Category: Roller Derby

I’ve had a brilliant weekend.

Yesterday I was at the Great Yorkshire Showdown in Leeds NSOing. (A reminder for any non skaters out there, NSO is Non Skating Official, we do time keeping and score keeping etc). I’d put my name forward some months ago and then forgotten about it. I was pleased to be selected as a penalty box timer.

I’ve done this role before at a few informal games, but GYSD was quite a big event. Six teams competed in two groups of three. The winners of each group when through to the final. Because (I imagine) is was WFTDA sanctioned there was paper work! Never had to do that in the past. Fortunately the box manager was a friend and he explained it. I got the hang of it by the end of the day.

I started off using stopwatches, as most do. I wanted to use the app that I wrote a bit ago, but didn’t want to mess things up. After the first game I gave myself a talking to. Who the hell is going to use the app if even I don’t trust it? Eat your own dog food is the rule! So in the second game I did use it, with the stopwatches around my neck as a back up. I was really pleased that I did. It works really well, though the experience highlighted some improvements that I can make.

The penalty box is the place where skaters don’t want to be. As a consequence when they visit they are generally not it high spirits. Most of them seem focussed on the game, a few are cross, either with themselves or with the call. A few though are chatty and jolly. Of note yesterday was Sniper from the Newcastle team. She called in a few times and asked for cakes to be ready for the next time. I also noticed that she was very happy on track.

On track all of the games seemed to be played in good spirit. There were some big hits and the medics were called to track a few times, though thankfully everyone was able to get up and walk off track after a few moments to compose themselves.

I don’t recall the scores. Some of the games were close, a few not so. The final though was amazing. Newcastle were about 50 points behind at half time but won by 1 point!

It was great to see Hulls Angels too. They brought me a HARD t-shirt so I’m one of the family now :-)

Proud to have been involved in such a prestigious, well organised event.

I don’t know of a precise way to measure how good a practice session was.

One measure could be how fast the session passes. Our Sunday sessions run from 2.30 to 5pm. It was 4.30 before I realised the time. We’d started with some work on laterals then covered falls and walls for the newer skaters. I’m quite tall, so I’ve been trying to stay really low. I hope I’m getting better at it!

Enjoyment during the session would possibly work, but that’s a bit wishy washy. I enjoy skating so much there is little/no differentiation between sessions. I’ve been suffering a bit of a cold since Friday evening and felt pretty crappy yesterday. I was considering just watching today, but that’s no fun! Anyway, the prospect of skating this afternoon lifted my spirits right from the get go this morning.

It was great to see Careless Santana back on his skates, though (annoyingly, as I was targeting him) he seems not to have lost much ground in the weeks that he’s been away. The newer guys are also rather solid, The Beast and Bilbosaur (is that right Bilb?) both seem impossible to knock over/off track.

We also played a game (did a drill/call it what you will) called “Homewrecker” (from memory). This was ace. I started off paired with Si Clops and Buckingham Malice tried to break us apart for three seconds or more. Some powerful hits from Buckingham, but I was pleased that Si and I managed to pretty much hold him off. (Si took most of the hits :-) )

This week my personal goal was to work on power from my thighs when hitting/blocking. Given that I failed to knock anyone over/off then I’d have to say I have some work to do!! Oh well…

On the way home it occurred to me that I really ache! And that is my benchmark this week – how achy am I? Lots! Really good session guys. Thank you :-)

In this post I’m turning the spotlight on Buckingham Malice.

The weather this weekend just past was the wrong way around for me. Saturday, my park skating day was rainy so I didn’t get out. I mooched around the house pondering the world. The Men’s European roller derby championship had been and gone. Shrooms made it as one of the best blockers. Sausage Roller also launched his “budgie smuggler” group on Facebook and Scooby Zoom seemed to be a hit with his camo leggings.

Both of these guys started their men’s derby careers with The Skateful Dead. Circumstances led to them moving on to bigger teams, though I’m sure that they enjoyed their time with The Dead and this helped to keep them on track.

Enjoying what you do is, in my experience, terribly important. As you may have read in my previous post, I have only recently returned to the track to play competitively. I did so at one of our co-ed scrims. The emphasis at these events is enjoyment. Buckingham Malice goes to great lengths to impress this on players; it is part of the pep-talk before the scrims and it is re-iterated on the day. For this I am grateful.

At practice Buckingham is generous with praise and always happy to help individuals with particular skills. He manages this without being boastful or prescriptive, recognising that people have different skating skills/styles.

He frequently guest skates with bigger teams and, if he wished, would doubtless be welcomed by any team as a player. Yet he continues to skate with The Dead – a real asset to our team – as he shares what he has learnt from others :-)

Thank you Buckingham for getting me into this daft sport, helping me improve and making it so much fun!

(A shameless play on the title of Kozmic Bruise’s recent post.)

At the end of June I started a new job. I need to learn a new framework, which is taking a share of my waking hours. Writing about events long after they have happened is such a chore, but I don’t feel that I can really just skip over them. Here then is a summary of things that I would have blogged about if I’d found the time.

Sur5al (Barrow in Furness)

June 21. Skateful Dead made the journey up to Barrow in Furness to take part in a men’s Sur5al tournament. I tagged along with my camera.

Sur5al is a variant of roller derby in which teams play each other in a series of two minute jams. The teams score points based on who gets lead (jammer) and who wins the jam. Most points wins. The points scored are secondary, used in the event of a tie in “Sur5al” points. There were eleven teams, some of which included Team England players. Skateful Dead didn’t expect to win, but they would make it fun and learn from it.

The day was well organised. I took lots of photos and posted 464 of them to Flickr. On the down side Ballistic Whistle was a dick – giving the referee a double thumbs down gesture all the way round to the penalty box when he got called. Very disappointing to see such behaviour from a top player.

Generally, game play seemed to go completely out of the window. I have never felt that men play in the same spirit as women. Sur5al just seemed to turn it into a mindless mess of people getting hit and ending up sprawled across the floor. The came away from the event feeling rather disheartened. Skateful Dead did reasonably well, though looking back I can’t see just how well. I did note though that two of our team had no penalties – cleanest team in the tournament, of which I am very proud.

(Also, note of thanks to Knuckleduster Nat for looking after our merchandise. Thank you!)

Humberstruck

June 29. I headed over to Hull to capture the first such tournament to be organised by Hull’s Angels. (162 photos on Flickr.)

There were four teams taking part, The Banditas, The Crucibelles, Hull’s Angels and LRD Whip-Its. Each team played every other team in 30 minute games. The Bandita’s won.

As is always the case when the Angels are involved it was well organised and loads of fun.

Co-ed Scrim Cancelled

The Skateful Dead co-ed mixed scrim scheduled for 19 July was cancelled.

Sur5al (Oldham)

On August 2 the Skateful Dead came second in the tournament, beaten only by the Barrow Infernos. Really good job!

That pretty much sums things up. The Skateful Dead host their next co-ed scrim on 30 August at Whitcliffe Mount. I should be on track for that game – nervous and excited. Tickets are available through the event page on Facebook. I hope to see some familiar faces on track with me :-)

Banditas vs LRD – Whip Its

On Saturday I was at North Bridge Leisure Centre as the Bandita’s photographer. They played Leeds Roller Dolls Whip Its in a very close game. Whip Its were first to score, but from then the lead changed with just about every other jam. Faye Tality got knocked down – not seen that before! It was hard work for both teams. Whip Its were only playing with 11 skaters (14 is the usual count) so they had extra work to do. There were a few hard hits, but it was a pretty clean game.

I started this roller derby malarkey about 14 months ago. I’ve only bouted once due to injury and so I’ve ended up photographing the sport. I felt, on Saturday, that I was very much part of the community. There were people there that I knew. Obviously I know the Banditas, but there were friends over from Hull too. The bloke from Taut let me have a go with his rather nice 85mm lens. Jupe was skating for LRD, so Andy was there to support her. I recognised one of the LRD A team players. A handful of my Dead bros were there too.

Also spectating, for his second time, was a neighbour. I recognise him from the commute, we say hello. Last time he brought his daughter to a bout (as they were back then) we had a chat, though they left at half time as she had found it too loud. This time they’d brought some ear protectors for her :-) We spoke again; he said that he felt that roller derby provided good role models for his daughter (I estimate that she’s six). That made me feel rather pleased/proud.

The second half was a tough as the first. I saw Ninja Nina pass the star – it must have been hard work! It looked like Leeds would win but in the end the Banditas clinched it 138 to 129.

Training

After the rain of Saturday, Sunday was sunny and warm (yeah, it rained later, what do expect?!). I got to Whitcliffe a little after 2pm and couldn’t persuade Phil to take part in an off skate warm up, so I did it myself :-)

It was hot in the hall. After the usual stretching we kicked off with an exercise that I came up with a bit ago (yeah me!) before starting the session proper. It wasn’t long before we were all rather sweaty! I felt that the stuff we were doing shouldn’t have been such hard work, but it was.

We did a load of agility stuff, toe stop dancing, which I’ve been nervous about in the past. There was plenty of opportunity to play the jammer role too, which I do enjoy. Then we broke Bilb – a fall caused him to twist his knee. The other one. Not good :-/

I finished my litre of water and was pleased that I’d brought extra with me. Towards the end of the session I stopped twice to catch my breath – obviously need to push the aerobic exercise during the week!

I closed off the weekend playing Battlefield with Elliot :-)

Today’s training session was, in a word, awesome!

I was particularly impressed by the newer skaters.

I refrain from calling them “newbies” as that might come over as condescending, which is not my intention at all. A few of the drills involved giving and taking hits. This is something that I’m really not very good at. I was in a three with Rob and Travis. Rob is a lovely bloke, always jolly and willing to help. Travis is our newest skater, but he didn’t stop once throughout the session. He’s boney! I expect my arms to be various colours over the next week or so. He through himself into every part of the session and even had a go at jamming in the scrim.

We did another drill which first called for four volunteers – I was there in a flash. They were to jam, one at a time, against the remainder of players who formed a pack – of seven Ash, seven! ;-) When they got knocked out or down then they stopped, joined the back of the jammer line and the next one went. It was great! I didn’t get through once I don’t think, but i gave it 100% effort. Apologies to Phil for continually hitting on his shoulder – I’m also a boney beggar!

Endurance, a regular occurrence, was 40.5 in 7.5 – if my maths is correct. I think I managed 42, though I wasn’t counting, that’s based on what others got and how many times they passed me.

Finally we scrimmaged. It was a small affair, half an hour, five on one side, six on the other. Really good fun though. Now I need to rest, my arms/shoulders ache! :-)

Thanks Gillie/Carly – top session!