Some of the best derby advice that I have indirectly received is a quote from, if I'm not mistaken, Heidi Volatile: "When in doubt, hit a bitch." It is a quote that I have oft-repeated, especially when I talk to fresher meat than I who need some reassuring, and especially when I was team captaining back at BnB.
As it turns out, that's harder advice to follow than I figured. Then again, like most things worth listening to, it's much harder to commit and do it than it is to talk big about it.
Saturday is approaching with a vengeance. It's the first home bout of the season. Wednesday night, I feel like shit. My hormones have chosen this particular week to run wild on me. I am snapping people's heads off left and right, my back is killing me, and my stomach is tied up in knots, though it's difficult to tell what of that is what we might delicately call "woman troubles" and what is what we might delicately call "bout tummy."
Practice was tense tonight. It always seems to be the Wednesday before a bout. People get snippy with each other. The air gets thick. Hits get hard, and sometimes they get sloppy. Curse words are said, and sometimes, they even sound like they're said with malice.
If our bout against Dixie Derby Girls was any indication, this must be just something we need to do before a bout. We need to use the scrimmage time on Wednesday as a way to get all our nerves out, all our frustrations and fears. When things start to look like a hot mess out there, it gets a little nerve-wracking to see us playing like that, but I know we can pull it together.
In Huntsville, we played like a well-oiled machine. It was the first time I've ever been to slow my mind down enough to do what I needed to do. In fact, for the most part, I just turned it off, and let my body go on auto-pilot. You know what to do. Block now. Stall now. Slow down now. Call out to your teammates now.
I felt liberated. Finally free from my over-analysis, my fear of failure, and my dogged inner critic that simply will not shut the hell up when it's time for her to do so.
It took me two seasons to get here, and one of those seasons, I was reffing - and was just as critical, and just as insecure.
Without a doubt, Huntsville, at least for me, was a milestone to celebrate. I'm not Amyn or Saintly - I don't have that kind of pack awareness, or the ability to just sit on jammers the way they do. I'm not a monster like Ziggy who sends jammers sailing every time she lays eyes on them. Yet. So while I may not have been the best skater on the team at Huntsville, I know on my own that I improved a lot that day.
Greenville, though, is no time for resting on my laurels. I've been well informed already that, strategy wise, this will be like nothing I've ever encountered before. Yes, I've watched slow derby, but it's another thing entirely to be using it. I'm nervous. That's putting it lightly. I've been trying not to think about it as much as possible, because I don't want to turn into a nutcase.
I read something tonight on Roller Derby Inside Track that made me think a bit about Saturday, though, and about my nerves: "Hungry teams excel by moving out of the comfort zones." The same can be said of hungry skaters, and all I've wanted since I started playing roller derby was to constantly get better at it. To one day be that blocker that nobody wants to mess with, the one that other teams yell for their blockers to stay on, lest she continually tear jammers asunder. The Cthulhu of blocking, materializing to - yeah, okay, enough of metaphors.
And I can't do that by being scared and sitting on my performance at Huntsville. One improved bout performance doesn't make me a good player, but continually doing something better at every bout will. So... it's time to set goals again.
1. Chase that damn jammer. I have a terrible habit of giving up every time a jammer passes me, and then getting mad at myself. At the core, it's two contradictory motions of the brain - You can't catch up with that jammer! You could have caught up with that jammer if you'd tried!
But I'll never know if I could have caught up with her if I don't try. Yeah, maybe I'll miss her. In that case, I'll slow down. And if I hit her, good game. And if I hit her and go to the box because I'm out of play, well I still hit her. A trip to the box is worth it in some cases.
2. Be aware of where my jammer needs me to be. Above all things, our jammer situation for Saturday is weird, to say the least. Sometimes I feel like I'm not always where my jammer needs me to be in order for me to get her through the pack. I feel like I defend against the other jammer much more readily than I get my own through the pack.
Saturday, I'm going to pay attention to my jammer just as much, because playing only defensively is playing irresponsibly. If my jammer has someone sitting on her and needs me to block her out of the way, then you better bet I'm going to try my damnedest to do that. Needs a whip? I'm there. Gets stuck? Not alone. My jammers need to know they can trust me to take care of them.
3. Play aggressively, but with a clear head. A team like Greenville wants other teams to get frustrated and blow their cool - that's how a strategy like what they do works. The other team gets mad. In their frustration, they don't think straight, forget how to defend against Greenville's strategy. And they lose.
It's hard to know what to expect this weekend, but easy enough to see that, maybe more so than any other games, if we get over-emotional, this one will go out the window. Part of the strategy of slow derby IS pissing off the other team. Throwing them off their game and leaving them without a defense OR an offense.
And part of the counter-strategy is to beat them at their own game. Adapt, build walls, keep your cool, play your game. I promise myself not to be part of a problem on Saturday, no matter how mad I want to get.
Time to set course for the weekend - tomorrow, pre-bout music. A perennial favorite of mine that I've somehow managed to never write about.
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Derby Stories, Part II: A Team, by Any Other Name
March 19, 2011. It's time for a new beginning, I tell myself. This is where it all starts. It's where it all started in 2008 anyway. Maybe this is where I should have always been. Me and BCR, BCR and me.
We got to the venue pretty early, but we weren't staying the night, so we didn't have a hotel room to hang out in. The ride up was relaxed, but as long as I've known Slim now, I didn't expect it to be otherwise. My newest derby wife is the only one still actively involved with a team. She and I have seen, frankly, dumb shit go down. That we're still skating says something about tenacity and passion for this sport.
Chatty's place was huge, way bigger than the other convention centers I've skated in. The dressing room was tiny and hot. My stomach was doing trampoline acrobatics to the extent that I was tempted to bust out the huge jug of whiskey they gave us just to take the edge off.
I felt better, though, because I wasn't the only one. Seedy was one of the earlier arrivals, and admitted that she, too, had what we colloquially call "bout tummy." And I certainly wasn't the only one sweating up a ridiculous storm in my brand new turquoise jersey.
When we went out to warm up and test the floor, I could feel my leg muscles shaking. Trembling might be a better word. I remain cool as a cucumber in most situations, but bouts are an exception. Whether I show it on the outside or not.
I knew the other team was watching me. I tried out stops and falls. I analyzed every movement I made as too slow, too clumsy, somehow unimpressive. They were watching me, I knew they were, and even if they were nice, with every stride I took, I just knew they were analyzing every way they could to pick me apart. Who wouldn't do that to an opponent they don't know? What should I show them? Should I be purposefully clumsy? Should I skate my best and hope for intimidation?
I hate waiting for bouts, more than anything else. Most of the time, we get there hours in advance, we go into our dressing rooms, we strap on our gear, get everything taped into place... and we wait. We sit, and we wait. And the whole time we do that, it feels like a small beaver is gnawing at the inner walls of my stomach, trying to get out.
When the bout started, I admit, I was a little more nervous than usual because of who was wearing the stripes. Major Wood was jam reffing for the bout. From my time as a ref, I just knew - this guy is a big deal. As in, this is the guy that pretty much wrote the rules down. A Big. Freaking. Deal. There were two other WFTDA refs there, and I knew this was going to be penalty calling like I had never experienced before.
I was set to go in every other jam. One jam as pivot, one jam as power blocker. That, I was pretty sure, I could handle, although I've frankly never played a game that I would call a "good game" on my part. Then again, I've only played four real games.
When it was my turn to go in, I couldn't - the person who had played power blocker before me was in the box. I was antsy on the sidelines, wanting to put my feet on that track. Same with the next time I went in to play power. And quite a few other times.
Then, there was the mouthguard disaster. We knew Major Wood was particular about mouthguards. What we didn't know was his peculiar criteria for "particular." 9 was sent to the box when she was jamming, then given another minute because she took her mouthguard out before she sat down. We might as well have had no jammer for two jams at that point. We were scoreless.
We were scoreless for maybe the first ten or fifteen minutes, or hell, it could have been twenty. At some point, the time all starts to run together out there. Certain moments feel agonizingly long, until you look up at the clock and realize ten seconds have gone by. I mentioned that before, when talking about that scoreless Jackson bout.
Oh my God, it's happening again.
I wrestled with myself. Do NOT let this turn into Jackson. Do NOT give up on yourself.
Amyn ordered us back to the locker room for halftime, and I braced for takeoff. I knew she was going to chew us out, let each and every one of us know how terribly we were playing out there, pick out every single mistake we had made and display it for the world. That, after all, was the kind of locker room talk I was used to. It was the kind of locker room talk going on in my last bout in August.
In the locker room, 9 was in tears. Everyone was quiet. Amyn was quiet, at least until 9 said she felt like it was her fault we were losing.
"9, there's no reason to blame yourself. We win as a team, we lose as a team."
I wish I had heard those words in Jackson. They, along with Amyn's encouragement, kept me from crumbling at halftime into self-doubt. She kept me from giving up, probably without even realizing it.
"They think they got us," she said. "They're gettin' cocky."
I didn't care if they won at that point. I've still never won a game, so plainly, my love of derby has nothing to do with the outcome, and everything to do with getting better as a player and as a team. Cho said something similar: "I don't care if they win, I just want us not to give up." To play harder, to skate faster, to score more points, to hold their jammer.
We still lost by 100 points, but whether those girls thought they had us or not, they saw a different side to BCR in the second half. I saw a different side to BCR. The side where a team gets backed into a corner but comes out swinging. No fear.
People cried in the locker room, blamed our loss on bad individual performances.
Even that, though, seemed like something new to me. This was a team that understood something BnB didn't, couldn't. A team that was able to analyze its own performance and realize what could have been better - that each person could have contributed more successfully. That one player doesn't lose a game for thirteen others.
But at the same time, we were guided by people who reminded us of that. It was always us as a team. There were things that the team needed to work on, rather than placing the blame on one person, rather than destroying someone's confidence at halftime and expecting them to go skate another half hour.
Maybe this is why BnB failed.
In any case, past is past - we learn from it, and we move on. I made some bad plays at Chattanooga. I know of at least two incidents where I totally missed a jammer skating by me. I could have played harder, more aggressively. I could have played smarter as a pivot, and directed my teammates more successfully.
I overcame something that Saturday, though. It's been altogether too easy for me to give up. As I've discovered, I really didn't know what it was that 'team' meant last season. I loved my BnB teammates to the point where I never thought I could feel happy in derby without them. But all that love didn't translate into success on the track, and it didn't translate into knowing how to work as a team. Knowing how to feel proud as a team. How can you feel pride if you're constantly beaten down? All that love we supposedly had didn't even translate into the ability to keep the team together. It didn't translate into the ability to respect your former teammates enough to not stab them in the back by creating another team just to embarrass and defeat one person.
Whether they realize it or not, a lot of the BCR vets showed a lot of the newer skaters something very important that Saturday. Somewhere in between the nebulous area of vet and not vet myself, I feel like I can understand these lessons a little easier. There's a time to crawl up a team's ass, to yell at them to motivate them to play better. But there's also a time to remind everyone that the team as a whole is responsible for playing well, not just one person. Good leaders know the difference.
We got to the venue pretty early, but we weren't staying the night, so we didn't have a hotel room to hang out in. The ride up was relaxed, but as long as I've known Slim now, I didn't expect it to be otherwise. My newest derby wife is the only one still actively involved with a team. She and I have seen, frankly, dumb shit go down. That we're still skating says something about tenacity and passion for this sport.
Chatty's place was huge, way bigger than the other convention centers I've skated in. The dressing room was tiny and hot. My stomach was doing trampoline acrobatics to the extent that I was tempted to bust out the huge jug of whiskey they gave us just to take the edge off.
I felt better, though, because I wasn't the only one. Seedy was one of the earlier arrivals, and admitted that she, too, had what we colloquially call "bout tummy." And I certainly wasn't the only one sweating up a ridiculous storm in my brand new turquoise jersey.
When we went out to warm up and test the floor, I could feel my leg muscles shaking. Trembling might be a better word. I remain cool as a cucumber in most situations, but bouts are an exception. Whether I show it on the outside or not.
I knew the other team was watching me. I tried out stops and falls. I analyzed every movement I made as too slow, too clumsy, somehow unimpressive. They were watching me, I knew they were, and even if they were nice, with every stride I took, I just knew they were analyzing every way they could to pick me apart. Who wouldn't do that to an opponent they don't know? What should I show them? Should I be purposefully clumsy? Should I skate my best and hope for intimidation?
I hate waiting for bouts, more than anything else. Most of the time, we get there hours in advance, we go into our dressing rooms, we strap on our gear, get everything taped into place... and we wait. We sit, and we wait. And the whole time we do that, it feels like a small beaver is gnawing at the inner walls of my stomach, trying to get out.
When the bout started, I admit, I was a little more nervous than usual because of who was wearing the stripes. Major Wood was jam reffing for the bout. From my time as a ref, I just knew - this guy is a big deal. As in, this is the guy that pretty much wrote the rules down. A Big. Freaking. Deal. There were two other WFTDA refs there, and I knew this was going to be penalty calling like I had never experienced before.
I was set to go in every other jam. One jam as pivot, one jam as power blocker. That, I was pretty sure, I could handle, although I've frankly never played a game that I would call a "good game" on my part. Then again, I've only played four real games.
When it was my turn to go in, I couldn't - the person who had played power blocker before me was in the box. I was antsy on the sidelines, wanting to put my feet on that track. Same with the next time I went in to play power. And quite a few other times.
Then, there was the mouthguard disaster. We knew Major Wood was particular about mouthguards. What we didn't know was his peculiar criteria for "particular." 9 was sent to the box when she was jamming, then given another minute because she took her mouthguard out before she sat down. We might as well have had no jammer for two jams at that point. We were scoreless.
We were scoreless for maybe the first ten or fifteen minutes, or hell, it could have been twenty. At some point, the time all starts to run together out there. Certain moments feel agonizingly long, until you look up at the clock and realize ten seconds have gone by. I mentioned that before, when talking about that scoreless Jackson bout.
Oh my God, it's happening again.
I wrestled with myself. Do NOT let this turn into Jackson. Do NOT give up on yourself.
Amyn ordered us back to the locker room for halftime, and I braced for takeoff. I knew she was going to chew us out, let each and every one of us know how terribly we were playing out there, pick out every single mistake we had made and display it for the world. That, after all, was the kind of locker room talk I was used to. It was the kind of locker room talk going on in my last bout in August.
In the locker room, 9 was in tears. Everyone was quiet. Amyn was quiet, at least until 9 said she felt like it was her fault we were losing.
"9, there's no reason to blame yourself. We win as a team, we lose as a team."
I wish I had heard those words in Jackson. They, along with Amyn's encouragement, kept me from crumbling at halftime into self-doubt. She kept me from giving up, probably without even realizing it.
"They think they got us," she said. "They're gettin' cocky."
I didn't care if they won at that point. I've still never won a game, so plainly, my love of derby has nothing to do with the outcome, and everything to do with getting better as a player and as a team. Cho said something similar: "I don't care if they win, I just want us not to give up." To play harder, to skate faster, to score more points, to hold their jammer.
We still lost by 100 points, but whether those girls thought they had us or not, they saw a different side to BCR in the second half. I saw a different side to BCR. The side where a team gets backed into a corner but comes out swinging. No fear.
People cried in the locker room, blamed our loss on bad individual performances.
Even that, though, seemed like something new to me. This was a team that understood something BnB didn't, couldn't. A team that was able to analyze its own performance and realize what could have been better - that each person could have contributed more successfully. That one player doesn't lose a game for thirteen others.
But at the same time, we were guided by people who reminded us of that. It was always us as a team. There were things that the team needed to work on, rather than placing the blame on one person, rather than destroying someone's confidence at halftime and expecting them to go skate another half hour.
Maybe this is why BnB failed.
In any case, past is past - we learn from it, and we move on. I made some bad plays at Chattanooga. I know of at least two incidents where I totally missed a jammer skating by me. I could have played harder, more aggressively. I could have played smarter as a pivot, and directed my teammates more successfully.
I overcame something that Saturday, though. It's been altogether too easy for me to give up. As I've discovered, I really didn't know what it was that 'team' meant last season. I loved my BnB teammates to the point where I never thought I could feel happy in derby without them. But all that love didn't translate into success on the track, and it didn't translate into knowing how to work as a team. Knowing how to feel proud as a team. How can you feel pride if you're constantly beaten down? All that love we supposedly had didn't even translate into the ability to keep the team together. It didn't translate into the ability to respect your former teammates enough to not stab them in the back by creating another team just to embarrass and defeat one person.
Whether they realize it or not, a lot of the BCR vets showed a lot of the newer skaters something very important that Saturday. Somewhere in between the nebulous area of vet and not vet myself, I feel like I can understand these lessons a little easier. There's a time to crawl up a team's ass, to yell at them to motivate them to play better. But there's also a time to remind everyone that the team as a whole is responsible for playing well, not just one person. Good leaders know the difference.
Monday, April 5, 2010
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
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
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