Roller derby explained in a simple YouTube video

Sometimes, when I tell people about derby, one of the most difficult things to explain about the rules is that it's a points scoring game, where BOTH teams play offense and defense at the same time. For some reason, this is confusing to people.

In the past, there's been a standard roller derby explanation video that I've seen at bouts:

 However, it's literally the basic rules, and doesn't really get into a lot of the strategy, or why people do what they do in a pack. There are other pretty simple rules that explain that.

Here's a video that Rose City put together which sums THAT up pretty well, as well as with the basics:

I guess the only tricky part is if you're not familiar with American currency?


Plus, it also says Roller Derby > pretty much every North American sport, so yeah. Enjoy, and learn!

WFTDA changes rules about what counts as a derby number

It's time to retire those jerseys that say "B00BS".

Today, WFTDA announced that, by the end of next year, jersey numbers will not be able to include alphabetic characters.

Specifically, they state that the rule change will not go into effect until December 2015, so that teams
will have time to adjust to this. I suspect that what they mean by this is that teams have time to get new jerseys for their skaters, or that you can start saving up for your new jersey now.

The Olympics is international, and
Usain Bolt gets letters on his jersey; why can't we?

It's not clear what the motivation for this is, except that there is some speculation that WFTDA's international reputation means that it shouldn't be relying on the Roman alphabet, as some places don't use that. However, that argument only goes so far, as surely the same can be said for different numbering systems as well. Conversely, it might be argued that international scientific systems, or sporting systems, like the Olympics, have to agree on using a particular alphanumeric system as well, so why can't WFTDA?

It seems that this will go over well with refs and officials more so than skaters, where reading numbers is way easier than letters.

Jam Timing is fraught with peril

So in the last post I said that the Jam Timer stuffed up in a WFTDA Divisionals bout.

Specifically, it was during the Santa Cruz v Tri-City bout, and it was a close one, so hence the controversy. There's information about it on DNN here.

In particular, this part:

"It transpired that the jam timer thought overtime jams were 60 seconds long, and whistled the end at that point. Discussion followed and Rule 2.5.1.1 (if an overtime jam ends before two minutes for any reason, the bout ends immediately and the score stands) came into effect. Santa Cruz won, 236-231."

So there are a couple of things that come into mind. Obviously at a divisional playoff you'd think that the officials would know the relevant rules. But overtimes are really not that common, so perhaps the JT wasn't familiar with the rule in practice.

But are they completely to blame? On the interwebs I'm also seeing things like people saying the Head Ref (but not Head NSO?) is also partially responsible; before the overtime jam happens s/he should call an official time out to go over the rules again with the ref/official crew. The Head Ref is pretty much like the captain of a ship in this sense; if shit happens and the ship goes down, then it doesn't matter who made the ship go down, the captain still assumes responsibility. Or so the online discussion goes.

I'd like to think that that's only partially true. Individuals who assume positions of responsibility are, well, responsible for what happens in their role. How about that? So only to the extent that the Head Ref is responsible for what other, responsible agents are doing, that's all they are to blame.

But then there's also some broader issues. WFTDA currently doesn't have any recourse for situations like this. I think all they've said so far is that all they could do is follow 2.5.1.1, but there's no rule in place (yet--there probably will be soon though) for resetting the jam or points or anything like that. Also, given the wording of the rule, it seems like it'd be easy to throw a game one way or another, just by having someone whistle off the overtime jam early. In this case it was totally an accident I'm sure but the possibility of less scrupulous motivations would still be problematic under this rule.

I'm jam timing today, so I made sure to look up the relevant rules, in case this happened again. Lightning striking twice and all that, right? :P

Passing the test

So last week I found out I passed WFTDA minimum skills test. I was actually kind of surprised since I did the test when I was pretty sick and uncoordinated. But hooray. Importantly, this means I can be drafted onto a team and actually get to bout somewhat regularly with NRV. Bouting time here I come!

The off-season

On Wednesday we had our last practice session before we took a break for Christmas/NYE. So of course, it was WFTDA skills test! Honestly, I have no idea how I went; I was still kind of sick and had a massive coughing fit in the middle of the test and choked on my water and snotted everywhere. It was gross and awkward. I thinkI might have failed but we'll see.

Anyway, off-season. What does one do on the off-season? Stupidly, because it's Christmas break, I suspect it's when people stuff themselves full of food and therefore get all sluggish and stuff before they get back. We only have two weeks off but I'll be going back to Oz so I'll be away for a month or so, plus there's Christmas and New Years and two weddings to go to so I'm sure I'll come back a bloaty fat ass.

When I was a kid my mum would never make this shit (maybe once she
made ham, but I don't eat ham). We used to have spaghetti and garlic
bread for Christmas Eve, and then go to a restaurant for Christmas Day.

I also wasn't planning to bring my skates so I guess I'll have to make up for it by doing crap loads of off skate work while I'm away. I'm thinking something along the lines of:

• alternating 30,60,120 minute planks
• sit ups (2, 5, 10 sets of 10)
• pushups (2, 5 sets of 5, contingent on munty shoulder and hand, blah)
• occasional running
• bicycles (I actually like these and will probably do these until I collapse)
• lifting heavy things (groceries, wedding presents etc.)
• knee up/downs (10, 15, 20 sets of 10)
• actually stretching in the mornings and after I do exercise

Haha this is all very ambitious I guess. But we'll see how it goes.

Happy holidays! (I don't care whether this is politically correct or not; it's at least accurate if you are on holiday.)

Return from munting

You'd think from all the munting I did that I'd get used to how awesome it feels to come back. I haven't, but it still feels awesome.

I have new gear too! New wheels and configurations, and also some anti-blister sock things. I'll have to do a product review of both of those at some point.

We were working on stuff for the WFTDA skills test, so we did 25/5. It was a good opportunity to test out the wheels, and I think they were okay. It was good to be back and I felt faster and more controlled in the corners than I had before. I did 25 laps in 4:27, which I think was pretty good for a month off skates. I want to knock that down to 4:20 though but I was happy with the result.

We also did a "pace line with hitting someone out of bounds" drill which was fun. Because of my size, hitting isn't the easiest thing for me, so Gritz suggested I try swooping/leaning people out instead of trying to hit them because if I bounce off them, all the worse for me. Basically, I should plant my foot in front of theirs and point my foot in the direction that I want them to go and then lean all my weight on them. It's much more effective than me trying to hit people twice my size, so I'll work on that too.

I also learned to (at least try to) do something I'll call the Sex Move--not because it's inappropriate or anything, but because Sexaqshunher was doing it. Basically you skate up to someone in the pace line, transition so you're going backwards, and then check them out of bounds. Because you're backwards, you're already ready to run back so they have to backtrack as well. It doesn't come naturally to me in derby yet, but that's something new to try out. Yeah. Being back on skates is good. :)

Bout time, in about two weeks

My VDL peeps are currently at the Gold Coast for Rollercon (eeee!) and I'm still slowly getting off the munted list. My fingers are still borked but at least I can sit down now. In the meantime, I have some new wheels to play with and I'm figuring out things like configurations and whatnot for them. In retrospect I probably should also have got some new bearings as well. Oh well.

Anyway, we're in the tail end of the year and a bunch of things are happening. I'm heading to practice this week for the first time in a month (after muntings and hospital visits). I'll also have new wheels and stuff, and WFTDA skills test is on next week at NRV, and then it's off to Season's Beatings! I'm listed to play in three bouts (the three newbie ones) and hopefully I won't suck too much. The roster is up here. I also did it so I wouldn't have to bring a bunch of different colored shirts, heh. Gritz is driving up and I am rooming with her which should be fun. I haven't been on the road with NRV before so I'm kind of excited about this (since they do a bit of travel to bout other people, so getting some experience with that this year before I bout with them will be good). Also, afterparty and whatnot.

Anyway, I have to admit I am a bit nervous because some of newbie people actually ARE bouting now and stuff and I'm still being crap and not drafted to a team. But we'll see how it goes; all I want is to not get mega injured or whatever.

More adventures with the US healthcare system

After my munting I thought things would be better, so I just tried to go to sleep. Then the next day everything was fucking shit. The blood pooled in my butt bruise overnight so I had this fucking huge purple ass crack, and my fingers were swollen up like little sausages and didn't bend at all. I dropped my toothbrush twice when I was trying to brush my teeth. Also I was going to a conference that afternoon.

Splints, hospital ID bracelet, hospital gowns.

So I stopped by the hospital on the way to the airport to fly out to said conference. The doctors put me in for some scans, since there was so much swelling and pain they couldn't really poke at anything to see if it was broken. They pushed on random bits of my spine and above my pelvis it seemed okay, but my sacrum/tailbone area hurt like the dickens. Then they also brought in the sports medicine doctor who said that even if I could bend my fingers they could still have fractures, so they splinted up my hands and then sent me off to radiology for some X-rays.

Because they were X-raying my butt, they made me change out of my jeans (with metal bits on them) into a hospital gown which seriously was draping on the ground because I was so short. They were nice though and gave me two so I could wear one backwards and one forwards and have my ass totally covered the whole time when I was walking through the hospital. The hospital gowns were stupidly huge and didn't do up (not that I could use my hands to tie the little tie-y things together anyway because my hands were in splints) but wearing a backwards and a forwards tent at the same time was at least not too terrible, even if it was really... breezy. Also lying on a cold X-ray table in a variety of different positions on a giant squishy bruise was not comfortable.

My whole that thing is brused and sore.

Anyway, so then they were done with the X-rays and I could get back and get dressed. I didn't get the results that day, but basically it turned out that there aren't any fractures, just a crap load of "soft tissue damage" in my joints and also possibly what looks like tears along my finger ligaments. Also, I found out that my tailbone is a fucking weird abnormal shape, which is why they couldn't tell on the X-ray if my tailbone is broken. Normally tailbones curve anyway into your pelvis thingy (yes, I'm so good at medical terms) but mine has a tiny kink in it. I've never had a problem with it but that is why on the X-rays they didn't know right away if something was up with it. So that was pretty cool to find out. But I don't know if that will ruin my dreams of having a prehensile tail at some point.

Anyway, so basically I'm out of action for at least 3-4 weeks, depending on how long it takes to recover. This also sucks because that would be riiiiiight when we are doing the league-wide WFTDA skills test. I'd hate to not be able to test because of my stupid muntings. They only do these every 6 months too, which sucks.

I'll post the X-rays when I get them!

And also here is a random leg bruise I got but
didn't notice until I was at hospital.

WFTDA posts Championship bracket

BAD made it into the championships so they're on their way to Atlanta! Well, not right away, since the championships are in early November. A bunch of people from NRV are driving down from here, but stupidly I have a conference on that weekend. But no socializing for me since I'll probably be watching DNN the whole time.

Here's the bracket:

Click to enlarge

It's a tough bracket, but at least BAD wouldn't have to meet up with Oly until after Philly and TXRG. Anyway, these are all freaking amazeball teams, so it will definitely be one to watch. I'll have to break out my BAD shirts for the whole weekend while everyone else is wearing fancy suits and whatnot at this conference.

If you want to help BAD make it to Atlanta, click here.

BAY AREAAAAA!!!

BAD are playing tonight in the WFTDA western playoffs for the championship! They're seriously the best team I've ever seen play, in terms of having amazing teamwork, and their athleticism and skill is nuts. I remember going to one of their league bouts and spending  most of my time with my mouth hanging open and screaming "OH MY GOD DID THAT JUST FUCKING HAPPEN" when crazy shit was going down on the track. Derby in the US is way faster and harder than what I'm used to in the land of Oz, so seeing the best teams in what's currently undisputedly the best derby country in the world is pretty fucking amazeballs.

Also, Demanda is pretty FUCKING AMAZEBALLS. Sigh...
(photo credit: D.E.sign)

Oh, also, the Oly Rollers are playing in a few hours, and if they beat Rocky Mountain, they'll play BAD next. That'll be interesting, given the amount of shit talk that has been going on about them, especially in, well, the Bay Area. Hellarad did an amazingly hilarious writeup of it here.

Anyway, here's me reppin' down in Virginia, on the other side of the country:

Whoo! I might also have to wear my other BAD shirt to NRV training on Sunday for extra reppin'.

The bracket for the Western Region playoffs:

Or if you want a downloadable .pdf version to print out and fill in, it's here.

New kid on the... river

I just got back from doing my first training session with the NRV rollergirls. It was pretty fun, and I'll talk about some of the drills and stuff we did below. But first, let me just get something out. OH GOD THE HUMIDTY HERE IS KILLING ME. IT IS FUCKING HORRIBLE.

This is how I would do the weather report if I were a weather reporter.

Training was at 10am today and already when I woke up I was all clammy. Then walking the 20-or-so steps to my car and getting in the car made me sweaty. (I guess this is also because the inside of the car was pretty warm.) Anyway, then we skated (indoors, thankfully, and it was somewhat air conditioned) and I was all sweaty and sticking to things like the floor, other people, the pads we hit in the hitting drill, etc. And then when it was done I had to go outside and it was so humid my sunglasses fogged up and it was just like walking into a wall of wet heat. The drive home was pretty bad; it's only 10 minutes in the car but I stuck to EVERYTHING in the car. I wanted to punch a million babies. Seriously, the training isn't super hard, but the acclimatization might take much longer than I thought.

Also, the heat made me drink three bottles of water (so, about 2-2.5L) during training. Then when I got home I had to pee like a racehorse.

The thing on the left with the stars is the DJ booth.
Also there were like 7 mirrorballs on the ceiling.

Anyway, so, NRV training. Firstly, I picked a really good/bad weekend to go since it's Labor Day weekend (tomorrow is a public holiday) so a lot of people weren't there. It's held at a place called Adventure World, which seriously reminds me of when I went rollerskating as a kid at a rink in the 80s. (Warning: their website also looks like it was made about that time and is loud and obnoxious.) They even have carpet with rockets on it. I met Seam, who's the president, and Pumpkin (secretary) and Blighty (who was the person I had been corresponding with and she's British and pretty nice and an awesome skater) and a couple of newbies and some of the refs. The refs also skate with us and do the same training, which is cool. BAD and SCRD weren't like that. But again, because it was Labor Day weekend, it was a relatively low turnout, maybe about 10 people in total. (Which is fine for me since I'm kind of socially awkward.)

On Sundays, NRV also does a thing where they spend the first hour and a half focusing on newbie skills. Basically, newbies have a thing called the "Fresh Meat Sheet" which breaks down basic derby skills into 10 different levels. Level one is really basic stuff like being able to stand on skates in derby stance, and level 10 is stuff like being able to take full-force hits. Level 6 is learning how to do hits, and once a skater can do that then they can do blocking/hitting drills with the big kids, but not scrimmage yet. Also, after they finish the fresh meat sheet then they qualify for taking the WFTDA minimum skills test. I guess they really are covering all their bases. Anyway, so the focus for Newbie Training is to have the fresh meat go through different things on their sheet and get them checked off, but everyone takes part in the drills.

What pages 1 and 3 look like of the Fresh Meat Sheet.
They printed double sided so I can't get 2 and 4 in the
same picture.

Not to be confused with the Crazy 88s.

We started with something called Crazy 8s for a warmup, where basically you sticky skate around the floor. Blighty would call out things like "slalom" or "scissors" and that's what your feet would be doing while you were skating. Then occasionally we'd change direction too. We did this for about 5-10 minutes.

That was to get everyone warmed up for the 25/5, which was the Fresh Meat skill they were working on today. They get to do it in 6, or for the level 4 freshie they do 12 laps in 2:30. I hadn't skated for about two months so when I got into the endurance thing my legs were like "YO BITCH WTF ARE YOU DOING" and I was tired by lap 10 already. Ugh. But I managed to do 25 in 4:37, which I guess isn't too bad. I need to stop coasting on corners when I'm tired because I am a lazy fuck. I would still like to be able to do 25/4 but we'll see.

After that, we had a bit of a water break and while that was happening, Blighty set up a bit of a course around the track. It looked something like this:

And we did things like this:
1. You had to step sideways through the cones, kind of like doing side hop things.
2. As you came into the first turn, one of the refs was there with a pad and you had to do either a hip, shoulder or full body check on him.
3. Slalom inside and outside around the turn
4. Do grapevines through the cones (alternating legs)
5. Here was another ref on the outside line that you hit (also Seam would yell out what kind of hit to do on him)
6. More slaloms and then you were done.

After that, we did something called the "Two and Thirty". Basically that meant we skated around and did 2 minutes of a drill, then, 30 second recovery, and then repeat. We practiced stops (I STILL HATE T-STOPS) and falls and tomahawks, only here tomahawks are called "backwards double toe stops" or something. It was weird. I've heard them be called about four different things now.

Completing the FMS means you can do
WFTDA min skills testing and scrim. Yay.

After that, we paired off to do some positional blocking drills, just basic 2-on-1 stuff. It was pretty good. I was paired with one of the newbies who had just finished her level 6 stuff and could do a lot of the blocking but didn't hit or scrim. Since we were only positional blocking, that wasn't going to be too bad, right? Well, then I threw her into the jammer a bit hard, oops. But it was effective. Then I got busted for low blocking the jammer because I clipped her wheels and she fell over. Blargh.

Finally, suicides. Now, these are not like any suicides I've ever come across. They're a cross between suicides and pyramids. So you had to lie on your stomach and on the whistle, get up and do two laps up and back down the rink, and then do 20 crunches. Then lie on your stomach, get up, do three laps, then do 10 burpees. Then the same but four laps and 10 pushups (and everyone else did girly pushups so I am awesome). Then the same with five laps and a 30 second plank. Then back to four laps, and a 30 second squat, and so on. I did okay in the drills and except for being really crap at tomahawking and turning around quickly. I also got jelly legs towards the end and tried to tomahawk on my off-leg and ended up falling on my face. Ugh. Good thing I can get up quickly. :P

Anyway, so that was all of training. It was fun, and the people are nice. I don't have to do the fresh meat stuff and I'll be going in as a transfer skater, so hopefully at the midweek trainings this time I can meet the coaching team and also see if I can do my WFTDA skills tests (AGAIN). I think I might be good enough to at least get drafted to their pool, if not their B team. Whee.

Update: It's apparently 92 degrees (almost 33 in Celsius) and about 80% humidity outside. KILL ME NOW.

Update 2: I just drank a fuckload of sweet tea. I am in the south after all. (I also ate half of this loaf of challah, but that is another story.)

FOOD OF DERBY GIRLS EVERYWHERE.