The Gold Pain girls brought a little too much pain to their final bout of the season at the second annual Gold Rush Rumble, which kept the penalty chairs warm and the home team fighting to keep up with the Fort St. John KillBillies until the Gold Pain's 212-180 loss.
“When our jammers were serving penalties the other jammer can just go through and go through and you can lose a whole jam on that,” coach Reani Rink Rash said.
The first 15 minutes of the bout promised to be exciting as both teams battled for the lead and the scores stayed tight.
Then, about 15 minutes into the first half of the bout, Gold Pain ran into some serious penalty trouble, giving the Kill Billies a bevy of chances to rack up the points in power jams due to a host of misdirection of play penalties.
Near the end of the first half, the Gold Pain were so deep in penalty trouble they had a single skater on the track, while the Kill Billies were working with a full line up, and they took advantage of the situation. Even the Gold Pain’s jammer was in the box, so they had their hands tied in any effort to score.
By the end of the first half, the Gold Pain were down 76-120. Despite the lopsided score they didn’t give up.
The Gold Pain came back out in the second half of the bout reenergized and ready to fight back.
Slowly, the Gold Pain started to creep back through in the initial ten minutes of the half.
It was slow going, as the KillBillies weren’t letting the Gold Pain off the hook and nearly, but not quite, matched Gold Pain point for point.
With ten minutes left, the game started to get tight once again, with less than a 20 point gap separating the teams.
With each trip around by the jammer netting the teams five points, the Gold Pain knew they were causing the KillBillies worries.
But as the clock ticked down, the Gold Pain girls got a little too pushy once again in their search for the win and once again the skaters got a little too familiar with the penalty area.
And, once again, the points started to climb for the KillBillies.
A single Gold Pain skater once again found herself on the track against a full lineup of KillBillies that wanted revenge for their loss to Gold Pain early that month and the KillBillies points mounted.
With five minutes left, the Gold Pain calmed, down, but it was too late to come back.
It was Gold Pains’ last bout of the season and, despite the loss, their coach was happy with how it had played out.
“I’m really, really proud of my girls. They played really hard. We’ve had an excellent season. We have done exactly what we wanted on the track. We have created a really competitive team that people have to work really hard playing against,” Reani Rink Rash said.
Already the team is looking forward to next year, with a ‘Fresh Meat’ course starting in September running for 11 weeks and open to anyone who wants to join.
The regular season will start in January, bringing some colour to winter and continue through to July.