Blood & Thunder

Blood&ThunderFeb2011ZK005 a photo by Zeeev on Flickr.

My current league, Crude City Roller Derby, hosted a Blood & Thunder Training Camp the last weekend of February. Tryouts for a Roller Derby World Cup team that will compete in December 2011 were held during the camp. This shot was taken during tryouts.

After the hour and a half tryout, when we were offered the chance to verbally promote ourselves on video, all I could say was, "I wish you would have done this when I was 35."

My Very Own Derby Revolution

Crude City Roller Derby's last home bout of the 2010 season has been cancelled.  The team we were scheduled to play is having issues, reorganizing, or something of the like that befalls most fledging derby leagues, and we couldn't scrounge up enough girls to get a mixed scrimmage going.  Bummer.

So that brings me around to some thoughts I've had since My Day One in derby...why can't derby actually be a sport?  When I say sport, I mean a game that has been organized, specifically with a defined season and predetermined competitors.  (I'm not even going to get into rules here; that is a can of worms I will never open.)  Yes, WFTDA has done a fine job of organizing and defining on a very high level with regional tournaments leading up to a national tournament and the member leagues that have the opportunity to compete at these tournaments, but something is missing.  The ranking system that precedes these tournaments is completely arbitrary (with not all the teams ever having played each other, or even half of the teams ahead of them in the rankings). You might be a team in the Eastern Region that can kick everybody's ass in the South Central, but for some reason, you don't even make it to the national tournament. (And I know that can happen in any sport, but it's more apt to happen when there is no cross-regional competition outside of a tournament.)  I can ramble on and on and never make any sense about this, and hell, maybe nobody will ever make any sense about derby as a sport, but I've got to get my idea out of my head.

There are many, many derby leagues that will never be able to compete in WFTDA as it now stands, my current league being one of them.  I really don't want to have to worry if I'm actually going to get to skate in a bout once a month; hell, I would love to bout every freaking weekend (believe me, it is much easier on your body than putting it through four grueling practices a week).  What I want is a set schedule that comes out at the beginning of the season and sets my team and any other team on the schedule up for having a win-loss record that will determine standings going into playoffs.  To make this happen, maybe we need to start thinking small.  Maybe all these Texas teams that either aren't in WFTDA or will never make it to a regional tournament can organize a season?  Crude (Corpus) has played teams from Central Texas, Amarillo, East Texas, even one from Louisiana, this year.  Why not get all these teams and anybody we missed and say, "Hey, could we all decide to play each other twice this year, one home and one away, and then have a playoff tournament in October/November where we all get together and compete for FLAT-TRACK ROLLER DERBY CHAMPION OF TEXAS/LOUISIANA."?  Sounds like a great idea to me.  Would anybody else out there want to get behind an idea like that, where you could actually identify as a fan to your city's roller derby team and want them to knock the socks off that other city you hate?

Well, I could certainly relate to that and feel like I'm actually playing a sport again, just like I did when I played basketball in college or women's professional football or even when I went down to the sand volleyball courts for some co-ed action and we beat every other team in our league over a six-week period to win a shirt and some free beer.  Maybe I should just quit there, keep living in the glory days, and just be thankful I have the opportunities I do.  Nah, I'm going to keep thinking about how to make the flat-track revolution actually happen.

I Just Thought I Was an Amazon

This is a true Amazon! The thing is she SHOULD be able to dunk and rack up the triple-doubles...she's a foot taller than most other girls. What is truly impressive is, from the looks of the video, she knows how to assist as well. I remember I had a real problem giving up the ball whenever I touched it. Imagine that. I had to work on my triple-doubles in points, rebounds, and blocks, and I was only a half a foot taller than most other girls.

A Sad Day for Houston Sports

I cannot believe it. The Comets, Houston's WNBA franchise, are being disbanded. Their wikipedia page has already been updated...geez, people, the body isn't even cold yet. ;)

This is just a shock to me. I was in the Compaq Center for their championship games...even drove from Austin to support my hometown team (and you're lucky I didn't say The Summit instead of Compaq Center because I saw my first concert there back in the early '80s). When my daughter was old enough, I wanted to show her yet another reason why she can be anything she wants to be.

This does not bode well for women's sports in general...let alone the perpetuation of the problems with Houston sports teams. What the hell is wrong with this place?

I Think I'm Entitled...

to bitch about working 13 hours straight on a Monday after spending Sunday abusing my body. You know that freaky bone that sticks out on the top of my foot (and if you don't know, it's not an injury, it's done that all my life)???...somehow that got scraped through my leather skate and two socks. What I wouldn't give right now with 30 minutes left of my voluntary prison in this god-forsaken library to be 24 hours in the past, putting more scrapes on my freaky bones.

Disappointments

Sometimes I wish I could be totally honest here. Actually, I wish I could be totally honest here all the time, but as a representative of the league, I must bite my tongue when I am tempted to share my humble opinions, even though there may be a couple of other people "sitting the bench" who would agree with my opinion of why Houston Roller Derby lost the championship game of the 2007 Governor's Cup. Since I can't be open and honest about league strategies, I'm going to focus on another disappointment that should be painfully obvious to everyone: attendance sucked!

I was expecting to skate in front of a couple of thousand people last night, from all over the state of Texas. I doubt we had half that number at the highest point. Why? Did we not market? We were lucky enough to be featured in the Chronicle's Preview last Thursday. Did people stay home to watch the Emmys? Use your DVR! Or football? If my husband missed a whole day of obsessively checking his fantasy stats and lived, then anybody can do it. Was $20 too much to pay to see five gangs of raving lunatics beat each other to bloody pulps? I know people pay more than that to watch UFC on pay-per-view. What are we doing wrong?

We, the skaters and a few die-hard fans, go on and on about this being a sport...well, real sports have spectators, and unless we get a steady number of paying customers for every bout, then roller derby, at least in Houston, will always be just a recreational activity. Now tell my beaten and bruised body that I'm just participating in a recreational activity...it might never forgive you.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

If you don't hear from me for a while, please don't worry. Rodeo starts tonight! I'm already off to a good start, kicking my own butt at the cookoff on Saturday (not necessarily news to anyone since even my neighbors have heard about it already) then staying out way past my bedtime on Sunday to see the Nacogdoches Rollergirls first bout this year. My friend, Madame Furie, has an excellent synopsis of Sunday evening on her blog.

Anyway, George will keep me out late tonight, then tomorrow I have travel team tryouts till 10:30pm, Brawler practice on Thursday night, and maybe I'll get to sit down for 45 minutes and watch this week's episode of Amazing Race on Friday afternoon before I head up to the rodeo again. Wheeeee! I'll see you in April.

Am I a Movie Star?

As I was working on my Amazing Race application this morning, I came across the question, "Have you ever appeared in a publicly released film or video of any sort?". Well, let's see...when I was playing football for the Austin Rage, we had a documentary filmmaker follow us around for a while. He even interviewed me at MPOW one day, and I babbled on and on about breaking stereotypes and other optimistic crap. So I can see why I would end up on the cutting room floor, but since I haven't seen the finished product, I'm not sure if I have appeared in a publicly released film or video.

That made me curious to find out if anyone had seen the finished product, and I found the "Playing with RAGE" trailer on YouTube. Boy, did that bring back some memories! I didn't spot myself in any of the clips, but it still looks awesome. It won an award at a Memphis film festival in October of 2006. Maybe we will see it in Houston soon.

Kinky Likes Roller Derby!

Everybody else is blogging about it, albeit for many different reasons, but I might as well give a shout-out to Kinky Friedman for giving a shout-out to roller derby. Just in case you don't want to read the article, here's the clip:

"I don't like basketball and I don't like women's basketball," he grumbles into his cellphone. "If it was roller derby, it would be different."

Kinky's referring to a promo he was asked to tape for the Houston Comets 10th anniversary. Now I must say that I totally respect the Comets, and I was even at their first three WNBA Championship games (good stuff!). In fact, I played against Sheryl Swoopes when I was in college. So I don't agree with him there. I do wonder what it would take to get him to do a promo for roller derby, though. Hell, forget the promo! Show up at a bout, such as the Stars Across Texas event that TXRG is hosting in September.