Push some boundaries and maybe even break a few rules. It’s ok, you are learning
To an unindoctrinated spectator, roller derby may look like nothing more that uncoordinated mayhem. But in reality, it is a sport governed by many rules. These rules are primarily in place to ensure safety and fairness in gameplay for all skaters. All skaters have to take and pass a test of the rules before they are allowed to play competitively. Generally, for the ten skaters playing, 7 referees are on track at any one time to enforce the rules and their whistles signaling penalty-worthy violations are commonplace. If you are called out for a rule violation, it gets you a one-way ticket to the penalty box for 30 seconds to contemplate your transgression.
Now I have always been a rule follower, a people pleaser, a teacher’s pet, and an all-around “good girl”. So you can understand why, for me, the idea of breaking a rule and having to serve a penalty felt like the worst thing in the world. I began my derby career dead set on never getting a penalty as long as I was a skater.
I made it exactly 1 game. In my post “If you are alone, you are wrong”, I tell the story of the first jam I ever skated in during a bout and how my only contribution was being ‘goated’. Here is the story of the second jam I ever skated in. It took place in my league’s initial bout of the River Valley Riot Tournament. Like my first bout, I was an alternate and spent most of it nervously watching from the bench. But I vowed to do better and promised myself I will stay connected to my team, no matter what!
Towards the end of the bout, I was called up to skate. I lined up in the middle of the other blockers, put my game face on, and prepared for the jam to start and chaos to erupt. Before I even knew what had happened, the whistle blew and the jammer had impacted me and the blocker beside me, pushing hard on the seam between us. Things were going great for exactly 7 seconds until suddenly, from behind me I heard a “tweet” and I looked up to see a referee pointing at me and signaling a penalty.
Turns out, I had committed a multiplayer block, a penalty in which a skater impedes the progress of a jammer challenging a seam by illegally grasping another skater. Now, this type of penalty is a very common mistake for newbie skaters. Those newly initiated to derby gameplay are generally terrified and tend to grab on to their teammates for dear life. Unlike what you may have seen in the movies where skaters link arms and clothes line a competitor, illegally grasping another skater is not allowed in modern roller derby. It is not safe for either the jammer or the blocker; this is how arms get broken and people get seriously hurt. We often instruct Fresh Meat recruits to use ‘Barbie hands’ to hold onto each other so that those connections will break easily when challenged. Yes, I was doing my best, yes, I didn’t do it on purpose, but I fell exactly into this trap and I had been called out on it.
WFTDA Penalty Signal Guide for Referees (Document credit: WFTDA - https://wftda.com/new-fans/
None of this made me feel any better in the moment. All I knew was that I had now skated for about 30 seconds of game play total in my derby career and I was about to spend my second 30 seconds in the penalty box not helping my team. For a goody-two-shoes like myself, this was simply awful. I was confused, I was embarrassed, I was … mad. You can clearly see the full body eye-roll I gave when I realized what was happening and skulked off to the penalty box to serve my time.
But you what? It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I had feared. First off, the penalty box staff we very kind when they learned it was my first time out. I also wasn’t alone. My captain, Dingleberry, was already in the box finishing up serving a penalty she had received the jam before and calmly, sweetly said “Come’on over here and sit down next to me” while tapping the chair next to her as I skated over. In fact, I wasn’t even the only skater to receive a multiplayer block penalty that period.
Explanation of the rules and demonstration of the multiplayer block. (Video credit: Big Easy Roller Girls - see their Facebook page for video access).
Most importantly, getting that penalty allowed me to learn an important lesson and it motivated me to improve. In fact, before the next game in the tournament, I went right to my phone to read up on the rules and last-minute crammed some videos about how to legally block. Now, I won’t say I’ve never been called on a multiplayer block again, and I have definitely visited the penalty box on more than one occasion since then. But what’s changed is my attitude towards penalties. Thanks to that first painful rule-breaking experience, instead of seeing my mistakes as something I have done wrong, I approach every penalty I earn with a growth mindset and a willingness to learn.
