What's Next? After you've had your "oh shit" moment on the track.

We all have "oh shit" moments on the track.  We give up the inside line to the opposing jammer, we cut the track when we jam, we back block the living hell out of the wall, and we all think, "Oh shit!  Why did I do that?" 

What just happened? Photo by Joshua R. Craig

You did that because it's derby.  Derby is a game in which the team that makes the least amount of errors wins; it's sad but true, and nobody is perfect.  Even Bonnie Thunders, that demigoddess of derby, has to pass the panty once in a while!  So, the first thing you need to do is allow yourself to screw up.  You're going to screw up on the track, and the sooner you accept it, the better your game is going to be, both mentally and physically.



So what do you do after you have an "oh shit" moment on the track?  Do you wallow in your mistake?  Do you take time to "show the world I screwed up", shrug your shoulders, make a face, or do you try to figure out what you can do next to make it better?  My personal mantra on the track is "What's next?"  What's next keeps me from getting into my own head and getting down about my errors.  It also keeps me engaged in the game, and I tend to be able to switch quicker from defense to offense and vice versa.  I can anticipate what the other team might do and because I'm thinking "What's next" sometimes I can do something about it.  Sometimes I pick the wrong thing to do, but you always have another chance to do the right thing.  If our sport is one where the team who makes the least amount of errors wins, it's also a sport where you can have a second, third or fourth chance, and that's pretty great.



I see so many people afraid to take risks at practice.  They're afraid that people are judging them, and nobody wants to be seen as anything but a badass on the track.  We all love our teammates, but we're also competing against them, and nobody wants look like weak sauce in front of the competition.  Don't get all bound up in not making mistakes, how else are you supposed to learn?  So what if you screw up?  Have your "Oh shit" moment in the safety of practice, not at a game, if you can help it.  Remember, you're not the only one out there trying to play a game, so if you screw up, your teammates have your back!  Most of the time, they're not counting your mistakes!

Top of the world, bottom of the food chain

"I think I'll take a little walk and explore the neighborhood," I said, not realizing that I could get mauled for suggesting such a thing.

"You'll need to bring bear spray," replied my brother-in-law Kris, reminding me that even mundane activities are slightly less so when you're doing them in Anchorage, Alaska.

 Mmmmmm, I smell tourist

"Never mind," I said, settling back into my chair.  Evening strolls could resume once I'd returned home, where, as long as you don't count the mosquitoes, I rest comfortably atop the food chain.  Besides, bear spray doesn’t work like bug spray.  You actually have to hit the bear with it, which I’d find difficult to do while going to the bathroom, which is what I’d be doing (involuntarily) if a bear attacked me. 

My wife Kara and I had ventured northwest with our two sons and Kara's parents to visit Kara's sister Jill and her husband Kris, who have been living in Anchorage since last summer.  Jill and Kris moved to Alaska for the same reason everyone else lives there: because they angered an evil ice queen who banished them from regular civilization for eternity.  Just kidding.  They vacationed there once and decided they'd live there someday.  Then, rather than continue dreaming about it, they actually did it.

“Wow,” I said as we left the airport.  The allure of Anchorage is obvious from the moment you arrive, especially if you arrive in July, when your nostrils don’t freeze together.  As we drove across city blocks with flowering baskets hanging from lampposts, snow-dappled mountains loomed in every direction.  I’d expected everything to look more like the inside of the fish counter at the grocery store, except with more salmon.

"It's weird to me that everyone is carrying on like we're still in America," I said to Kris.  He smiled and cocked his head, and I could tell that he was wondering how much attention I’d been paying in fifth-grade geography.

I know that Alaska is as much a part of America as apple pie and diabetes, but still, it felt strange to fly three-thousand miles past America and still be there.  Seemed like there should be more yurts and less Carl's Jrs.  Or is it Carls’ Jr.?  In any event, whoever invented Carl’s Jr. clearly did not have easy pluralization as a top priority.  They probably never expected to have to build more than one.

When you first arrive in Anchorage and you drive past grocery stores, strip malls and schools, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the rest of Alaska is full of people, too.  In fact, 40% of Alaska's population lives in Anchorage.  The other 60% were eaten by grizzly bears last year.  I am wildly exaggerating, of course.  Some of them were eaten by wolves, too.  No, in all seriousness, very few people get eaten by the wildlife in Alaska, though they do need to be mindful of their politicians, who fly around in helicopters firing high-powered rifles at things.

In Anchorage, the city feels so normal that it’s easy to forget that you’re right on the edge of wilderness.  Sometimes, that wilderness wanders into the city, which is why you can’t just stroll out of Jill and Kris’ townhouse without strapping a canister of ursine tear gas to yourself.  Apparently, it’s fairly common to see bears walking down the sidewalks near their neighborhood, which can be quite a dangerous situation, since bears, especially when protecting their cubs, are notorious jaywalkers. 

It’s also important to point out that while we had a wonderful time in Alaska, we are back home now, so if you are a burglar, you already missed your chance.  The only thing worth stealing was the iPad, anyway, and we brought that with us in the hopes of entertaining our two kids on the twenty hours of flights.  That plan didn’t work, but I’m not ready to joke about it yet.

You can pluralize Carl’s Jr. with Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.

To the Entitled: Part Three

Just when I think derby is winning the war on dealing with entitled members, I get a spate of emails and messages from people in leagues all over the place dealing with a group of entitled skaters.  Is it cyclical, like the seasons?  Or the moon phase?  Is there a tropical storm season of entitlement?

Image found here

I've spent a lot of time and effort in my blog to help people realize that entitlement is one of the seven deadly sins of derby teams.  It is destructive and it can take the joy out of skating for people if it is left unchecked.  Ever get a blister from skating?  It seems like a small injury, but it nags at you.  It hurts, it makes you miserable and sometimes it becomes the focus of all of your attention.  Entitlement is the blister on the foot of a derby league.



How does this happen?  Why does it keep happening?  What can we do to stop it from happening in our leagues?



First of all, I think entitlement is an especially thorny issue in derby because we have a weird set up in our sport, which makes us a unique entity.  "For the skaters, by the skaters" is a great DIY ideal, but in the practical everyday running of the league, this tends to cause a lot of problems if there isn't excellent communication in the league in question.  Let's face it, leagues don't always communicate well.  "That's how we've always done it and new people need to figure out our way" tends to be the ruling philosophy, which works if someone knows all of the unspoken rules of a league, but if they're new they're probably clueless.  Also, if a league has skaters who are "awesome" and aren't held to the same standards that everyone else is, ie. volunteer work and attendance, then why wouldn't newer skaters think they can act the same way.  If you don't want entitlement issues in your league, don't foster entitlement with any of your skaters.  Pure and simple.  Either we all work, or this league doesn't succeed. 



A few people have written to me with an interesting conundrum.  To cut down on the butthurt, their leagues have had the skaters self evaluate their performances; what shocked the people reading the evaluations was that a majority of skaters ranked themselves ridiculously high, even the newbies.  Wait, what?  How does that happen?  Well, I really think that we foster this kind of warped self image to skaters, by not giving honest and helpful feedback.   Nobody likes to crush the dreams and hopes of a newbie skater, but when we say "You're doing great!  You're amazing" without giving the skater a context for that level of feedback.  When we say those things, what we really mean is "You're doing really well for a newbie!"  or "that was great, because a month ago you could barely stop without falling down."  We edit ourselves because we don't want to crush a newbie; unfortunately, newer skaters don't understand the context.  They hear "you're awesome" and that's as far as it gets.  It's no shock that many skaters develop a twisted and inherently skewed perception of their skills.  Add to that the fact that many newer skaters don't get to venture out of their leagues to mingle with other skaters, so they don't have a good perspective of what "Good" is.  Let's face it, the definition of "good" is graded on a curve in derby.



How can we minimize entitlement?  Basically, we need to communicate better.  We have to act better too, and be clear with our expectations.  If we don't model how we want people to behave in our league, we're going to keep getting more and more entitled waves hitting our sport, and ain't nobody got time for that....as they say.

The Glades: A Report Card

 I'm slowly becoming convinced that there is no way to bring roller derby to the small screen without certain stagnant and trite tropes.  Ok Hollyweird...you won.  You can't do a TV show with derby in it without trotting out these tired ideas, and the Glades is no different.

Image found here

 The Trope List



1.  Five minutes into the episode....the abuse word is mentioned.  Whee!  All of the cop episodes that involve derby do this.  'The victim has bruises, she must be an abuse victim."  I don't know, maybe this is an indictment about women in general, but I'm tired of hearing it on shows with derby involved. On a personal note, I had bruises before derby, but that's because I rarely look where I'm going and I'm just plain clumsy.



2.   BY DAY SHE WAS A BANKER!  BY NIGHT SHE WAS A DERBY GIRL!  MUHAA HAA!  Lord, I'm tired of this.  By day I'm a graphic designer, by night I'm a graphic designer who plays roller derby. Hey, at least they showed one of the derby girls with a good and normal job. Of course, two of the derby girls were involved in some kind of weird girl gang before derby.  We're all violent, right?



3.  Team tattoos.  Ok, I'm sure there are teams that get tattooed together; I have derby tattoos, but they're mine and mine alone.  No offense ladies, I like you guys a lot, but I don't want to have the same tattoos that you do.



4.  Blood.  Fighting.  Ugh.  I am not thrilled when I see a knock down drag out fight taking place on these shows with derby, but once again I feel like TV producers don't think derby lives up to it's reputation, so they have to spice it up with fights and blood.  I know, I know, a lot of police shows like to spice up all sports with fights and blood, right?  Not as much as they like to do it with derby.  People still have an outdated vision of derby in their heads, so "Give the people want they want!"  Bleah.



5.  The nerd boy/girl always is the one into derby and has to explain it to the cool cop. Of course it's the nerd. Yea for the nerds!  The cool kids are too cool to know about derby, right?



6.  When derby parties, it parties hard.  The Glades might have outdone the other silly TV shows with this one.  They showed the teams getting together and drinking the night before a bout.  I don't know about your team, but my team won't do that.  We might go to a meet and greet, and drink a lot of water and eat together, but we won't drink alcohol.  Sorry television, we're athletes, and athletes are kind of boring if we're training correctly.





Things They Got Right



1.  Hooray!  They corrected the word game to bout!  Huzzah!  At least nobody called it a match.  (That's just a pet peeve of mine.)



2.   Yea mouth guards!  They were wearing mouth guards and made a show of taking them out before they talked to the cops.  Yea!



3.  One derby girl said about her team, "We fight our opponents, not each other."  I hope that's becoming true all over derbydom.  Start being a team.  Rely on each other, fight for each other, and don't talk crap about each other.  Be A TEAM!



4.   They had some good skating and real skaters and refs!  Hooray for showing real skating!  I saw some jumps and blocks and jukes and heard the correct whistles.  Accuracy like that helps to make the derby believable. 



So, all in all, I'd give the Glades a C.  It wasn't as terrible as the The Bones episode, but it wasn't as positive as the Hawaii Five-O episode.   After watching the three derby episodes in question, I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to bring derby into a cop show without turning it into a trip to the Side Show.  I would really love to have derby understood by the "mainstream" public out there, but we're going to have to be the ones to do it, not television or movies.



So get to it.

I don't know, but Alaska

Have you ever tried to write a column while on vacation with your family in Alaska?  Me neither!  I'll be back next week with some Alaska-themed goodness, but since we took a red-eye home from Anchorage last night (or was it this morning?  or both?), I can barely keep my head propped up to type this excuse paragraph. 

'Til next week!

Also, a few pictures:

Derby Etiquette Part Duh.

I get a hodge podge of emails and messages about random derby questions, and I like to lump them together in derby etiquette blog posts. I'm not going to "Dear Ann Landers" this one, but suffice to say that any issues I bring up in an etiquette blog have been raised by people who read my posts on a regular basis.  I am always looking for material, and I promise to never out you if you submit  questions.  Serious or humorous, I'm always looking to help people out when it comes to derby dos and don'ts.



First of all, let's start with #1, literally.  I hope nobody on your team is sporting the number one on his or her jersey, because that's a big derby nono.  Back in 1937, at least 18 people on a touring bus of derby skaters and support personnel died in a wreck.  The number "1" was permanently retired from all roller derby teams as a tribute.  I haven't seen any #1s out there yet, but just let your freshmeat know it just isn't done in derby.  Also, it would be a really arrogant number to take, or is that just me? Maybe it's just me.



Moving on.

Photo by Joshua R. Craig

Seems like more teams are having issues with the pregame greet line or "high five line."  Yeah, that surprised me too, but evidently some teams are opting not to slap hands with the opposing team. Don't be rude! Just do it!  It's good form.  I don't care if you don't like the other team; you don't have to be best friends, just be civil, and this is a tradition in our sport.  At the end of the bout, slap hands with them too, and then go and thank the refs.  Please don't give me that crap about "I'm a germ-a-phobe and I just can't slap hands with people."  You play derby, and according to experts, you're covered in microbes.  Get over it and be polite.   Also, you'd better give every little kid that is there a high five at the end.  You are a hero to them; don't burst their bubbles because you lost or had a crappy game.  They don't see you as losers. 



Derby peeps, I know we do this as a semi-hobby/semi-obsession; we sometimes find ourselves biting off more than we can chew.  What am I talking about?  Well, I've noticed a trend of derby people flaking out of derby commitments.  Everyone gets excited when invitationals are first announced, but then reality hits, or laziness hits, or forgetfulness hits and people start backing out.  This is not ok.  If you're going to sign up for something, make sure you are willing and able to do it!  It's not ok with an invitational, it's not ok with events hosted by your league, and it's definitely not ok when it comes to games your league is involved in!  Yes, I know that sometimes real life steps in and says "I don't think so" to your plans, but if you're consistently flaking out on events, don't make the commitment in the first place.



Finally, dealing with league emails is my last topic.  Never hit the "reply to all" option if you're just answering one person!  We all get two hundred eleventy bazillion emails on a pretty regular basis, and ain't nobody got time for a "reply to all" with a side comment in it.  Reply all is the bane of many derby leagues!  Try to keep the clutter out of your league member's email boxes!  Avoid the reply all!

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Image found here.

Every change or rule you make in any social group or structure will have unintended and unforeseen consequences, especially if the law didn't take into account long term development of the society it controls.   It can't be helped; it happens and then the group has to figure out if the original law is worth keeping  The philosopher and economist Adam Smith called it the "invisible hand" of governance.  Oh Q, it's too early to talk about invisible hands and philosophers; give me a concrete example.  Ok. So, the government, in an attempt to stop forest fires sets up a system where no fires in the forest are tolerated, natural or otherwise.  This is a short term solution, which stopped fires from happening, but also stopped the natural process where dangerous undergrowth which would normally be kept under control by small, natural fires.  Twenty to thirty years later,  forest fires burn out of control because they have so much fuel.  Ugh.  Sometimes it feels like no matter what we do to make things better, we screw something else up, like rule changes.



We are now experiencing the law of unintended consequences in derby, and I think it's making our game less exciting to watch.  It's been six official months since the murdering of the minors.  People have slowly adjusted and life is back to normal again, right?  Wrong. Now, if  jammer cuts one blocker from the opposing team, she's in the box, no questions asked.  I know that a jammer has bettered her position by cutting one blocker, but was the position bettered enough to throw her in the box?  Was the position bettered enough to give the other team a possible thirty points?  It depends, where did the cut take place?  Did she accidentally cut someone while being mobbed in the pack, or did she cut the last opposing blocker?



If she cuts the last opposing blocker, absolutely throw her trangressing butt in in the box, but come on.  Does a cut of one opposing blocker in the pack really merit the possibility of the other team scoring more than they might in five jams?  I seriously doubt it.  Is cutting one person equivalent to a high block, back block or low block?  I don't think it is, and I hate when I see a jammer who has realized she has made a mistake and cut someone try and correct it.  Too late!  You're whole team is screwed!  Yes, I know it makes every blocker feel like a rock star when you knock the jammer out and take her all the way back through the pack, but if the major cut went back to the cutting the last opposing blocker, you could still have your rockstar moment. It's also really really boring to watch one jammer knock the other jammer out and take her all of the way around through the pack.  Yes, you're a better skater, but it's dull to watch and dull to be a part of.  It used to be exciting when Shenita Stretcher used to do it when there were minors, because it was an exceptional circumstance, but now it is common place.



Should it be ok for someone to yield to a skater they have cut?  I think it's something to think about.  At the beginning of the jam, if a jammer false starts, she has to yield to the other jammer...no harm no foul.  Could something similar be done with the jammer yielding at a cut to the blocker she cut?  Maybe.  Would it be tough for refs to call?  Maybe.  I'm just trying to think out of the box.  (See what I did there?)



I like to compare the latest rule set derby to playing technically proficient jazz music; it's exciting and wonderful if you're the one playing it, but for the rest of us listening to it?  Enh.  I'm worried that we are killing off the fun of our sport with the technicalities.  My friend Mike had a saying.  "Just because you're really good at masturbating, doesn't mean I'm going to pay money to watch."  I worry what's going to happen to our sport in the future.  It's hard to watch some of these bouts at ECDX this year because they are technically perfect, but rather dull as a fan.  Just my two cents.



And don't get me started on the new multi player block rule.  ;)