Why I Do Derby

So many people ask me why I do derby. Why I would put up with all these loud mouth women and angry bench coaches jumping all in my grits. My family wonders how I find the time to waste on such a thing when I work 40+ hours a week, sell AVON on the side, am taking a full class load this semester, have new baby girl and hubby at home. While all of the above is gratifying (minus the grits business) - roller derby is my release.




I deal with an unbelievable amount of stress on a daily basis. I deal with so many rude, asinine, ignorant, arrogant, severely negative people every single day that I would go completely and utterly bonkers if I didn't have roller derby in my life. If I didn't have a means to vent my anger and frustration at this cruel and unjust world. You would probably find me on the news on some vigilantly rampage. So be very glad I have roller derby in my life!



I'd much rather deal with angry bench coaches and loud mouth skaters than the some of the reps I have to deal with at work. At least I know that the skaters would buy me a shot at the after party.



Another reason are the women I get to meet and bond with. Women who, yes come from all different walks of life, but I find that many of us are walking the same path or have already been down the path. So many women to share encouragement, strength, and a drink with. I wouldn't be the person I am today with out meeting and skating with these ladies!



ROLLER GIRLS RULE!

Behind the Stripes

Bare with me as I take a break from my trip down memory lane for a second and recapping a little from the bout yesterday. The Upstate Roller Girl Evolution hosted "Confrontational Invitational" yesterday @ The Pavilion in Greenville. It featured skaters from several different leagues, URGE, Richland County Regulators, Columbia Quad Squad, Blue Ridge Rollergirls, & Greenville Derby Dames. Way to go Team Red for taking a commanding lead and being able to hold on to it while Blue tried many a valiant attempts at a come back.




The whole idea behind the invitational and the one they hosted previously called "Red, White & Bruised" in July, is to give newer skaters bouting experience without it "going on a leagues record". Now they weren't all rookie skaters, but they did make up the majority. It also gives refs & volunteers from all the leagues experience in running bouts.



With my crazy school schedule, I opted to help ref the invitational since being a ref is all I can do for the rest of the season. It wasn't my first rodeo with jam reffing, but it was my first time under the WFTDA 4.0 rules - don't get me started on some of those rules man. Let me just sum it up as I hate the whole being able to re-engage, fall behind and still retain lead jammer status/points crap. What happened to the good ol' days where if you committed a foul or stepped out of bounds you didn't get lead or the point?? *sigh* WFTDA I don't know what you were thinking when you passed that rule into effect...but bring back the good ol' days! Do you know just how much of a nightmare it is trying to keep your eyes on the jammers skates while the pack has turned into a cluster-*%$#? Or trying to keep so many damn rookie skaters/refs in line? To all you skaters, coaches, & bench coaches out there - give it a try sometime it's a damn fine humbling experience and it gives you new found respect for those who wear the stripes. But it was still good ol' derby fun! Thank you to Liquor Possi from Blue Ridge Rollergirls for Head Reffing and having the patience of a saint! Thank you to Grumpy Ol' Man & Grumpy Ol' Lady from Charlotte Rollergirls for helping out with the stats & penalties. Thank you to Referend David Caress, Dippin' Dot from Richland County Regulators from lending an experience hand. Thank you to El Jefe from Columbia Quad Squad for earning some more stripes (hahaha no pun intended). Thank you to DD Dragon & Yeti from Greenville Derby Dames for rolling with us. Hands down the toughest bout I've ever had to ref in my life, but I still can't wait for October's "Heaven Help Us!!"

New Girls, New Issues

So let's face one fact that has held true for all of time - when you get a bunch of women together there's bound to be drama. Especially when the woman are a bunch of independent, out-spoken, strong-willed, passionate and "don't-take-no-crap-from-no-one" women. We all know that these are the very women that are drawn to roller derby. The sport wouldn't exist without these women. There wouldn't have been an original A&E series called Rollergirls if there wasn't any drama to put on TV.

In the early months of the league we had encountered some issues with a skater or two and how to handle unsportswoman like conduct (intentionally trying to hurt your own teammate just because you don't like her is considered unsportswoman like conduct). I still kick myself in the pants today about not being more aggressive about it. Letting issues go and trying to make everyone happy really hurt more in the long run and I learned that you're never going to make everyone happy. Someone is always going to get the short end of the stick. I didn't want to scare the skaters away that we had, especially strong skaters, but we ended up losing them because they weren't happy with the majority ruling. Such is life in roller derby. Women will come and women will go over the biggest or smallest things. You've got to remember that roller derby leagues "are run for the skaters, by the skaters" and everyone has a different philosophy on how their league should be run. However it should be everyone's main goal to uphold the Orders of Operations that the league put in place.

Yes we lost some of our founding skaters over the months Mama MIA, Ginger Snap, Boxcutter Betty & we lost a few new recruits to injuries, broken ankles, torn ligaments, & busted up knees. But with these departure's brought us new girls like Pitchaso, Ruby Sinn, Bombshell Bekah, Kimmy Kaos, & Hold'er Back Holland a.k.a Annathrax a.k.a Ivanna Skate. Eventually by March of 2008 we had officially enough skaters to break off into two home teams and in March we received a call from the Palmetto State Rollergirls inviting us to skate in not only our league's first official bout, but the first ever flat-track roller derby bout in the state of SC.

Orders of Operation & LLC

So let's recap, the derby league had a name - Reedy River Rollergirls, it had a core group of skaters, it had a coach, it had a logo, stickers and t-shirts, now all it needed was to be official! We already met at Roxie Moxie's house to have a little "Derby 101" session and to assign specific jobs to certain skaters, but we needed to be official on paper. We needed to have a structure by which to run and maintain the league - especially if we ever hoped to be an official WFTDA league. We needed to rules to handle all sorts of situations that would arise down the road. Roxie & I reached out to everyone that we could find that was in the same boat that we were. We got some great advice from the Blue Ridge Rollergirls from Asheville on setting up an account to maintain funds and we got our orders of operations from the Palmetto State Rollergirls from Conway, SC the only other league in SC at the time that was just as new as we were. Feara Shera brought a friend to practice one night that just so happened to be a lawyer and offered to help us set up our LLC - free of charge. She looked over the Orders of Operations and told me, "You can't perfect what's already been perfected." and approved. The only thing we had to pay was the filing fee of $100 to file our LLC. We'll at the time we hadn't started taking up due's and all of the merch that we had gotten so far had been donated to us from our very first sponsors Anthony's Graphics (t-shirts), Rob from the Rogue Rollergirls designed our logo and Benji from Juggernaut printed up the stickers. Luckily we received the money from an anonymous donor and two weeks later we were official! 

Coach or No Coach?

Finally I had managed to gather a core group of women together that kept coming back to my bi-weekly practices. Word was spreading and some of the regulars starting brining in friends - as was the case with Tornado Tosha recruiting Val Talon. I kept seeing the same faces on a regular basis and managed to come up with an attendance sheet & contact log. Something that Roxie Moxie really helped me organize. Let me tell ya, having someone, even if it's just one person really click with you and you're both organized, driven, focused individuals - magic truly happens! I only had a few women that I met through derby that I just instantianiously clicked with. Roxie Moxie was the first, Val Talon was the second, Torch was the third and The Jersey Kid a.k.a Nir'Ivanna was the fourth. We got our goals accomplished, whether it was league related, training related, or game related I couldn't have gotten it done without them. It takes a hell of a lot to be skater-owned and operated.

Now that the ladies were getting the basics downs we needed closed practices to mark off a track and begin working on drills within the track space. We managed to arrange closed practices at Roller Sports in Taylors in conjunction with out very first photo shoot. My husband just happened to tag along that night and noticed just how insane it was for me to be a skater and a coach at the same time. I couldn't really stand back and assess the girls progress and see what people needed to work on. I also wasn't able to focus on sharpening my own derby skills. So after that very first close practice he offered to coach us. He knew pretty much everything I did since that was all I would talk about and he had access to all of the drills and training manuals that I had.

Some of the girls didn't like the idea of having a male coach, but majority ruled that we needed someone to carry the title of coach that wasn't a skater. So began the reign of F.B. a.k.a Franken

 

The Article that Changed It All

Here it is, the article that changed it all and was the official 'birth' of the Reedy River Rollergirls. As you can clearly see we only had 3 members at the time this article was published and we were practicing in the middle of each and every open skate on Tuesday/Thursday nights. The third girl in the picture was Lucy Diemond. She was the girl friend of one of my husbands friends and someone that I manage to talk into coming out. Of course she fell in love.




I was used to and even a little comfortable with training just two girls and me - so when this article hit news stands come that very Thursday panic set in when I saw 19 women stomping through the doors wanting to know more about Roller Derby.



I was never a very social person. I was a shy awkward child with only a few close friends. Even through high school I knew of a lot of people, but I only had a few close friends. I had taken speech, debate and did Forensics quiet actively through out high school, but I NEVER had to LEAD 19 women before. But on that night more women fell in love with Roller Derby. I met Roxie Moxie, Elly Dismay Clampett, Tornado Tosha, Storm A. Brewin', Feara Sheara, Stella Belladonna, Venemous Vixen, & Shotgun Chelle. Out of the initial 19 women that came through the doors that night, those were the ones that stuck around out the first initial wave. The weak were weeded out mainly because they didn't realize just how much it takes to be a true derby girl.

You had to practice twice a week, you had to drive to and from practice (I believe the furthest anyone drove was from Clemson to Berea where the practices were), you had to pay to rent skates, you had to buy your gear, you had to buy more comfortable clothes to wear during practice and don't forget the awesome derby socks! We knew that a girl was committed if she ordered skates right away.

We had to keep the publicity train a moving' so Roxie Moxie created the website for Reedy River Rollergirls and uploaded the article. We created fliers, posters, anything that we could create to get the word out and get more women involved.

When December 2007 rolled around - we were ready for our first official closed practice.

One is the Lonliest Number...

Once I got some formal training under my belt and all the gear that I needed - save my skates. The next step in creating a league was to find other skaters. I knew roller-derby was the shiznit, now I just needed to convince all the other females in the greater Greenville area.


I spoke of roller-derby and nothing else where ever I went. My co-workers got pissed sick of me bugging them to join and only came out to think rink out of sympathy or to get me to shut up. She said she'd join, she said her friend was interested as well, but I think they only came out to take picture's of themselves, because you see - roller derby is hot!

A LOT of women are attracted to the IMAGE of roller-derby; they just want to be called a 'derby girl'. It takes a special kind of woman to stick with derby for the long haul and love it for what it truly is. A smelly, hard hitting, gut wrenching, shin splinting, bone breaking, crotch bruising, estrogen filled, and puke spewing sport. Roller Derby is not for the faint of heart.

See the picture above? Only the girl in the gray shirt stuck around after that night. Luckily she was my neighbor and it was quiet easy to tie her down, tape her eyes open and force her to watch the A&E series Rollergirls with me. J/K she was more willing than that. It was also super easy to kidnap her and drag her to the rink with me every Tuesday and Thursday night. She was for the longest time my only roller derby recruit.

We emailed each other everyday discussing potential names for our league and potential derby names. I quickly named her Mama M.I.A because I joked that she had a habit of being 'missing in action'. I also decided upon my original derby name - Hellen Debauchery. I wanted something that completely clashed with my goodie two shoes image and conservative upbringing and that was the best I could think of.

I stumbled across a website called twoevils.org that kept a master roster of all registered derby girl names, team names and league names. Greenville Roller Girls was taken by Greenville, NC, SC Roller Girls didn't sound that great, and I low and behold I discovered that Blue Ridge Roller Girls was already registered. I quickly googled them to find out where they were located and rejoiced when I found out that they skated in Hendersonville, NC - just a quick 45 minute drive up hwy 25. I got in contact with the founder of BRRG, Chell O'Shoot 'er and pumped her for as much information as I could. She quickly invited us up to their next practice and we happily hit the road for our first derby road trip.

The Saga Continues

So after the first few initial trips out to the local roller rink, I knew that I needed some formal training and some gear. I went to target and picked up some cheap adult wrist guards, elbow pads, and knee pads. I felt like the biggest dork on the face of the planet when I strapped those suckers on all by my lonesome, but I didn't care.




In August on 2006 Minerva VaVoom took it upon herself to come down the G-Vegas for a visit and a weekend long intensive training session. She told me, "Invest in some better pads - Pro Design, Pro Tect or at the VERY least some cheap skateboarder pads!!" So we went and visited Blazers on Laurens Rd and purchased a better set of pads and my first derby helmet - a sweet hot pink S-ONE helmet. I also found a hot pink mouth guard at a Sports Authority down the road.



I was all ready to hit the rink for my first official training session. We spent hours at both of the local skating rinks, doing stops, falls, whips, hits, sprints, push ups, sit ups, jumps and everything else Ms. VaVoom could think to do. Before she left to go back home to Charm City she passed along two sheets worth of training drills and some parting words of advice - "Get yourself some damn skates!!"

In the Beginning...

Here it goes - after the fate's aligned and brought Minerva VaVoom into my life I wanted to find out more about this "roller derby", but had no clue where to begin. Upon the return from my week long honeymoon, the first email to greet me in my inbox was from Minerva. It explained in great detail what derby was, what I needed to buy, and some websites to check out.


Unfortunately I quickly discovered that the only two leagues’ within driving distance to me was the Carolina Rollergirls located in Raleigh (5 hours away) or the Atlanta Rollergirls (2 hours away). I was quickly crushed. I contemplated how much gas it would eat up to go to practice in Atlanta and it wasn't a possibility for me.

Thinking my derby days were over before they began, I found a second email in my inbox from Minerva. This time it gave me the road map to starting my very own league right in my town. I didn't think I would be able to pull it off though. I hadn't skated since middle school and even back then I sucked royally. I had a good friend that could twirl jump and skate circles around me but she was long gone. I finally dragged my hubby out to the local roller rink one night and strapped those crappy rink skates to my feet...and found my wings.