Derby and race: 1. The whiteness of derby

So, as I outlined in this entry, I'm going to be looking at a couple of interrelated issues about race in roller derby. To start with, we can ask whether derby is predominantly white, and how that came about.

I think that, very roughly speaking, roller derby is a very "white" sport. That is, the vast, vast majority of people in the derby community seem to be white, although of course there are exceptions. Here are some of the team photos for the WFTDA teams that played at the championships (minus Gotham's, which I have already posted in the introductory entry):

  ...And you get the idea. 

They're predominantly white. Even Angel City, which of all the leagues' locations has the highest minority population, is made of up mostly white skaters. Notice, firstly, that all of these teams are either in the US or UK. I started looking down the WFTDA rankings for any teams ranked that were not from a western country, but I couldn't find any (although admittedly the list goes to 175 and there are plenty of non-WFTDA leagues out there, and given the stringency of the WFTDA membership process the lack of non-western WFTDA leagues might just suggest that leagues in non-western countries are not on the WFTDA wagon for some reason or another).

At my own league, there are what, 2.5 minority people (by which I mean, people who don't identify as white). Of course, I don't know if that's a good example though because hey, we're in southwest Virginia. But I've also skated in San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Melbourne and Canberra, and even though those places have more diversity among their populations, most people who do derby are still white. There's some variation though, so there were more Asians and Latina skaters in California, but it's still predominantly white.

Now here's the kicker: why is this the case? Why is derby so white?

A lot of discussion has been generated by this question at Elektra Q Tion's blog entry here, and there are several explanations provided. I'll touch on some of these below.

Visibility: One contributing factor which explains the ongoing whiteness of derby is that derby is seen to be white. What race you are is very, very visible in most cases, so you can see who is of a race similar to you almost right away just by looking at people.

And therin lies the problem. Suppose I go to practice and I'm fresh meat, and I don't see anyone like me. Maybe I will feel like I don't fit in, especially if there aren't that many other FM with whom I can otherwise connect to. Or I look in FiveOnFive or on DNN and see very few people that look like me. I don't know how much this really factors into it, but I've seen similar arguments made to explain the gender disparity in certain parts of academia. (For example, here's an article about the problems of visibility and academia.) The general idea is something like this: if I don't see people that look like me, I'm not going to connect as well or be as inclined to stay in derby.

As a result, the whiteness of derby also self-perpetuating in this way. If I am a minority skater and didn't feel like I was fitting in or relating well to the people around me, I might not stick around in the league. And then that'd make minorities less present, so that other potential minority skaters would also see less minority skaters in the league, and therefore be less inclined to stay, and so on.

(Elektra talks about this in her blog and in her post, Paris suggests that the minority skaters on a team have a responsibility to act and go out there and be visible. I'll talk about this in a few weeks' time when I talk about the role of minority and white skaters.)


Socioeconomics: There are some cases where we might have reason to think that race and socioeconomic status has a correlation. In particular, there is some good evidence that there is a disparity in the median net worth between whites and blacks (although the study I'm looking at only looks at the black/white difference; it might be interesting to see where Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans fit on the scale.

Here's a graph of wealth distribution across races:

Source: 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances

As you can see, even the wealthiest black and Hispanic families have much less wealth than white families, even when you compare blacks and whites within the same income groups. (Even in the bottom quintiles where you can barely see the wealth distribution, the white groups still do better.)

If we accept that there is a wealth gap between races, that might explain why we see fewer historically-poor races being represented. Derby gear is expensive! If you have a limited amount of money, then cost of gear and skates and league membership would have a higher likelihood of trading off against other things, like rent, student loans, groceries or whatever. Plus there are additional costs in things like travel costs on the car (gas, repairs, etc.) as well as time taken away from when one could potentially be working to earn more money.

Fresh meat packs run for several hundred
dollars usually. (And then there's also the
need to upgrade gear after a few seasons.)

Socioeconomics doesn't explain the race gap completely, though. On a small scale, leagues do often help with loaner gear or setting up payment arrangements for members who can't cover their membership dues right away. But if the wealth gap is something systemic, then the small-scale remedies might be of little help in changing the overall face of derby.

There's a similar argument for why ice hockey is so white; it's because a lot of historically poorer areas with minority kids didn't have access to rinks or equipment. (Football is also expensive, but schools will often provide gear.) And then, there's a lot of travel that has to go on since rinks are less common than fields or basketball courts. So parents would have to be free to drive their kids around further to practice, and at times that can impinge on work times.

So, by extrapolation, maybe that goes some way to explaining the whiteness of derby. One difference with derby is that it's mostly played by adults who can drive themselves, but with the advent of junior derby we might have another wave of whiteness coming in the next few years.

Blatant racism: And then one thing that might explain the whiteness of derby is when stuff like this still happens in other predominantly white sport, like hockey:

If you are a minority person, there's already enough difficulty with everyday racism, so why would you want to be subject to overt racism as well? I don't think that derby is as subject to outright racism as much as professional sports are (just because of the smaller scale on which leagues operate on), but racism isn't just contained in sport, and the potential for this would be pretty much a turn-off.

Next on race and derby: If (as I outlined at the beginning of this article) that pretty much all of the WFTDA leagues are western, then how does this affect the development of derby worldwide? I'll look at the the impact of culture on derby in non-western countries, and see if there's something about derby culture that lines up with western culture.

NRV in the news!

We had a scrimmage with Rocktown yesterday, and it was on the news!

Check out the story here! I'm in the jam that they show at the beginning, wearing my giant ass face shield, yay. I like how they start with the bit when the wall breaks :D

(Also, I need to be WAY lower :P)

Seasons Beatings, the second year now liveblogged!!

So a few exciting things:

1. I now have entered the 21st century and have a smartphone.

2. I am going to Season's Beatings again this year. It is this Saturday! We're driving up in the morning and my first bout is at 11:45.

This time will be mega cool; the people I skated with last year in the beginner division have been in touch and we're all stoked to go back to where we met (but now in the intermediate group) and also, there'll be more people from NRV headed up (and now that I know them better, it's like there are more friends all around. Yeah!). So hopefully that will be good. Last year it was super fun although afterwards I could barely walk or do anything.

So what I'm going to do is try to liveblog the event if I can get my phone and blogger to co-operate. Yeah!

Glitter everywhere

So, the league has a monthly meeting, in which they recognize a "member of the month". And at this month's meeting, it was me!

Again, getting this was a WAT moment.

I'm not good with stuff like this so I probably wasn't even paying attention when they announced it and then if I hadn't already been sitting on the ground at the meeting, I probably would have fallen off my chair. Apparently I've been improving a lot, and I have a good attitude and am willing to learn. Yay me! (Also, Bettie said that if I shit glitter and rainbows it is with a degree of cynicism. Heh.)

I do feel very humbled by the acknowledgement, though. In previous months the people who win this are people that put tons of time and effort into the league. That said, I feel like I have been learning a lot in the last few months (although knowing when to apply it can sometimes be harder since it's like I KNOW what I should do but my body doesn't know how to do it in time, or I realize like 2 seconds after the fact that I should have done something else, or something dumb like that). This blog helps--it's like I can take notes on the stuff that I am learning to help keep it in my brain.

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

Save your point!

Here's one thing that I learned about blocking if you're not doing a 4-wall (i.e. in a straight line). Suppose you're all rushing to the front of the pack to save your point. How should you go about that?


To illustrate this, suppose the yellow jammer is coming up to the blockers (as seen below):

You would probably want your weakest blockers (2 and 3) to be furthest up front. Why? In virtue of being the weakest blockers, they are the most likely to get sucked back into the pack. So you want to keep them in the pack, but as far away as possible from the opposing jammer, who would get their point. (And I guess you'd also want them as far away from the opposing blockers, who might goat them. But of course, this should all be done while still maintaining the pack.)

Of the two of those, you might put the weakest one in Blocker 3's position, so at least 2 can hold the inside line (with B1 if necessary). Plus it would take the jammer more energy to get to the outside past B3. 

This would entail that you also leave your strongest blocker (Blocker 1) in the back, and if necessary they can tractor-trailer off the frontmost blockers, to hold the jammer in the pack and stop her getting the points of all three blockers.



This probably all sounds really obvious in retrospect, but sometimes I need obvious things explained to me to help the light bulb go on!

Thunder in the Valley, the prequel

Tomorrow is the Thunder in the Valley double header over in Salem!

 Star City Rollergirls are hosting, and basically the nearby leagues are coming to bout. NRV's All Star team is playing Chemical Valley in the first bout. And then the NRV B Team skaters are skating for Blackwater Rollers as guest skaters, and there will also be some other skaters from Iron Mountain to round out Blackwater's lineup.

It'll be a long day for me. I'm NSOing the first bout and then skating in the second. I'm also NSOing a position that I've not done before, and it's probably the scariest one to fuck up. I'm jam timing. I have to practice blowing my whistle. Fox40 whistles are fucking confusing, especially to get the four blasts to end the jam. I feel like I'm drooling everywhere. And because of the venue, I'll have to be extra shouty. And then of course when I'm bouting I'm going to need to be extra shouty too.

I'm particularly nervous because Jam Timing is one of those positions where if you fuck up, EVERYONE knows. So apparently tonight at the WFTDA Division 2 playoffs, the JT thought that overtime was one minute jams, and then stuffed that up. I haven't found out all the details yet, but knowing that there will be a sufficient amount of rage if I fuck up makes me a little twitchy. Hell, you have a whistle and if you sound wimpy blowing it, then you kinda suck. Now I'm not a super loud person so this will be an interesting experience on the boundaries of my comfort zone.

In fact, I think I'm going to go down to the car and lock myself in it and practice blowing my whistle. :P

In an unrelated note, the place we are bouting at tomorrow is also know as the stadium where the rodeo scene for Borat was filmed:

I hope the audience will be more friendly. :P

NRV also has a new website!

And NRV also has an updated website! Yay! Hahaha we did headshots the other day for it, but I didn't expect them to be up so soon. I remember we got to do "smiley" ones and "scary" ones where you looked serious and intimidating. I was really bad at those and the photographer had to keep telling me that my stink eye was bad and that if I stood up straighter I would look scarier and so on. :P

But yay, new website! Also, boo shiny face :/

NRV gets a new logo!

NRV had been doing a contest for a new logo for the past few months. Rebranding can be hard, but I don't think anyone was super tied to the original logo we had. This is what it looked like:

It didn't really do much in terms of saying anything at all about roller derby, and the font was weird and hard to read, and reminds me of tribal tattoos from the late 90's, which are probably on a lot of wrinkly and saggy lower backs and upper arms right now.

So we put the call out we got a bunch of possible candidates. The entries that we got were a range of different ones in different shapes, ideas, and symbols of the New River area. A few weeks ago the league looked at the finalists and put it to a vote.

This is the shiny new one, unveiled last night:

Yay! The pictures are black and white here, but there is also a black/pink/white versioon if we were printing in three colors. I like it. It's at least clearer that it is actually more skatey, and I guess there are mountains in the area (well, it's New River VALLEY, so of course there'd have to be some hilly topography to make it such the case that valleys exist). 

Also, it helps resolve the problem I had with never knowing if it was "Roller Girls" as two words, or "Rollergirls" as one. (I thought it was one word; apparently it is two.) :P

I have taught them well.

I have a lot of derby posters on my door so it's
not hard to guess that I'm into derby if you're
a student who shows up for office hours.

Right now I'm not doing a lot of big posts because I'm busy with the end of the semester in my non-derby life, which involves (among other things) a lot of grading.

I usually don't tell students upfront that I do derby because 1) I did this last semester and then one of them tweeted it to the internet from class and 2) being in a college town, it's already hard enough to have a life away from academia and students, so I try to keep those things separate.

But of course, the derby monster is a big monster, and occasionally he creeps into my academic work. I advertise our bouts on my office door. I also wear my derby helmet when I ride my bike to work. I also had a diagram of a track on my whiteboard in my office once because I was explaining what derby was to some students who came by to ask. Yep.

Anyway, this semester, I taught a graduate seminar where one of the main topics we talked about collective responsibility and whether group was anything over and above the individuals that constitution it and that sort of stuff. It was a good class; the grad kids all know I do derby, since they have offices down the hall from my office anyway and can see when new flyers go up.

So I found this today in a paper I was grading:

Consider, for analogy, a roller derby team.  When they lose or win, they do so as a team, and this means more than each of the members winning individually (the coherence of which is doubtful).  Although the individual performances strongly affect the outcome, there are properties that the team has as a group that affects the responsibility for their performance.  For instance, if a team lacks a particular position, say a really scrappy jammer, they would be far worse off than a team composed of individually equally-skilled players that includes a jammer.  Yet, there is no straightforward way in which the responsibility for not being a jammer is "shared" by the members of the team. 

To be clear, I hvae no idea what a "scrappy jammer" is, but considering this student didn't know anything about derby at the beginning of the semester, I'd say he's done pretty well. :D

Post Tax Smackaroo

So Post Tax was this weekend. There were four womens' teams and three co-ed ones. I just did the women's bout; I think co-ed is something I'll need to work up to.

Psycho, Maluvicen, Caboose and Iron Man get cute little
MVP trophies and also calendars from the SPCA for
being awesome at the co-ed bout finals.

Overall it was fun; I saw some people again that I met at Beatings last year, and met some new skaters too. Anyway, it turned out that most of the people on my team were relatively new. In our first bout, it turned out that only one person said that they jammed regularly, although we had a few "I'll jam if I have to" people. I think I was one of those, but maybe more to the "I'm okay jamming" side. So, as a result of that, I was given the jammer panty for the first jam of the first bout. I was a bit like O_o.

O_o turns to :O very quickly when the jam whistle goes.
(Photo credit: Albert Hartley aka Mr. Whip)

But when the benchie gives you the panty, you take it and you put it on your helmet. So there I was, jamming in the starting lineup. I didn't get lead, and I think I got hit a bit and fell. But I made it through the pack. Yay! I jammed a few more times that bout, although I did get boxed twice. The first was for "taking a knee to avoid a hit" which seriously was a bit of a WTF (okay, so I get that I'm short and if I'm using my toe stop and in derby stance I'm low, but my knee didn't make contact with the ground).

Sweaty head bandana also doubles as a bandage.

The second was for a low block, where I fell over someone on the opposing team who was down, and someone fell on me, and I got boxed. Bleh. But that time when I came out of the box, my shin was really hurting. I thought I had crazy shin splints, and I barely even made it through the pack without getting the crap pummelled out of me. At this point, I also got can opened, and I've never been on the receiving end of a can opener, but my boobs hurt and it felt like an elephant kicked me in the sternum. (Almost a week later, it still hurts, and it feels all crackly.)

After the bout, I looked at my shins and it turned out in the low block sandwich fall I had landed on someone's trucks on my shins and they were doing purple. I had to ice my shins. Then Beth taped it for me so I could do my second bout.

I didn't jam as much in the second one because my shins and ankles were all crying, but I did manage some good hits I think. I like creeping up on opposing blockers and hitting them when they are not looking, hahaha. I also have to work on not throwing myself at the opposing jammer, and leaning more into them with my hips I think. My shoulders are bony, but I think most of the time if I just do that I bounce off them, whereas I might get more power and control in my hits if I am leaning them out. Anyway, we din't win that bout either, and as a result our team was eliminated from the finals. Sadface.

Beer in a bowl, hooray!

There were a total of 7 bouts I think throughout the day, so I had a bit of time to also just hang out and watch some good derby. I learned a bunch just from watching other teams, in terms of working out strategies and that sort of thing. I should have written it down though. :P

And then we had giant bowls of beer at Macados and more shennanigans were had, when our party of 6 people turned into an alternative to the after party when 5 other tables of loud, smelly derby people showed up.

We took up one whole section of the restaurant and probably scared off a bunch of people. Apparently part of the section we were sitting was reserved for a bunch of high school kids going to their prom dinner or whatever, but they ended up reseating them faaaaar away from us. :P Hahahaha. At least we tipped our poor server guy well; I think he was probably traumatized by the whole incident.

Post Tax Smacks

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Roanoke to skate in their Post Tax Smacks, which is kind of like the scrimmagey all-day bout that Season's Beatings was. I'm excited, although one big difference is that the teams are of mixed skill levels. So I have people like Gritz on my team, and I will be beaten up tomorrow by people who are Gritz-like on other teams. Whee.

It's also tournament-style, so it'lll be a bit more competitive than Beatings. There are four women's teams (and three co-ed) and you basically will be playing elimination-style. I'm in the first bout, and then there's a while until my second bout, so hopefully I'll learn a bit of stuff tomorrow, even if my team gets eliminated (which of course I hope it doesn't).

I'm also trying a new layout with wheels (with my poisons--which are new and I will have to write a review for--and my 88A bullets). But yeah, again, I've packed enough food to feed a small village, as well as all my gear, and this time four different colored shirts (in case there are spare spots on other teams). Hopefully time there will be no bloody lip and no vomit, but we'll see. (What else is there, crying?)

The closest bout ever

So this happened earlier tonight:

I think a lot of us thought NRV was going to get thrashed because LC beat Charlottesville by a heap, and Charlottesville beat NRV. But transitivity fail: we beat LC by a hair!

NRV did great; the first period they came out really strong and with a smaller bench than Little City. But at the beginning of the second period Little City was fighting back and they closed a pretty good gap quickly. There were lots of amazing walls and some pretty hard hits.

I think the lead changed in the last five minutes about five times. And in that time both jammers went to the box. Plus the last few points were calculated after the final whistle, so it was a surprise I wasn't having a hernia by that point.

Also, I was NSO-ing, doing THREE jobs: penalty tracking for both teams, and inside whiteboard. I didn't screw up and I didn't have a meltdown (although sometimes it was close). So, everyone wins!

Bout vs Blackwater

It's been a busy week, derbywise. We had the bout on Saturday, then practice Sunday, bout review Monday, then Tuesday and Wednesday were practice. My bruises from the weekend are coming up nicely, and we're now looking forward to the upcoming bouts.

Anyway, Blackwater. So this was the place where I popped my bouting cherry, as it were. Well, properly bouting anyway. I'll try to recount some of the things from the bout.

I remember there was a lot of stuff that had to happen before the bout actually took place. I mean, not just getting there and warmups and stuff, but then there are introductions (at which I failed very clearly), captains meetings, the singing of the national anthem, random announcements, the bout demo/slo-mo jam, and THEN the bout could start. It was weird because I was so ready to bout when I put my skates on at the beginning, then all these things had to happen before we could start and it was anticlimatic and clearly I was jittery since I did a bunch of stupid things like almost crashing into people in the high five area and getting a bloody mouth in warmups.

Once the bout was underway though, I think I stopped being that stupid. I don't even remember much about the first half. We had two lineups and we just alternated those, and rotated our jammers. I didn't think I was being super effective in the first half; a lot of it was just getting used to being on the track and working with the lineup. I did feel like I was giving up my point a bit easily at some parts because I was kind of floating and there were so many things I could do at any given moment that I couldn't decide if I should do offense or defense or what the hell.

I think this was in the second jam or something.

I think our jammers were working really well and we racked up a lot of points. We also did a fair bit of power jamming, and the strategies we had been working on (passive offence stuff) worked pretty well. I think our walls could have been stronger because Blackwater were really good at getting in between us and breaking up our walls and we weren't reforming very quickly. We also had problems with being aware of the opposing jammer; a few times she snuck through before anyone had even turned around to see. (Of course, the bench is all there screaming JAMMER!! but it doesn't necessarily mean that the pack is going to notice.)

I think it was at half time when we went back to our team area and noticed that I wasn't getting the numbers on my arms redrawn on that I figured I needed to hit people more. I felt like I was good at positional blocking, but knocking down some skaters would help the jammer score some easy points. Plus, it's fun to hit a bitch. I actually wanted to see if I could take out the biggest skater on the opposing team. Of course the likelihood of that was minimal, but it gave me something to work towards.

I think I felt much better about blocking in the second half. We did a lot of backwards bridging, so you hit the jammer out, the scoot back so she has to reenter behind you, while the rest of your team is bridging so you can still take her out:

Imagine I'm the pink blocker who hits out the yellow jammer.

 

Then the other blockers peel off and bridge so I can still engage the jammer.
In practice it works better when I skate up to the next pink blocker so it becomes a 2-on-1.

OMG I AM HITTING SOMEONE. LOL.
(Actually, this was the hit that knocked the jammer out and we did
an awesome backwards bridge and forced her to cut, hooray.)

I hit the jammer a few times and she fell down, and then I ran backwards on my toe stops a bunch to make her reenter behind me. I really like toe stop work. Anyway, yeah so the backwards bridging I think worked quite well. Making sure you bring at least one other blocker with you also helps, so you end up with the jammer having to get past two blockers (which is harder than one).

Most times for hitting other blockers, throwing myself at them wasn't so great, so other times I think leaning people out worked better, but as they got tired, hitting became more effective. So I guess I'm also a late bloomer in that sense; I found my fire halfway through the bout. (I guess that works though, since people who had their fire early on were tiring out, so the amount of fire-ness overall in the team stays consistent?)

During one of our power jams. Ape and I were both rookies
and we were the only two blockers on the track. We managed
to send of two Blackwater blockers for destroying the pack, whee.

I also think we need to do more work in terms of actually doing something when the jammer isn't around. I felt like we would be like "oh here's the opposing jammer, let's hit her. Oh now she's gone, let's stand around until she comes back", which is actually probably quite boring to watch. Plus I'm sure fucking with the other team's walls and whatnot throughout would throw them off a bit.

Oh, and about halfway through the second half I got to jam. Before the whistle blew for my first time as jammer, there was a time out. The anticipation was horrible. I felt like I needed to pee and throw up and crap my pants all at the same time. But once the jam was underway, it was okay. I somehow got lead and then on my scoring lap I managed to make it through and call it before the opposing jammer got through. I need to pick up my feet more. Also, I did fall a bunch. That's something I need to work on: not falling when someone smacks into me. It's just so much easier to fall, but I got sucked back into the pack a few times as a result. I guess the way you get better at that is just to get pummelled a whole bunch and try to stay on your feet? I'm not sure what other drills there would be for this...

The final score was 206-347 to NRV. I learned a whole bunch, and going to the after party was also awesome! Now we get to do it all again in a month, wheeeeee.

All of the rookie fails.

Officially now I have bouted in a full (although not WTFDA sanctioned--that might be the next step) bout. Hooray! And I wasn't munted (well, severely). Hooray! The weather was awesome; a couple of us drove up to Appomattox together and it was nice to get the road tripping experience in as well.

I'll write more about the actual bout in a little while, but this is just a list of some of the things you should NOT do during your first bout.

Another thing that I should do for a bout:
Provide a picture for the program.
(But yay, I'm actually in a program!!)

I guess I didn't really have pre-bout jitters or anything; I did a bit of work earlier in the day, made myself two peanut butter and banana sandwiches, ate a stupid amount of breakfast burrito and packed my gear. We got to the skate place with plenty of time to spare, so there was no rush to get ready or gear up as we went to hit the track.

Then I went on to commit all the rookie mistakes possible in the history of roller derby.

During warmups we were doing the "three people in a wall and a jammer tries to break through the wall" drill and I got elbowed in the face and busted my lip. DURING WARMUPS. The bout hadn't even started yet and I was already bleeding. And the EMTs weren't getting there until right before the bout, so I had to stop warming up and go and wash out my mouth and mouthguard and everything, but there wasn't any ice so I just had a fat lip for the first part of the bout. Interestingly, getting elbowed in the mouth was exactly what happened in my first bout for Season's Beatings too. My prebout ritual is now eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and getting a bloody lip from a teammate. I'm 2 for 2.

Then, when the bout was about to start, I fucked up the rollout by almost plowing into our bench manager.We were doing an intro when we skated around the track in a pack, and when your name was called, you skated a lap, high fiving the other team as you went, and then rejoined the back of the pack.

What normal people did.

Gritz was announcing, and she had a little description of everyone based on their derby names. So mine was something about "cruel and unusual punishment", and then I got very excited and started skating my lap. We were right about to go into turn 3 when I started. I took the corner too fast and almost smashed straight into Smack in the high five line, but she was right in front of the Blackwater team so I could either skate into her, or into the opposing team. I think I made the right choice. :P Still, that was embarassing as fuck. I don't even know how that happened.

What I ended up doing. FML.

I also managed to projectile vomit (well only a little bit) on myself and possibly an opposing blocker in the second half of the bout. I was jamming and back blocked someone. But I backblocked them so hard and because they were taller than me their butt basically went into my stomach.

The drill, or the jam, or whatever.

The downside was that I was full of gatorade and breakfast burrito and bananas and water and clif bars and it was like getting punched in the stomach, and all that predigested food had to go somewhere, so as I sat in the box it came up a little. It wasn't like I was skating and barfing on the track at the same time, but it was enough that I had little chunks of undigested gatorade-clif bars-banana on my wrist guard and in my mouth guard and a bit on my pants. Go me. And I was only in the box for four seconds, so I wasn't feeling too amazing when I got out and finished the jam.

But seriously. Who the fuck does that?! At least I didn't puke on the track. It would have been worse if they had to stop the bout because I had barfed all over the track and it was ruining people's skates.

I think those were the main things that one should probably not do in their first bout. Okay, so maybe I didn't commit ALL of the rookie mistakes in history. I didn't forearms anyone, I didn't multiplayer block anyone, I didn't hit anyone with my elbows (I think). I spent a total of FOUR SECONDS in the box for the entire bout. I'm not sure if that means I wasn't working hard enough or something. Or maybe I was playing very cleanly.

I hope this means I won't be such a derp in my future bouts. I just get a bit overexcited at the prospect of actually bouting. Hopefully that is all (or mostly) out of my system. No pun intended, but you get the idea.

But it was fun, and I learned a lot from it, whee! More on the actual bout later.

Bout day is here.

There are many mountains in derby. You pass fresh meat, you get to scrimmage, you get drafted to a team, you do your first bout.

Today is bout day. It's the first time I will get to bout for a team representing my league. I will get to do a rollout. I will get to wear a team jersey with my name on it (see below) I will get to do a 2-3 hour road trip with my teammates and leaguemates to travel to the bout venue. I will get to play derby with people with whom I've trained and practiced with for the last couple of months, and we know how each other work. 

I don't know if we'll win, but that seems secondary to actually getting to bout right now. It feels like it's been a long time coming for me. But, as the Chinese saying goes, for every mountain, there is a higher mountain. So the challenges will still be coming, which is good for not stagnating.

I'll write a report up of how the bout went later today (or maybe tomorrow, depending on how tired I am), but if it was anything like the practice bouts and scrimmages I've done, things will be good. This is one mountain I've been looking to get over for a while, and I'll be happy to have conquered it.

Also, don't forget that any part of a good uniform involves sparkly yellow derbyskinz (they look better with a butt in them):

Dirty dancing transitions

This is a really simple trick to practice transitions without even really thinking about it! We used to do this at VDL when we were learning transitions, and I introduced it to some of the skaters at NRV tonight and they liked it, hooray! I call it Dirty Dancing Transitions for want of a better name, but you have to maintain lots of eye contact as you do moves together, and the transitioning looks like something they could do if Dirty Dancing was done on skates.

Now I've had the time of my life
No I never felt like this before

With a partner, start facing each other, not too far apart, maybe like 15-20 feet (depending on how much speed you want to do this at). Skate towards each other (1), and look each other in the eye. Maintain eye contact as you pass each other and turn around (2), so you end up skating backwards (3).

Red arrows indicate the direction you're skating in.

I should really work on my paint skills.

This means that you'll both end up transitioning, and because you're not focusing on your feet, the transitions will come naturally and quickly. You can also check to see if your transitions are working well, if you turn around and your partner is directly across from you, not veering off to the side.

Remember to practice transitioning on both sides--if you have a bad side, try to partner up with someone who also has that as their bad side so you can both work on transitioning on that side at the same time. 

As you both get better at it, you can increase your speed.

The question is... who gets to be Patrick Swayze?

Running the fence

Have a single pace line, about a foot away from the inside track line. The last person in the pace line is the jammer, and they have to get through the gap made between the skaters and the inside line. If they cut the track, they have to stop, go back and reenter the pace line from whoever they cut in front of.

It's really not a lot of space.

As the jammer, you have to pick up your feet a lot. (I know I don't do this as much as I should.) Since there's not much room, you can't propel yourself by sticky skating or whatever; there's not enough room really to have both your skates on the ground side by side.

Variation: have the pace line again, but on the outside line. This makes your jammer have to work much harder since they have to go faster to cover more distance.

Variation 2: have the pace line, but have your hip sticking out a bit over the line to offer some resistance to the jammer as they are getting past.

Today, after almost two years of skating...

 ...I am finally on a roster for a bout I will actually get to bout.

Yes.

So, last night I had a dream that I was buying warpaint for derby, and then today the roster went out for NRV's B team bout against the Blackwater Rollers. Coincidence? I think not. (Yes, I have dreams about derby. I often hipcheck Ze Boyfriend in my sleep.)

Okay, so I've been on rosters before. At VDL, I had been drafted to both the Cheerbleeders and the Dishonour Rollers, but I never actually got to do their bouts since I was overseas or injured. I did the CRDL Scrimmage (which was terrifying at the time because I had NO idea what I was doing) and I also did the mini-bouts at Season's Beatings last year.

But this upcoming bout will be my first proper bout with a team that I actually am in a league with. I will get a jersey with my name on it, and I will get to hit people in the name of my league. These things matter; it means that I'm not such a late bloomer after all (although I admit I was getting worried that if I didn't have any bouting experience and I had been skating for years, people might think there was something wrong with me).

It also will be the first time I get to do a rollout. Yay!

And the torch passes

Remember my Diablos? They were my very first pair of derby skates that were mentioned in the first entry for this blog all the way back here. I stoped using them after a while because they turned out to be the wrong size for me, and I learned that the hard way.

Anyway, they have a new home! One of the freshies has inherited them, but at least she has the smarts to not skate on those horrible stock Evos that come with them, and she has Poisons instead. I'm sure they feel much better than the rental skates that she has otherwise been skating on. Plus, I'm glad the Diablos are getting put to good use and not just wasting away in a closet because I was dumb and got the wrong size skate.

It's awesome when you have a pair of skates to call your own. When I first got my skates I slept with them in bed (before they were dirty and skated on) because I thought they were so fantastic. I'm not saying that everyone does that, but hey, I was excited.

Anyway, here they are on their new owner:

Note asymmetrical laces! All my footwear has asymmetrical laces.
Also note horrible looking Adventure World carpet.

Yay! Happy rolling, Sarah!

Elevator

When you are walling up as a blocker, you shouldn't be relying on just being an arm's length away from your blockers; the closer you can get to to them, the stronger your wall will be, and the harder it is for the jammer to get through.

Have a double pace line, where each person is skating about a foot apart from their partner. This is as if the elevator doors are "open". When someone yells "close" you have to basically have your shoulder/hip/thigh touching your partner's, like you are learning into each other. So basically, you've got a pace line, that is opening and closing as you skate.

We skated around just practicing "open" and "close" first, but hey, after a while, that's not much fun. So then we had someone who had to run through the gauntlet we'd created. So when the "doors" are open, if you are in the back of the pace line, you had to run through as many open doors as you could before they closed. And when they closed you had to slow down so you wouldn't back block the blockers in front of you. And then when they opened again, you ran again, until you got to the front.

The red jammer is trying to get through the pace line, but should maintain their speed
when the doors close. This is also a test to see how fast the blockers can close their gap.

As a jammer doing this, you've only got about a foot of space between the blockers. But that's more than enough. It's also important that when you run you don't kick your feet out sideways because then you'll be clipping people's wheels and kicking their skates out from under them.

Just make sure when the elevator doors open you're not seeing this: