Ears Wide Open

Once a new derby skater has her skills on lock and is ready to scrimmage, it's easy for her to think that she's where she needs to be. It's a milestone to pass that scrimmage test, to officially be told that you can participate. But it's definitely not the end of the journey. Becoming a rollergirl is a constant process of evolution, and after the skating skills come two other important things: communication and strategy.

Strategy tends to come with time, and it's not really part of what I wanted to talk about today. Communication is the one skill that tends to be re-emphasized, repeatedly beaten into a derby girl's head, once she finally gets to the point where she can scrimmage. And there's good reason for that.

Without communication in the pack, we'd be nowhere. Our jammers wouldn't have a way to let us know when they need help. We couldn't block the other team's jammer. We wouldn't know when to give a hit, when to call off a jam, when another team was trying to split the pack and force us out of play. Without a doubt, roller derby is one of those sports where communication between teammates is absolutely essential. The sport just doesn't happen without it.

It's not easy to learn, either. During my tenure as a ref, I was amazed at how chaotic communication generally was. On the sideline, one team yells "SPEED UP! SPEED UP! SPEED UP!" while the other yells "SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN!" By the time a bench coach yells a strategy to the team, the moment to execute it may well have passed by. By the very nature of the sport, it moves fast, and communication has to happen on the spur of the moment. You practically have to have ESP with your teammates sometimes, and the very best teams get to that point- where body language communicates. Where hand signals tell what plays and formations to execute, code noises tell you when a jammer is coming through on the inside and needs a hole.

It's perhaps even more so as a skater. Once you get in that pack, there's so much going on that it's hard to track. There's both teams trying to communicate plays on top of each other, without tipping off the other team too much to what they're doing. Add on top of that having to watch out for both jammers, as well as having to watch out for the other blockers so you don't get taken by surprise. Add on top of that, the bench coach yelling instructions, the referees yelling penalties, the players smack talking, the crowd cheering, the music blaring. It's an understatement to say that a rollergirl has a lot to keep track of when she's trying to do her job.

Communicating with your own team is hard enough. We have to be tuned in, focused and aware of what our teammates are telling us. We have to listen for when the jammer comes through, and for when we need to give a block or a whip or a push. Yet, given time, that becomes easier. Natural leaders emerge on any team, and trust builds between teammates as they learn to trust the judgment that those leaders have, and to follow instructions quickly.

There is one aspect of communication, though, that I feel is overlooked- and I learned firsthand about it this weekend.

I played on Team Black at the Mashup Smashup scrimmage in Jackson, Mississippi. Team Black played short three players, and as a consequence, we got tired very quickly, and struggled to maintain focus and defense. I lined up for a jam as a blocker, and after the first lap, got separated from my teammates- it was me and what seemed like a sea of four white jerseys.

Ahead of me, my fellow Team Black players were making a wall to hold the white jammer back as she tried her first scoring pass. Back with all those white players, suddenly, the pivot said "Slow down, I've got one of them back here!"

This was a great strategy on her part- holding me back would have meant that Team White could have taken over pack control and held me back long enough to force Team Black out of play. Team Black would have had to drop their wall and give up their control over the White jammer, thus giving her a better chance to get through while our defense was disorganized.

IF I hadn't heard her.

The moment those words were out of her mouth, I said to myself "The hell you do!" I'm a blocker- not the fastest or most agile girl on the track, and I know that. But at that moment, I knew it was important that I muster my energy, speed and agility to get out of there and bridge the pack- to keep them from messing up our wall. And that's just what I did. Without thinking twice about whether or not I could do it, I ducked between two of them and sprinted up to keep my blockers in play.

The moral of the story is that it's just as important to pay attention to what the other team says as it is to pay attention to what your own team says. Maybe it's not always as blatant as this, but when it is, there's no reason not to take advantage of it, right?

If you keep your ears open in the pack, you never know what you might hear- or how it might save your butt.

Slugs 'N' Stitches,
Mary Helley

Hello, World.

I'm Mary Helley. You won't know that name- I skate for a team that has just started on its first season. That team being in Alabama, you might guess that we don't have quite the population to pull from that teams in other, bigger states and other, bigger cities might have.

However small we might be, though, Belles 'N' Bombshells is a family. Me being one of those "women who don't generally get along with other women" types, I wasn't expecting to roll up into Montgomery and find a bunch of amazing sisters, people who have extended my concept of what a roller derby team is, and moreover, what a friend is.

I skated my first bout this past weekend- well, that's actually something of a misnomer. I skated my first bout as a skater this past weekend. From January to November of 2009, I nursed a knee injury and skated as a referee for my first league, Auburn's Burn City Rollers. I realized a few important things during that time- one, that I loved roller derby too much to quit when I didn't know what was wrong with my knee, like a lot of our other skaters had. Two, though I learned a lot from reffing, it wasn't satisfying in many ways.

Truth was, I needed a team. It was scary for me to make the decision to be a skater. Over the time that I'd been hurt, I'd built up a lot of resistance to the idea. And by that, I don't mean that I didn't want to do it. I wanted it still. But I was scared, first of all. I didn't know what was wrong with my knee, and though it was better by the time I started training with BnB in November, I was still scared that it would give out on me, or that I would injure it worse. The other thing was the more crushing of the two: I didn't believe. I didn't believe that I could do it.

Whatever the impression BCR had meant to convey (and I don't fault them for this), they had made me feel like they didn't believe either. Like nobody but my husband believed. To his credit, he never stopped believing that I could be a skater if I wanted to.

So here I am now- a shade more than a year after I first started reffing for this wonderful sport we call roller derby. Things are different now. I look at the game from a totally different perspective. But there are still things that I have to learn. That's the aim of this blog- to write down those things that I learn. To offer some insight into the mind of a referee-turned-pivot, and hopefully entertain a few fellow derby lifers at the same time.

Slugs 'n' Stitches,
Mary Helley