USARS Finalizes Derby Rules, Launches Olympic Aspirations

After months of planning, tweaks, beta tests, and input of feedback, USA Roller Sports has approved its first official set of roller derby rules for submission to the the USARS executive committee for final review. They are also to be used in USARS roller derby member leagues, effective immediately.

This marks yet another important step in roller derby’s international growth. Recognized by the U.S. Olympic Committee nationally, and the International Roller Sports Federation (FIRS) internationally, USARS is—by law—the only organization in the United States that can launch a legitimate push for top-level international competition or Olympic inclusion of roller derby, or any rollerskating sport in general.

That’s good to know, especially with the re-emerging news that the International Olympic Committee has short-listed roller sports (which includes roller derby) as a possible addition to the 2020 Olympic Games.

Eight sports made the list for consideration. The competition roller sports faces include baseball, softball, karate, wushu, wakeboarding, sport climbing, and squash. There’s only room for one of these to make the cut, however, since the Olypmics have already committed to adding golf and rugby to the Games starting in 2016. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup, and all that.

Derby’s Olympic chances at this early stage in the game are likely slim. A final decision on which of the eight sports will make it in is to be made sometime in 2013. That’s too soon for the world (and men) to catch up to the sport’s explosive growth here in the United States. You can’t have an Olympic event without high-caliber athletes from all over the world taking part, after all.

Then again, all disciplines of a sport will be taken under consideration by the International Olympic Committee. Derby may have an outside chance at coming along for the ride if roller hockey, roller speed skating, and roller figure skating are deemed viable for the Summer Olympics, just as their ice skating counterparts have been part of the Winter Olympics program for decades.

Even if it’s too soon for derby to make it all the way, there are still thousands of amateur athletes within the USARS membership that have an opportunity to apply their skills to the sport of roller derby.

So that we know what those men and women might be getting themselves into, let’s familiarize ourselves with the style of roller derby USARS is bringing to the table.

For the Fans, By the Fans

A few days ago, I received an email. It was from a young woman who, like many playing the game, became enthralled with roller derby after attending her first bout. She immediately decided to play it, and committed herself to training to be a good skater.

However…

“One thing I’ve since learned is the standard of athleticism is low, and occasionally non-existent, in the derby world. While this was enticing to me (and I assume many other skaters) initially, I’ve learned that it’s also created two schools of roller derby: The athletic school and the social school. The latter are the ones who worry the most about nicknames, boutfits, derby drama, and never move beyond the grassroots bush leagues.”

And very quickly, she has discovered the problem that exists with a sport that is meant to be “for the skaters, by the skaters.”

We all know what the spirit of this phrase is all about. But the WFTDA actually takes it a step further and has made it its governing philosophy. Says so right there on its website. “By the skaters” is not just an ethos; it’s their constitution. Everything that has to do with WFTDA roller derby is controlled solely by the skaters who play the game, for the benefit of the skaters who play the game.

This ideal has served the game well over the previous decade, as the explosive growth of derby across the United States and throughout the world has readily demonstrated. There are more than 200 leagues under the wings of the WFTDA (including apprentices) and of the almost thousand or so more unaffiliated leagues around the world, many more mirror WFTDA rules and policies.

The proliferation of WFTDA-style flat track derby puts the Association and its members at one of the top positions in the race to grow and expand the sport to new skaters and new fans. Since the WFTDA acts at the direction of the players who play the game, this currently gives the skaters a big chunk of control over what direction the future of the sport will head in.

Frankly, that’s a big responsibility. Are the skaters up for it?

That’s a tricky question to answer. As our young, aspiring athlete has figured out, the open-arms policy that allows anyone to play roller derby is a double edged sword: Anyone can play roller derby…including maybe the ones that shouldn’t.

If “the skaters” are the ones in charge, maybe it would be a good idea to find out who this group consists of. Because if the skaters are leading the charge to help foster and grow this game for the future, we should be sure the right people are doing it for the right reasons: For the good of those involved with the sport, and of the sport itself.

So just who are the skaters who play roller derby?

The 2011 WFTDA Penalty Derby Championships

September 13, 2009 was a very significant date in the history of modern roller derby. Do you remember what happened then?

Because I will never, ever forget it:

(Derby News Network) RALEIGH, NC — Philly and Gotham provided what was by far the most dramatic bout of the Eastern Regionals, trading the lead all through the second half — and 4 times in the last jam alone — before Philly scored a one-point upset of Gotham to end Gotham’s two-year, 18 game winning streak by just one last-second point, 90-89.

It was the day Philly upset Gotham. Their game was an epic contest that featured everything that makes roller derby, roller derby: Speed, constant action, great blocking, amazing teamwork, and competitive on the scoreboard the whole way through. As if that wasn’t enough, the last jam of the game went the full two minutes, culminating with Philly’s Teflon Donna literally making a last-second pass to pick up a point on the track and a ghost point in the box…the two points they needed to overcome Gotham and win the regional title.

The game was amazing in every respect. Personally, I hold it near and dear to my heart. It instantly sold me on flat track roller derby, and showed me everything that was good about the modern game.

There are two things about it that will forever be ingrained in my memories.

The first is what happened at the end of the game. When Philly realized they had won, their entire bench came out and dogpiled onto Teflon in mad celebration. By itself, this moment was amazing.

But then Gotham joined in the celebration and also jumped onto the dogpile.

That made the moment legendary.

A pile of humanity containing Gotham and Philly skaters. Awesome!

Right then and there, I got it. I understood how teams could be fiercely competitive and still be part of a community that just wants to have fun playing roller derby. That winners and losers can mingling in the same ball of joyful humanity after a nail-biting finish told me all I needed to know about the people playing the game.

It was absolutely wonderful.

However, it’s the second thing that I took away from Gotham/Philly 2009 that has been on my mind a lot lately.

As exciting as the finish was, I was more impressed with the start of the game. In light of recent events, you may have a hard time believing this: For the first ten minutes of the bout, there were no major penalties committed by either team.

I was gobsmacked. Finally, I thought. The best teams playing the best roller derby, skating hard, skating fast, and skating clean, playing the game five-on-five for an extended period of time. As it should be!

Inevitably, penalties factored into the game. A penalty directly influenced the final result, obviously, as a last-minute blocker penalty by Gotham gave Philly the last-second ghost point they needed to topple the giants and end their years-long win streak.

Even so, this game showed me how quickly derby skaters were bettering themselves and their abilities, proving that they could skate hard without committing penalties. I envisioned roller derby games with fierce action and very few penalties, as is the way in other sports. I was stoked. Surely, I thought at the time, this was the springboard towards a bright future.

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.

Two months after Philly’s historic upset, Denver started to tug on loopholes in the rule book at west region playoffs. Ever since then, derby has been getting slower and more sloppy, ultimately culminating with Gotham solving the rules and coming up with unbeatable strategies, directly resulting in red-faced referees gasping for air, whistling more penalties than ever. This has turned derby into a mindless farce, and a shadow of what the game used to be just months previously.

This isn’t my opinion. This is a fact.

With the help of Rinxter, we can look at bout statistics and prove—beyond the shadow of a doubt—that the “slow derby” game has been bad for roller derby, turning beautiful games featuring clean skating, into ugly affairs filled with penalties.

If you’re someone who likes the “strategy” game, then you’re going to have some explaining to do: The numbers will prove that you also like games filled with rule violations and box trips galore.

WFTDA Championships 2011: Queens of the Mountain

And here we are.

After a month of wall-to-wall regional playoff derby, lots of controversy, lots of action, lots of non-action, lots of surprises, lots of non-surprises, and a lot of waiting…it’s time for the 2011 WFTDA Championships.

Twelve teams will play for the Hyrda, flat-track roller derby’s biggest prize. But let’s not beat around the bush, here: Only four teams have a realistic shot of winning it, and only two of those teams will survive and make it to the final. As for the other eight in attendance, only four of them will have a legit chance of bringing home some hardware with a third place finish.

But between now and the medals ceremony, the brackets are packed to the gills with some amazing games. There’s only one obvious potential blowout in the cards this weekend, but that’s to be expected when you have the best from each region playing each other in a single-elimination format. But there are some surprises lurking, too.

Here’s WRDN’s breakdown of each team’s chances this weekend, starting from the bottom. We are, after all, climbing a mountain to see who will plant their flag at the top…

We’re Just Happy to Be Here

(S3) Nashville, (N3) Naptown

Poor, poor Nashville. For two years in a row, you draw the defending champions in your opening game. Last year, Oly obliterated you in the first round. This year, you’re Rocky Mountain’s warm-up for their Saturday game against Gotham. One of these years, you’re going to get a favorable draw that will put you against the weakest #2 regional seed instead of the strongest, but this year isn’t it. At least you can take solace in the fact that you’re at championships, and everyone else isn’t.

Naptown damn near knocked off Windy City a month ago. That’s pretty impressive, considering they have never been within striking distance of an elite team before their semi-final game against Windy last month. That close game can be attributed to Naptown’s rapid improvement over the last year and the huge home-crowd advantage.

However, besides a 104-78 win over Nashville two months ago, Naptown has never faced a top team outside of their region. Ever. Different regions seem to have a preference for different styles of play, and without this extra knowledge they may find themselves with no way to defend against Philly and their notorious “slow derby” tactics. Though this may actually be a good thing for Naptown if they can crack the code quickly enough (see below), their lack of inexperience against other top teams in other regions may be their downfall.

Victory Through No Pack of Effort

I am reminded of something that happened to me 12 years ago.

I playing on the offensive line in my first year of varsity football for my high school football team. While installing new plays during practice, I did something that my coaches, and my team, did not appreciate.

The play we were working on was designed to be a quick run to the far right. Playing on the left side, I only needed to get in the way of my man for a few moments so our running back would be in no danger of getting tripped up in the backfield from the blind side. By then, the running back should be far to the other side, well away from me.

When the ball was snapped, I shoved my defender away, kept him to my outside for three seconds, then stopped blocking him to turn and find out where my running back was.

Two seconds later, I watched my running back get crushed by the defender I stopped blocking. Turns out, he bounced back towards my side of the field with the ball due to the defense unexpectedly overwhelming the right side.

Oops.

While I was standing there, watching the aftermath, our offensive coordinator came up to me and tore me a new one. I remember him calmly explaining to me, WHAT KIND OF EFFORT WAS THAT?! KEEP PLAYING UNTIL THE WHISTLE BLOWS. He wasn’t pleased, to say the least. (What was left of my running-back teammate did not appreciate the lack of assistance, either.) He made sure I was looking at him when he said that to me, made sure I got it, and then walked away.

That look was all I needed, though. I understood.

Team sports rely on individuals to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. From start to finish, an individual’s best effort is needed to help the team succeed. However, just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, an individual not putting in their best effort, or effectively quitting on the play, can be disaster for the well-being of an entire team.

My lack of effort caused the play to fail, when it could have succeeded had I not given up and played until the whistle. Even though it was just a practice play, from that moment forward I resolved to always put in my best effort on every play, be it practice or game time. I figured, why would I ever want to go half-ass during practices, when all that would be training me to do is to go half-ass during games? That’s not going to help anyone on my team, and it’s certainly not going to help me in the long run.

That’s because almost without exception, effort in sports should be rewarded. If you work harder than your opponent (assuming your opponent is of similar skill and ability) good things will happen to your team. Even when it looks impossible, you never know what can happen if you never give up.

As the saying goes, winners never quit, and quitters never win.

However, in roller derby, quitters can win.

The current rules make it that way.

MRDA Championships 2011: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

Step aside, ladies. This looks like a job for a man. Lots of men. Lots of men…on roller skates.

It’s time for the first-ever Men’s Roller Derby Association Championships.

Okay, it’s actually the second time the guys have duked it out for the big prize. But this is the first under newly-created MRDA sanctioning.  Aa lot has changed in the one year between the MDC championships then and the MRDA championships now, however. Namely, there are now 18 fully-sanctioned MRDA leagues, with another 19 or so men’s leagues from four countries expressing interest in joining in the fun down the road. That’s putting men’s derby on the same growth vector the women’s game used to launch itself forward a few years ago. It seems there’s a bright future for both genders when it comes to playing roller derby.

But the future will have to wait until the present has past. Here and now, the top six MRDA teams will meet this Saturday, October 26, in Old Bethpage, N.Y. for seven championship games on two tracks in one derby-filled day to determine which team will take home the coveted Athletic Cup Trophy. Our preview will look to separate the contenders from the pretenders.

Also, seeing as that this Saturday’s games may be the first time a lot of derby folk will be tuning in to see the men’s game, I’ll also highlight some things to look out for that you may not normally or often see in WFTDA play…for better and for worse. (But mostly for better.) So consider this a comprehensive preview to all things men’s derby, as it exists at this moment in time.

Chess, Roller Derby, and Global Thermonuclear War

GREETINGS, PROFESSOR FALKEN.

Hello.

HOW ARE YOU FEELING TODAY?

I’m fine. How are you?

EXCELLENT. SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?

Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?

WOULDN'T YOU PREFER A GOOD GAME OF CHESS?

Hmmm… sure, why not? Let’s play chess instead.

We'll play Global Thermonuclear War later.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS?

One.

GAME TYPE: REGULAR CHESS OR DERBY CHESS?

I…what? Derby chess? What’s that?

ROLLER DERBY IS A GAME OF STRATEGY. DERBY CHESS REQUIRES
 STRATEGIES SIMILAR TO THOSE USED IN ROLLER DERBY.

Sounds like fun. Let’s play derby chess.

INITIALIZE GAME. PLEASE SELECT A PIECE TO SACRIFICE.

Okay, I…uh, what? What do you mean sacrifice a piece? We haven’t started the game yet.

DERBY CHESS STRATEGY REQUIRES ONE PLAYER TO SACRIFICE A PIECE
 BEFORE THE GAME CAN BEGIN. I WILL NOT SACRIFICE A PIECE
 AND WILLINGLY START AT A DISADVANTAGE.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE THE GAME TO BEGIN, YOU MUST SACRIFICE A PIECE.

That’s not fair.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE THE GAME TO BEGIN, YOU MUST SACRIFICE A PIECE.

That’s not fair! Why should you get to start the game with more pieces on the board than I do? I didn’t do anything to deserve that!

IF YOU WOULD LIKE THE GAME TO BEGIN, YOU MUST SACRIFICE A PIECE.

Fine, I’ll remove a pawn. I just want to play chess, geez.

BEGIN PLAY.

WFTDA North Central Playoffs 2011: My Kind of Town

The playoffs? Yeah, I guess they’re worth talking about.

Monumental Mayhem is the last of the four smallish WFTDA Big 5 playoff weekends. Hosted by the Naptown Roller Girls, this event will be the last chance for teams to get their foot in the door at the WFTDA Championships in Denver.

I know a lot of things about Denver (chief among them: it’s cold there), but I don’t know that much about the city of Naptown. However, after some exhaustive research on my part, I have determined that Naptown is not the name of an actual place but is, in fact, a nickname for the city of Indianapolis, Ind. (That would have been much easier to figure out if they were called the Naptown Colts…actually, that would be a lot more appropriate this year, huh?)

Indy is my kind of town. I’m a huge racing fan, and the world knows of no more an iconic racing circuit than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It’s 100 years old, and still looks as beautiful as the day she was born. One of the things on my bucket list is to travel to this racing mecca and take in ‘The 500’ live and in person; a little roller derby on the side wouldn’t hurt, either.

Racing and roller derby. Two things I love, one town to see them in.

There’s a lot of derby to be played this weekend, and with a lot of teams in the North Central closer to each other in terms of relative skills and abilities, don’t expect an automatic 1-2-3 podium finish for the top three qualifiers heading into the tournament. While one team should get in pretty easily, once you start looking behind the leader you may find another upset run in the making…the question is, who might it come from this year?

WFTDA West Region Playoffs 2011: Westerns are the New Westerns

Well, that was an uneventful start to The Big 5, wasn’t it? Let’s get this playoff train back on its tracks.

Next stop: The West. Destination: Portland, Oregon.

Woah, woah there, Mr. Conductor! Wait a second. The West? Portland?? That’s not the first place that springs to mind when I think of the Wild Wild West. If we’re going to be previewing the roller derby “westerns,” then we’ve got to talk about the men (and women) that made the west what it is today. I’m talking about cowboys. Real cowboys. Jesse James. Billy the Kid. Wild Bill Hickok. Wyatt Earp. Calamity Jane, too. That’s the west that comes to my mind.

Unfortunately, I don’t know all that much about the history of the “real” west, or real cowboys. But I do know quite a bit about the fake real west: Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Roy Rodgers, other Hollywood cowboys and the films they starred in contributed much to society. Or at least, enough for me to refer to these fine pieces of historical work in an attempt to preview Bridgetown Brawl, the 2011 WFTDA West Region playoffs.

After all, with how closely matched so many of the top teams in the west are, it’s to be expected that a lot of games will wind up being shootouts. And what self-respecting western wouldn’t have a hell of a great shootout?

In Defense of Dutchland’s Forfeit

The biggest story at Nightmare on 95 wasn’t who won the East Region playoff tournament. Gotham was simply on another level from every other team in attendence, and that they took the gold medal was a surprise to nobody. Gotham’s victory was so obviously inevitable, I wrote this sentence six hours before they were scheduled to beat play Philly for the regional title.

That Gotham is so good says everything about their individual skill and teamwork. They are so good, in fact, one of their opponents saved themselves the trouble and didn’t even bother playing them.

That decision turned out to be one the biggest controversies in modern roller derby’s young history.

Citing strategic reasons, Lancaster, Pa.’s Dutchland Derby Rollers forfeited their quarterfinal game against Gotham Girls Roller Derby. The game was not played and was recorded as a default 100-0 Dutchland loss. To fill the scheduled two hours lost by this non-game, Gotham scrimmaged against Maine and Carolina in two 30-minute play-arounds.

Derby News Network spoke to Dutchland coach Merv the Perv for an explanation behind the team’s decision:

Dutchland chose to forfeit because they felt it was strategically better for their final placement in the tournament to not play a game that they were likely to lose to by a significant margin and to go into the consolation rounds with a fresher team.

Later, Merv commented on the DNN post to provide further explanation. “I made the decision that having a chance to moving up a rank or two was worth missing one blow out game,” he said. “Sports teams often pull starters from a game that has no meaning to them. It, too, is not a fan favorite, but they do it to protect there [sic] players.”

While the coach is saying he made the decision, there is no way this was a decision made lightly or without the consultation of the team. We can never know what was discussed internally at Dutchland, but I’ve seen a second-hand report that there was some “convincing” being done within the team. Ultimately, we can only speculate. Had a majority of the players wanted to play the game after weighing their options, would they have played the game? Probably. Maybe. Who knows? But in the end, the team decided not to.

And the shitstorm of criticism started immediately.