Down & Derby

"Red carpet" entry into the Doll Factory

I've never seen the movie "Whip It"- but for those of you who have, Drew Barrymore apparently did her research for the film with the LA Derby Dolls.  Since I haven't seen the movie or a Roller Derby... match? jam perhaps?  contest?  I dunno what you call it...  anyway, with this being my first Roller Derby experience, I didn't really know what to expect.  I knew it was girls on roller skates and I knew that it got physical.  I guess I kinda pictured girls randomly skating around and body checking each other into walls, hockey style.

My foggy conceptions of Roller Derby were clarified on Sunday evening at "Baby Doll Brawl"- a competition for the newest LA Derby Dolls, the ladies of the Fresh Meat program who are training to make one of the 4 home teams.  The Derby Dolls are one of the few banked-tracked derby leagues in the world, most (98%) are flat track and from my research on Wikipedia, banked-track seems way cooler.  One of Steph's friends was actually competing on one of the teams under the pseudonym "Belle Scorcho."  Yeah... so one of the awesome things about derby is that the girls compete under skater names and some of them paint their faces and add some flare to their outfits.  Yep, little bit like pro wrestling, lotta bit awesome.  Speaking of awesome...

Yep, disco ball roller skate.  Boom.

Ok, so that now that I've established that Roller Derby is flashy, let's talk about the rules.  Each team has 5 players on the track for each round, called a jam.  4 players are blockers and one player is a jammer- they wear a star on their helmet.  The blockers line up in front of the jammers and start skating on the first whistle.  The jammers skate into the pack on the second whistle and try to get through.  Blockers attempt to block the opposing teams jammer and help theirs through.  This is where the body checking comes in to play, slightly more organized than I pictured it since everyone is moving in the same direction together:

It's hard to tell because it's blurry, but the pink helmet w/ the black blob is the jammer...

Once a jammer is through the pack, she is eligible to score points.  Points are scored by skating around the rink and passing through the pack again.  You get one point for each member of the opposing team that you lap.  More times lapping the pack=more points.  Each jam lasts about a minute but can be called off early by the lead jammer (the jammer who breaks through the pack first).  When the jam is called (or just over) teams get the points that were earned by their respective jammer added to their score.

Scoreboard.  Are you getting the punk rock feel??

Also, like hockey, there are penalties and skaters can be put in the penalty box, causing their team to be down a player (or sometimes 3...) for the next jam.  If the jammer is out, the other team has a "power jam" since they are the only team able to score points.

Players on the bench in the middle of the track.
Players on penalty are in the middle of the benches.

Apparently the derby I saw way pretty tame given that it was the new girls, it was a Sunday evening, and it was an all ages event.  Even so, it was a ton of fun and actually not quite as brawly as I had been lead to believe- let's put it this way, I've been involved in more violent kickball games.

Wahh, wah.

Kidding...you could totally shatter your ankle if you got your skate tangled up in the scrum-like pack.  That thought alone is enough to keep me from signing up, even though I secretly want to try it and have been thinking about what my derby name would be.  (Perhaps no longer a secret since I just posted it on the interweb...oops?) Despite the fact that I would make a stellar blocker,  my lack of coordination would be a serious hindrance.  Also you get penalties for using your arms to block and I feel like I would try to arm check everyone.  Clearly my time is better served downing beers in the stands while screaming at the participants- I'm quite accomplished at this and let's be honest, sports are nothing without fans.  I'm looking forward to being a stellar Roller Derby fan at future competitions.