Kent Roller Girls secured Promotion to Division 2 of the British Roller Derby Championships following an amazing comeback in their playoff match up against Norfolk.

Kent had won all 5 of their divisional matches this year against Cornwall, Devon, Surrey, Plymouth and Bath and needed one more victory to secure promotion.

The Championships, held in Newark had 8 teams from across the country playing full contact Roller Derby, an extreme sport on quad roller skates. Derby involves two skaters called Jammers from opposing teams having a speed skating race round an oval track.

They each have four blockers on their side who are allowed to hip and shoulder check the opposition to remove them from their Jammer’s path so that they can score points by passing the blockers hips.

The Norfolk Brawds team, were very co-ordinated in their attack and showed strong offence skills from the start to create opportunities for their jammers to get points on the board and were leading by over 30 points at half time.

However, Kent staged a remarkable comeback, which began in the first 2 minutes of the second half by drawing a penalty which sent the Norfolk Jammer to the box for 30 seconds.

This gave Kent a chance to start scoring unhindered and boosted the teams confidence to help wipe away the deficit and then go on to stage a stunning revival and finish the game victorious at 154-138.

Team Captain Canterbury’s Jenna Sharpe said “I’m so proud KRG is going to be a division 2 team next year. We sat down last year after coming 3^rd and decided we wanted to make it playoffs.”

“After missing out on a spot in the 2015 playoffs the team were so focussed and driven that we ended up finishing first in our division, getting to playoffs, and  then, winning our promotion match. We really smashed both our expectations and our opponents.”

Ranked 57^th in Europe Kent played two more games in a knock out round of the tournament, but lost out to Wirral who were 15 places higher up the rankings (Final score 73-130) and the overall champions on the day, Swansea ranked 22^nd  (Final score 123-223).

However, such close score will no doubt help boost KRG’s end of year position on the Flat Track Stats ranking table ahead of their move up to the next tier of play in Division 2.

Find out more about Kent Roller Girls and their sport on Facebook. If you a female over 18 who wants to learn the game and how to skate the team are holding an open day on 23^rd October.

Pictures supplied by Michael East.