site, or a website about the rules.
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