Dear Fresh Meat (& all other Derby Players)

Derby is hard. Like, really really hard.

We have all hit plateaus where we are pushing our bodies as hard as we can, they STILL aren’t cooperating with us, and our minds have just gone all fetal position and begun the slow, sad trajectory of leaving us.

A favorite sport quote of mine is “The game is 80% mental and 40% physical.” This reminds me of 2 things. 1- ALWAYS invest in a good helmet, brains are valuable and 2- we are always our own worst enemy on the track. Sometimes you’re hit so hard you just don’t want to get back up. But that’s what makes us stronger- the drive and will to pick ourselves up over and over again. Mentally, as well as physically.

We have all hit mental/physical walls so hard, we needed our chiropractor to straighten us back out. I, personally, have thrown my skates across my living room just so they can get a glimpse of how they’ve made me feel.

But we all have to get back up. And when we fall our hardest, it is always a fellow teammate that helps drag us off the ground, and back upright on our skates. We’re a team, even when we practice against each other, we still support each other. The same can be said for the roller derby community at large.

So, to anyone who feels stuck, discouraged, drained, frustrated, or homicidal – we have all been there and will be there again. Just know, underneath it all, we are all rooting for you and each other. It’s our teammates that inspire us, push us to succeed, and emotionally resuscitate us when we reach the end of our ropes. It’s what makes being on a team so wonderful. Well, that and how awesome we all look in our jerseys.

 

You want to do WHAT to me!?

We have a few teammates who like to explain what we’re going to attempt with absolutely zero adjectives. The conversation goes something like: “I’m going to be all” (and then she waves one arm while angling her left skate) “and then when the other team’s jammer tries to, you know” (insert aggressive wiggling here) “I’ll just be able to take you” (mimes activity Lifetime Television for Women movies are based off of) “and then you will be all” followed by her making one of two sounds we will be like- either “whooshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhah” or “unggggggghhhhhh.” When these conversations happen, we have NO IDEA what on Earth she is saying.

At first, I thought perhaps enthusiasm had robbed my teammate of the gift of words and the subsequent ability to string them into coherent thoughts. If derby players made a game of taking a shot of steroids every time someone hurriedly told us to get into “pairs of 3 and 4” or “sets of one around the track” we’d all have won the Tour de France by now. Then I realized it might be to prevent us from knowing what’s about to happen to us.

“So, you be Miley, and I’ll be the wrecking ball, but with clothes on. Got it?”

In derby, “no” is not the correct answer and every drill and jam can be like doing a trust fall with (hopefully) none of us toppling backwards with our eyes closed. Learning not to resist is against everything in us. It’s a skill that once mastered, you have to fear for your safety when walking in dark parking decks. While obviously tough and  probably in possession of Mace, once you’ve been programmed not to fight when physically assaulted, picked up, pretzeled into a basketball, and then hurled at an opposing team member (all with one skate on the ground so as to be legal- you are welcome refs!), it really can be a slippery slope.

“Dang it. This isn’t a drill, it’s a car trunk! Ugh. Not again!!”

So the next time your teammate turns around and grabs your chest, or pushes you, or throws you, or does any variety of things that would result in a time out and a week of no TV if you had done it to a sibling, just go with it. Plus- free mammogram with every stopped jammer!

“Good news! No lumps!”

And, added bonus, sometimes you get to see the occasional Vulcan neck pinch!

Bikram Derby

Not wanting to start any religious/political/scientific debate on Global Warming, I will merely state that many rinks have no Air Conditioning during practice times. The chance that humans might be able to prevent a degree or two of temperature increases leads me to slightly more vigilant recycling habits during the summer. It’s like Pascal’s Wager, but with wine bottles.

Practice without AC is a special sort of treat that leaves my soul checking itself at the rink doors; it has an eternity of this heat waiting for it, no need to get a jump start. Philosophical debates about the nature of time passage could be waged in AC-less rinks. Sadly, the participants would all be too busy gasping for air and would be unable to focus on the clock to gather empirical data. Fun fact- when skating with no air, if you wear contacts, at some point, they just start floating on top of a sweat sheen on your eyes and you can’t focus on anything but the heat monsters slowly prickling up your legs.

Why does this keep happening to us!?!?

Summer practices are tough. All practices are tough, but pushing yourself in taxing heat has an exponentially draining effect. Just keep in mind that imperfect conditions help make us tougher. Regular water breaks (I recommend you start hydrating 3,000 hours in advance, so, like, in March), a working knowledge of the signs of oncoming heat stroke, and the sort of toughness only derby can give will carry you through. It is SO bad, it’s the absolute worst, but as the prophet of our times (Kelly Clarkson) claims, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Is this sweat or tears or OHMYDEITY IT’S PURE SALT!!!

Jersey was just slapped with a heat wave, so if you need someone to commiserate hot practices with, you can tell us all about it. You can find us curled up in the darkest, coolest corner of our rink (all the way down to 105 degrees!) unable to even weep because our veins have turned into raisins.

Chin up! If we didn’t have our Salisbury bout coming up, our countdown to the right would be # of days until fall…

 

When All Else Fails, Blame a Zebra

Being a mouth breather (both physically and mentally), I tend to claim all penalties called on me in a bout/scrimmage/practice are for breathing, because I can see no other reason for being sent to the box. I also claim our jammers are faulted with “existing” – a penalty called because the jammer takes up space in the universe at large. In other words, I’m constantly apologizing to my friends who referee for our occasional jerkiness.

In our minds:

In reality:

So, while a lot of us huff and puff in the box and then sit on the bench with our fellow teammates, shrugging because we have NO IDEA WHY we were given a penalty, we should probably be doing something far more helpful. Like listening to what we did and then making a note not to do it again. Crazy, I know.

I am not denying that from time to time a melee on the track is misread by a referee. I am, however, positive enough to bet all my red Skittles that most of the action is better seen and judged from outside the pack, rather than in the middle of it.

I know we can all be a little testy when we’re out there, trying our best, practicing endlessly, and a penalty can feel like you’ve just been told you’re the worst player and human ever to live in the history of the entire world. But it’s ACTUALLY you being told you made a mistake. Really, just the mistake, no judgment on who you are as a person.

If you spend your life convinced that the high block you keep getting called on is bogus, you’re just doing a Viking Head Butt and it should be perfectly legal, maybe you should just accept the ruling and keep your brains to yourself. Our refs spend countless hours poring over tiny nuances of rules, then they try to condense them into quick quips of insight for us at practice, and we tend to thank them for this by making faces, sighing dramatically, shaking our heads, and storming to the penalty box.

Clearly this is the thanks that they deserve

So on behalf all players, Refs, you do a thankless job and get all sorts of accusations mumbled under breath at you- certainly not by all players all the time, but often enough- and we really do appreciate you. I know it’s hard to tell that when you’re given horns in our minds or busy giving out extra minutes in the box because of tantrums on the track.  Without you, we’d be lawless and busy spending our time trying to play offense, defense, AND ref from inside the pack- not that some of us don’t do that already.

It’s ok, we’ve ALL done it…

And congrats to the Hellrazors on their 142 – 245 win against Jerzey Derby Brigade!!!

EFF THIS!!!!

There are 2 types of derby players. Girls who admit to having said the non-edited version of this (out loud, in mind thoughts, scrawled into their Gummi Bears journal) and liars. Seriously, at some point, everyone has wanted to execute the perfect toe cap to helmet trajectory.

I saw one once. It. was. epic.

This typically happens after a bad practice. A Bad Practice has the ability to spill into your soul and kill the joy. All of it. It can happen for a variety of reasons, and it’s usually a combination of them all. You did nothing but fall drills, you couldn’t keep up because you had BBQ 5 days in a row, everyone’s favorite character clearly died in last night’s episode of whatever, traffic terrorized your soul and you just can’t shake it. Maybe you were sent out to jam against a wall of super blockers.

Both this wall and the great one in China can be seen from space. True story.

A teammate has spent all of practice trying to beat candy out of you because apparently you remind her of a childhood birthday piñata that refused to break and she is working out some long-held issues about it.

“I’ll break you this time, piñata!!!!”

You’re blocking your heart out to pieces and the jammer teleports. Again and again and again.

There is no logical step between frames 2 and 3. None. It just happened.

Once your Bad Practice has finally ended, you de-gear, put your skate bag in your trunk, and head home. On the drive home, you decide to hate the most offending teammates and list them Arya style. (On Game of Thrones she kept a running list of people she wanted to murder, for those of you not getting your dork on every Sunday night.) While chanting their names, you realize that you actually love all of them. And they were just playing the game and doing their best. It wasn’t personal, it’s derby. Then you get even madder because you don’t have a legitimate reason to be furious and taking a person’s reason for anger away is just really, really low.

So then you move on to humiliating yourself. You list every mistake, missed opportunity, zig you should have zagged, and fall. You drive in shock, just KNOWING that your team is appalled to have you and currently plotting to steal and burn your jersey you worked so dang hard for.

This is typically when logic should make its appearance (infuriatingly enough, it’s usually in your captain or coach’s voice). We all have had a Bad Practice. They hurt for 2 main reasons: 1- they’re kind of rare and therefore more memorable and shocking and 2- we want to get better, if we didn’t, we wouldn’t care.

Here’s a secret- your teammates are not keeping a tally of your mistakes. They have their own to focus, mentally abuse themselves, and work on. Everyone has been disappointed in their performance at some time. It’s part of being human. Even Suzy Hotrod has bad days. Michael Jordan has missed shots. Heck, Jesus himself got lost in a desert for 40 days. IT IS OK. Wrap around some Advil and a heating pad, tomorrow is another day and next practice will be better. It is totally acceptable to have some self-pity tears in the shower, but then you have to move on.

The water hitting my face must be from the ocean – there’s no other reason for its saltiness.

We play derby for a reason, and that reason has never been because it’s easy and every practice is a rainbow glitterfest. Let it go. No one is perfect. Except Spock- and even he cried.

The only person who can truly defeat you, is yourself.

And come see us throw all our practice induced prowess at our home season opener against the W-B Roller Radicals this Sunday!

Falling for Derby

While crowded on the train, a fellow commuter, due to the bumpy ride, nailed me in my lady eye with her very heavy and very angular purse. After the initial shock of it, and her apology, I started to ease her mind with a dismissive phrase when it dawned on me that, “It happens all the time” might give her the wrong impression of me. While all derby players, from time to time, get bludgeoned (more often than not by themselves) with a skate wheel in the other penalty box, it’s not the sort of knowledge one imparts to strangers on public transit.

Stop hitting on me, Wheel! I’m not interested!

The best way to prevent any sort of self-inflicted wheel bruise (and staring awkwardly at frisky purses wielded by members of the elderly community) is to practice falling. Sadly, fall drills are like having the clouds part and your particular deity of choice spit on you.

When you start, you’re spry, your abs are warm, and your quads are totally co-operative. Then something happens- and by “something,” I mean the jerk in the stripes keeps blowing the whistle and you have to keep falling.

What was once perfect execution slowly morphs into persecution. The first 60 seconds of the drill, you’re all over it like Sally Struthers on starving children. Seconds 61 to 120 are considerably harder and filled with some sad noises from time to time and a little less precision in the falls and the remount. If this were the Olympics, some technical points would be lacking but, I like to think, artistic merits would still be high. The last 30 seconds? You start to resemble an overused Jack-In-The-Box that can only impotently sag to the left if shaken with vigor.  The burn, the pain, the noises of despair you hear emitting out of your teammates, accentuated by the peel of terror blasting at you, sort of makes you want to curl into the fetal position and never unwind. But at least you’ll be able to regain footing quickly in bouts and also stop looking like you have the world’s most hideous case of ring worm! Plus all that “love of the sport” stuff.

The solution? Ice, Advil, and recent Hellrazor bout photos!

WFTDA Hates You! (Not really…)

WFTDA updated the rules on us recently and they have now released their updated minimum skills set. Here’s the thing about skills, especially ones you do not use regularly- they are a lot like riding a bike. Not that you intrinsically will be able to do it no matter what, but in the approach that if you take an extended break from bike riding, your muscles will eventually recall the motion, but not without a few scratches on your calves, moments of wobbling confusion, and at least one awkward, lopsided landing.

Yep, this is exactly how I remember it…

Minimum skills are like getting your roller derby license. I don’t know if any of you remember taking your driving test, but it wasn’t easy. You had to practice, a lot. And then you had to be able to do all kinds of crazy things – like parallel park. When I was taking my driving test, I could parallel park with the same sort of ease most cats use the litter box. Now? I can parallel park if there are 2 open spaces and maybe a blocked off fire hydrant portion attached to one of those empty spaces. If you can’t park a Boeing 747 in it, it’s not happening. As time passed and I no longer used that talent, I lost it. The same can happen to your required derby skills.

When we were first tested, we could all T and plow stop. Mainly because we spent countless hours doing it- but now that we all rely on the Tomahawk stop, trying a flawless T or plow stop might be an exercise in abruptly hugging the rink floor. Maybe not, but it won’t be the perfect maneuver you worked at like a hamster on a wheel. As the game changes, so do the expectations put on us; while we go forward, we don’t want to regress in other areas.

Not only did some of the skills get beefed up, but so did our speed requirement. Our 25 in 5 is now 27. To non-derbyers, 2 extra laps may not sound like a lot, but it is. To all derby players, stop hyperventilating, you will be ok. I promise. It’s hard, and that’s where cardio training comes in. Some of us would rather be eaten by a large mammal then exert the extra force required to run away from it, so the idea of harder cardio requirements does not fill all souls with sunshine and unicorn smiles. But derby is a sport, and a sport requires work.

What the new 27 in 5 looks like if you close your eyes.

For new participants, if the list scares you, good. Derby isn’t easy. It’s not bubble gum, glitter, and wearing your underwear like Madonna circa 1990. Roller derby is a litany of wonderful things, but it is also doing things you don’t want to, thinking you’re going to die but pushing through, and (to all Hellrazors at Tuesday’s practice) sometimes looking like the piñata from an anger management support group. Derby is hard, but that’s one of the many reasons we love it.

Zig! Now zag! Stop! Go!

Derby has had an ever-changing image through-out its career. Sort of like Cher. As it has gone through its metamorphosis, so has its rules. With rules, and rule changes, come strategies. With strategies, come self-doubt, forgetfulness, feelings of panic, and headaches. Some people can see a strategy and immediately see when it should be applied, how, and why. I would not recommend playing a game of Chess, Risk, or Hungry, Hungry Hippos against these people. Others feel like strategies are like some secret Choose Your Own Adventure book where the answer is always, “Anything but what you just chose to do.”

See- it’s all very simple…

This is why Pivots and their yelling and prancing about are important, but we all need a basic knowledge of what to do and when. Sadly, you can never prepare for the EXACT situation you find yourself. We might know what to do when the other team’s jammer is sent to the box, but what happens when, while going to the box, the remaining 4 members of her team transform into Power Rangers? Well, then what? While that might be a tad excessive, it’s sort of how it feels when you are in a pack.

Derby is unlike any other sport in the world, ever. This is not where I go on a long, flowery speech about self-realization, strength, friendships, and all that Oprah stuff. In other sports you have offense and defense. In derby, you have to play all the fences. And knowing when to switch to which one can sort of be like trying to figure out if you should tell someone they do, or do not, look hideous in their wedding dress. Sadly, we can’t shove a Twix in our mouths to take a second- we have to make our decisions immediately while skating around hopped up on adrenaline and electrolytes.

So, to anyone struggling with strategies, or forgetting all the strategies, or having mental fantasies about pummeling their pivot, it’s ok. Derby is hard. If it weren’t, we’d all be doing something else because clearly we love a challenge.

And, in “I have no way to segue to this news” we did not take the win from Shore Points last Saturday. We came back strong in the second half, but just didn’t have enough time to close the gap. We only fell short by 15 points, and congrats to both teams and all players for a very, very tough bout. Pictures are up on Mr. Wreckage’s page.

Next time, Shore Points, next time…

Oh, This Again?

Hawaii Five-0 decided to have the gratuitous roller derby episode. I’m beginning to feel like a crime drama will get cancelled if they don’t have one. Since I’ve already raged against television’s view on derby, I vowed, when I saw the commercials, not to do it again. But then I watched it.

If only they knew roller derby as well as they knew bad one liners.

It provided another fun-filled hour of watching stereotypes be reinforced. They had teammates that had no clue what their fellow player’s real name was- and all of them had a sunny disposition that was based on looking menacing and having a general dislike and need to be uncooperative to the police. It made me realize that I really need to work on my scowling.

They had the usual broken and pinned body parts in multiples per girl, which led to one of my favorite lines of the night. It was said by a pediatrician, and was something to the general effect of, “Keep it down, these people might not bring their children to my hospital if they knew that at night, I put people IN the hospital.” Because each of us has notch marks on our skates for each girl we’ve put in the hospital. Speaking of skates… how much did Antiks pay to have their logos splashed all over that episode!? It was like one really long, inaccurate commercial for skates most of us would have to sell a kidney to get.

The best part was that they lost their ONLY jammer right before the “Championship Game” and to fill the position, they held tryouts. That’s a move about as smart as your average MTV reality star. Obviously the under cover girl was able to finagle her way on the team, and, of course, no skills testing, no Fresh Meat period, immediately a star jammer. I am going to give them a pass for the remaining large pile of inaccuracies because the surprise twist at the end (SPOILER ALERT) was that the manager/coach did it. Not a teammate. I was pretty shocked it wasn’t the undercover agent’s brand new buddy. That’s a new twist, for sure. They actually portrayed us as eventually warming up to others and having some ability to bond and be kind. So for that, I will not spend the next 15 minutes of your time dissecting their dramatization of roller derby as (quoted directly from the show), “a catfight on wheels.”

However, there was one thing that really got me thinking in this episode. Girls made it expressly clear that there was the roller derby them, and then the “real world” them. The two never coincided and it was a hidden part of them. Like it was some episode of WE tv’s “The Secret Lives of Women” gone horribly awry. One woman rather testily informed the feds that derby isn’t a crime. Well, duh. The show seemed to imply that playing roller derby is something to be ashamed of and hidden. They took the usual tack that we are all normal by day and miscreants by night. Please note, by day, I am a law-abiding, productive member of society. By night, I am, well, a law-abiding productive member of society.

We are not lurking in the shadows, ready to pop up, ninja stealth like, to kidnap unsuspecting women and force them into sports based servitude. Roller derby teams are rather vocal about their existence. If we weren’t, no one would come watch us play. We have websites, Facebook pages, twitter accounts, and, hold on to your hot pants, even blogs. The notion that derby is something to be ashamed of is as baffling as why baby badgers are so cute but grow up to be terrifying.

Try to kiss us so we can eat your face!!!

In happier news, our bouting season officially starts this Saturday, and we won’t even hide our faces and avoid eye contact with anyone that might recognize us! We will be taking on Shore Points at their home rink – check back here for updates, scores, and the usual musings on roller derby.

 

The Black (and Blue) Plague

While gearing up, I couldn’t help noticing a teammate was looking rather like a peach who had taken a few turns in a rock tumbler. I was about to comment on this before realizing we ALL look like that. We certainly don’t look like domestic violence victims (hear that television?!) but, well, we don’t look like we spend our days getting spa treatments, either.

Roller derby is a full contact sport, and no amount of pads and fall drills will keep you from getting the random bruise or clock cleaning. Some players post their more epic bruises on FB or other social media, but if we actually documented our entire list of aches and ails, it would be as long as Lindsay Lohan’s police record.

Our sport is rough. The new rule set has made it even rougher, and injuries are an ever-present threat. And not just the Big One we all fear that leads to Vicodin and sadness. Each of us gets knocked around and just looking the wrong way during a drill can result in ice and confusion.

“Show me on the unicorn where she hit you.”

Bruises don’t show skill or a lack thereof at roller derby. Sometimes they happen, sometimes they don’t. I think the secret of whether or not a particular fall/hit will result in a wicked bruise or week of Advil is based on a secret logarithm where one of the variables is a ground-hog and the answer depends on if he sees his shadow.

We may get battered around a bit, but so do rugby players, hockey players and, (according to Lifetime Television movies about prep schools) lacrosse players. It’s a part of the sport, just like sore muscles and feet warped into shapes that belong in the topiary garden of the Overlook Hotel are.

So why do it? Well, why not do it? Derby is a love that you either have or you don’t. A lot of people don’t understand how we could do this, but anyone who has something they’re passionate about- be it stamp collecting, bird watching, kitten cuddling, etc- gets it. Ice and Advil are nothing compared to the love of the sport.