I felt special this past week, 3 different leagues asked me to NSO, ref and announce all within 5 hours of each other. I have a first come first serve policy, provided the league has a NSO spot available for my friend Geri, the gypsy jew. I assure you, he’d get a kick out of the nickname and not take offense. All refs can benefit from working a bout as an NSO, and even though DJ TJ and Stash Merkin make announcing seem easy, having a Ref and NSO background make announcing only SLIGHTLY less daunting than it actually is.
In any case, Skruff was the first to ask me to NSO for him this weekend and I made plans to ride with Geri out to Youngsville. Now I always bring my skate gear with me, cuz ya never know when someone else might drop out or not show up to ref. And at the very least I can sneak in some pre bout skate time. Fortunately, for me, one of Skruff’s refs, dropped out earlier this week so he asked me to bring my gear.
Now once Geri and I made it to Top Shelf Sports, I was made aware of the fact that some Acadiana skaters were former Cen-La Derby Dames of Alexandria. Derby isn’t a professional sport YET, so this is quite common and not subject to trading or free agent rules. Skaters move or even work near a league and find it easier to goto practice from work.
As a rule of thumb when asked to ref I just presume that’ll be working on the outside, and wait to be told that I’m on the inside. Skruff and I had worked together last season as Jam refs in a game CenLa played in Lake Charles. So I was a bit surprised when I was told I was gonna be jam ref, because generally the jam ref is a rep of one league that are playing. Visiting team generally brings at least 2 of their own refs and one of them is their Jam ref as well. Though jam refs swap teams at the half to keep it fair so that no one can argue that a jam ref was being impartial. Anywho, the point is, jam ref is kind of a big deal. So being a visiting ref and given a seat of honor, so to speak means quite a bit to me.
Saturday nights bout was a very fun game to officiate. In hindsight, CDD seemed to be playing for the love and fun of the game, and ARG was playing to win. Not that CDD was playing to lose, just that their skaters seemed like they were having a good time on track, and ARG had a militaristic way of playing. Early on ARG established a strong lead, when I glanced at the scoreboard, I think ARG was up 24 to 3. However, Dirty Beets and another skater, jack rabbit slim I believe, managed to get lead jammer and pulled the TXRG strategy of one n done. Meaning, get lead jammer, get at least one point on the board and call it off before the other jammer can score. its slow moving, but the net gain is more important than scoring a 16 point jam if the other jammer scores 14. I think CDD managed to keep ARG scoreless for about 6 or 7 jams and probably caught up to ARG. But Coach Friday changed his strategy and had his jammers out front first and racking up points again.
My first penalty call for the night was blue 13 back block major. I remember it one because I think even the crowd on the other side of the track heard me make the call AND the fact that the skater gave me a sheepish grin, like ‘dang I was hoping you didn’t see that’. In the second half I was CenLa’s Jammer ref, and generally a jam ref makes one or two gaffs per bout. Usually it’s the first jam of the second half and you end up following or keeping your eye on the same jammer/team you had in the first half. Sven Deför kept saying aloud, the color of the team he’s NOW supposed to watch in the second half, though I kept saying ‘i am white teams jam ref, white team is my jammer, i am white teams jam ref’. Even repeating that to yourself for a few minutes before the whistle of the second half, jam refs are fallible and can follow the wrong jammer. I didn’t make that mistake in the first jam… I made it about 4 jams later, luckily I caught myself before the jammers made it out of the pack so I didn’t impact the game.
I must say that CenLas Jammers fought hard last night. Dirty Beets got lead jammer more often than not in the 2nd half, Slim I think was about 50/50 and poor Misfit, she’s tiny and fast, but the pack ended up trapping her quite often. Sadly as a jammer ref, you don’t get to see all the action, since you end up seeing the pack, three to ten seconds at a time. All in all I must say I had a great time refing last night in Youngsville with great refs, teams and NSOs. Did I mention the announcers?
nothing special about this one, in so far as how I got the gig. There was a sign up sheet (google doc) early in the season and I signed up through the end of the season to ref @ Alamo City RG.
So its the usual suspects reffing this bout, Cucuy, Chop Stewie, Karate Chappa, and El Matador (the locals) Krez Sez & Private Been Jammin (PBJ) from Houston, but skating as reps for Texas Roller Derby All Scar Army.
Now the special thing about this bout, in case you dear reader don’t already know, TXRD is banked track. If you live in the SATX/Austin area, you can catch it on cable-or so I’m told. There’s quite a few nuances that are different between a banked track and flat track ruleset. The general objective is the same, get your jammer through and score points, stop the other jammer from doing the same. Sounds easy right? You’d be surprised. In any case, one big difference is that in banked track is when a skater commits a penalty they serve their time in the following jam. So they continue to skate the current jam, knowing this, I was worried there’d be an issue getting TXRD skaters off track whenever they got a major penalty. Generally there’s one or two skaters per league that seem genuinely surprised when they get sent to the box. Occasionally pointing to another skater and vocalizing that we missed something another skater did. I must say that I really appreciated TXRD in that whenever they were sent off, they made eye contact nodded that they heard that they were being sent off and would get off track as quickly as possible without running into other skaters and beeline to the box. though there were a few that weren’t as quick, but thats more an issue with not being heard yelling penalties over the volume of the sound system.
ACRGs Tricky Bobbie has grown by leaps and bounds in a few short months, perviously, as a jammer whenever she got hit she’d go down and take a lil more than a second to recover and get back on her skates. NOW she takes hits like a pinball, simply bouncing off the initiator of the block or spinning around and racing her way to the front. LA DodgeHer has improved slow pack slicing. Last season and even early in this season, if the pack was moving slowly, she lacked some lateral ability to find a hole to get through and score. Now if the pack is moving fast, all she needs is about a inch wider than her skates wheel base and she glide right though with the slightest of glancing hits. Rounding out ACRGs rotation was Speedyrella, true to her name, Black n’ Blue Belle-ACRG’s skater of the month, and also much more graceful and improved over the past few months and last but certainly not least Barbacoa, who is amazing because she’s one of those rare skaters who can block AND jam.
Now TXRD isn’t chopped liver, from my understanding, compared to last years bout, they’ve shown tremendous improvement. There certainly wasn’t any lack os skating ability, unfortunately this was my first time seeing them and between focusing on defining the pack, processing 20 pages of the rules depending on the scenario in less than a seconds time, assisting the jammer refs, avoid plowing through the camerawoman, skating backwards and hoping I don’t screw up too terribly, I didn’t get to see TXRD as a whole. However, i don’t recall seeing any of them wiping out on the track because, from my perspective, of their wheels or lack of comfort with the skating surface. they stayed on all 8 wheels as intended, or 4 if need be. Also amazing agility from several skaters, in being able to race out front with the jammer AND awareness of the pack AND having another skater nearby to know to make a bridge to the pack. though there was an occasional out of play just because the pack shifted on them. but what impressed me most was the pack awareness, and I’m pretty sure that next year, with a better understanding of the WFTDA ruleset they’ll close the point spread and may even pull of a surprise win.
In derby there’s good, bad and ugly and it can all be nothing short of amazing. Last season I had the opportunity to jam ref with Skruff McDuffie in Lake Charles. I can’t recall the first time I worked with Short Fuse but he’s all over Louisiana and Texas but it was well before Belle Ringer. Hell’s Hand & I worked together in Pasadena once when his team played there —I have to admit this was one of the bad’s not Hell’s Hand, just a bad situation, I might write about it in the off season.
Magnolia Roller Vixens had a very impressive track warm up. Some of their drills were unorthodox, but they made a lot of sense. Like a drill in which they’d purposely roll over the track boundary, to get a feel for it, and then recycle or jump back into the pack. They were fierce, and though displeased with some calls and a perceived lack of calls, some may have been justified. They were quite prim and proper as to not argue or yell at the refs, they let their captain and alternate do so to the head ref, during timeouts, as it should be.
Acadiana has a very nice venue, its essentially a indoor hockey rink, but its very clean. The music and announcer, Stash Merkin, was at just the right level. Speaking of the announcing, having done so a time or two, I wholeheartedly respect how easy they make a difficult job seem. MORESO having to do it by yourself. The National Anthem was played by a skating violinist, very interesting and moving all at once.
Now as far as the game goes, it was very fast paced with a few hiccups, but the ref crew was quite fair in all their calls. From what I understood of the complaints, it seemed that there is a misunderstanding on the skater/coach/training side as to Out of Play and No Pack situations as well as Destruction of Pack. Both teams had skaters sitting in the box because of the lack of understanding. But I think at halftime Short Fuse was able to clear that for the coaching staff, because the second half seemed to have less of those penalties.
Otherwise the game was played quite cleanly by both teams. There were of course some elbows and forearm penalties, and a few multi-player blocks. As a ref, in time you can get an eye for a team that’s playing to the best of their ability and a team that’s trying to win at any cost. Both teams last night showed, me at least, the former.
OrgAnnica is an amazing head NSO, very little escapes her. There were a few times that I or another outside pack ref sent a skater to the box for a major. We think we’re loud enough for the inside refs/NSOs to hear us. Sometimes this is true, however there were a few times that a skater was in the box and I could see OrgAnnica points and asking her wranglers, and I’m guessing here, “who has Teal (number’s) penalty?”. When they’d shrug and say “I dunno” she’d look to the outside and find the out of rotation ref and point to the skater. Then we’d hand signal the penalty and point that it was a major, she’d give us the thumbs up, and the pack would be back around on us.
All in all I had a great time, a good cigar, a decent after party meal, played “get to know an NSO” for about 6 hours, and can’t wait for the next time I get to go to Louisiana.
So you know the drill. Some time ago I was setup to help out with this bout and now we fast forward right? Well this one was a bit different than the uzh, Sk8-B8 didn’t reach out, since he only deals with refs and as of late a lot of league have an over abundance of refs. An NSO I work with asked me if I was working this bout just last Tuesday. I told him no, since the two leagues are pretty ref heavy now a days. So Geri Let me know that they still need NSOs. SWEET, I like both of these teams and their skaters AND officials. So I threw my name in the hat and I got pegged to do lineup tracker.
Now if I tried to explain how to do the job, you might get lost, but it’s pretty simple and you HAVE to watch the bout. What a chore right? especially if you love derby! In any case, It’s something I’ve gotten into the groove of doing. and it allows me the freedom to roam a bit. So about 15 mins before the Ref/ NSO head coin, I get a text from my friend “Sunnie with a chance of Pain” to see if I was gonna be at the Bayou Outlaws vs Rocket City bout. which I was, then she asked if I would mind announcing, HELL YEAH! so far I had announced 1 and a quarter bouts. I’ve told y’all about the Rocket City vs Cen-Tex bout I got to pop my cherry on. A few weeks ago, my post didn’t pop up on the Northside Fury vs Bayou Outlaws I got to announce for about 20 mins. One of the announcers had to leave and Sunnie was on her own, which without some banter make announcing a bit dry. So because we worked pretty well together she asked me to help her out since her co-announcer for THIS bout had car trouble and couldn’t make it.
Now I had to find a sucker to fill my spot. Which was made all the more daunting because explaining the job with the sheet that they’re going to work off of makes the job sound like a nightmare. But once I explained to Super Dave what the job entailed with the tracker sheet as a visual it went pretty smoothly.
So for this bout I got to announce the intros for Bayou Outlaws which I flubbed a bit, I got tongue twisted and said Bayou City Outlaws (I was thinking HRD for a sec) but got everything else out pretty clearly. With BORG struggling in the first half to get their wheels to stick to the floor. I think the first half ended with Rocket City 100 to Bayou 38, huge deficit to come back from but not at all outside the realm of possibility in a derby bout. Ax N 4 it and Stretch Her both had some injuries on track that had to have the jam called off. Sox Star and Eval Kinevil both did great as jammers and were like pinballs in the pack getting knocked around from blocker to blocker, and a few times with the floor. But they popped right back up and kept going. One or the other should’ve taken a variation of ‘timex’ as their derby name. Bayou’s Bootylicious was ever the B3 sweeper or front pack wall slowing down Rocket City in quite a few jams while making a hole for her jammer to get out of the pack. Bayou Outlaws Pulled through to to finish the game with 105 to Rocket City’s 191. A huge gain over their first half performance, many thanks to X Factor & Wild Cat for racking up some points for Bayou and Beep Beep, Cherry Chaser & the rest of the Outlaws making way for their jammers.
I gotta mention that I’m proud and surprised the Frisky Bidness & Cute Butt Psycho made it through the bout with as few penalties as they did. They’ve improved their game quit a bit over the past few months and have either gotten sneakier or in my opinion better.
Our all-stars (ranked 5th in South Central) lost against the Windy City Rollers (ranked 1st in North Central) this morning, 232 to 93. I had predicted this game would be a loss, but I was hoping for a good showing and a respectable losing score, and HRD delivered. I followed the DNN textcast for…
Houston Roller Derby’s all-stars won against the Mad Rollin’ Dolls from Madison, Wisc. 176-127 tonight, bringing their season record to 5-0. They’ll go against Chicago Outfit tomorrow and Windy City on Sunday.
I predict a nail-biter win for HRD against Outfit and possibly a loss against Windy City, but you never know! So proud of those ladies right now! Who are we? HRD!
Normally this starts off with the how and why I was working a bout. But for some reason my post from last week when Houston’s Knockouts played las Pistoleras at San Antonio didn’t post. That was 390 something to 28. It was turrble, but I was kind of proud to see that at half time it didn’t demoralize las Pistoleras, in fact they played a little harder and scored more than double their points from the first half. Its not saying much, given the score, but the alternative to giving up and quitting. A much better job. It was however kinda fun to be able to guess, acurately, when the Knockouts were going to call off the jam.
Now for THIS past weekend April 21st bout, Alamo City @ Houston. Alamo city won 172 to 115 against Bayou City Bosses. Alamo City’s LA DodgeHer did a beastial job getting out of the pack and almost every time getting lead jammer and dominating. I didn’t know what to expect out of this match up as Houston Roller Derby went through some drafting to equalize the playing field now that they have four home teams. So the cross pollenation might make for better teams once they get their bearings. Bayou City Boss, Bloody Hell was an antagonistic sweeper at B3 through out the night and chased the jammer more than once. Voodoo Dollie and LA seemed to have a bit of a rivalry going on track with some Jammer on Jammer action in the deep blue sea, half a lap ahead of the pack.
Bosses held their own and rallied at the end of the second half with a couple of grand slams, but just not enough to chip away at the lead ACRG established early on in the game. Boss, Becky Booty gave all the ACRG jammers trouble when they made their way to the front of the pack by knocking them out of bounds and forcing ACRGs Tricky Bobby and Black n Blue Belle to recyle more often than not. Though Belle’s biggest issue seemed to be being able to keep her wheels stuck to the skate court floor that was too slick for what she’s used to. If i’m not mistaken she was on poisons so I have no idea what else she could do to help keep her wheel stuck to the floor.
First score keeping job of the year. Double header tonight and it’s gonna be a fun night. Great to see old familiar faces among skaters, NSOs and officials. Derby <3 is strong here, Rubi is loving with her gracious smile and Snickers is a laugh a minute with her dry wit. I’m not used to sitting down during a bout so this is gonna be an interesting night being score keeper. The setup for tonight is different from last year, where the scoreboard, lineup and announcers were at the the straightaway between turn 4 & 1. This year it’s at turn 4, which used to be turn 2. It’s a better vantage point for the NSOs to watch whats going on.
Tonight’s first bout is between Red Stick Roller Derby and Spindletop Roller Derby. Already I see a fan favorite Glock Strap, Turbo Tyke. Sadly Rock Bottom didn’t make it out here. Moxie Balboa & Jams P Sullivan are Beasts! They jammed pretty much all night, Lil Miss Maggot gave them some relief in jam 16, and TKO spent jams 12-14 in the box, due to a misunderstanding in being released. In the second period Maggot got into the rotation in the 7th jam with Jams P. Sullivan. Tank goodness fouled out in jam 18. Glock Strap is quite an effective B3 sweeper and B1 commanding the red wall.
Spindletop managed to figure out how to break out of the wall of red in the second half and rallied the crowd and doubled their points from the first half at 36 to end it 92-138 Red Stick. Emma Propriate, Foto Finish, AndyConDuh and Choctaw did did most of the jam rotations. Bootylicious & Ravoltin’ Rambo were knocking’ red jammers out left n right as best they could & succeeded more often than not, but red was resilient. All in all it was a great action packed first game and I can’t wait for bout #2 to get started.
