I couldn’t make it to practice this weekend. However, Sunday afternoon found me at North Bridge Leisure Centre “NSOing”.
An Non Skating Official is one of the team involved with the administration of a roller derby bout. They perform a range of tasks, score keeping, penalty tracking and timing. I’ve never done it before, but when the Banditas but out a call on Facebook I jumped at the chance. Some have said that it can be boring, though I didn’t find it so. In any case I feel that it’s important to step up and do this kind of thing, I believe it’s part of belonging to the derby community.
This was a scrimmage was between Halifax Banditas and Rainy City Rollergirls. The Head NSO was Kim who plays for Wakey Wheeled Cats. She organised us all, provided sweets and gave clear guidance on what we needed to do. I was one of the three penalty box timers; timing a blocker pair.
A roller derby bout is 60 minutes, consisting of two 30 minute periods. Each of these is a series of “jams” that are no longer than 2 minutes each. If a player get penalised they spend a minute in the box. So that is what I was timing. It’s not quite so straight forward though. Jams can be shorter than 2 minutes and when they end then the penalty timers stop until the next jam starts. In addition the skater remains seated until they have 10 seconds remaining, at which point they stand. There is only space for two blockers from each team in the box, so if a third commits a foul it gets more complicated. Anyway, it went pretty well and I came away with a list of improvements for my penalty timer app.
How quickly did I learn the importance of calling colour and number when giving instructions? Two players with #147 in the box at the same time. Oops! No harm done.
After the first two periods the teams drew black/white discs and two new teams evolved each made up of a mixture of Banditas and Rainy City girls. (I was glad to be living by my “always carry a camera” rule as at this point I got asked to take photos of the mixed teams.) They then played a third period. This was followed by some hectic removing of the track and tidying the hall before a bit of a buffet in the bar.
A very enjoyable afternoon thank you!