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So You Want To Be A Star
So, you wanted to be a star?
So many skaters came to the Roller Derby to enjoy the excitement it can bring them.
Even in the 1950's when I began to skate, skaters wanted to join the Derby because they SAW a chance for adventure, travel, and the chance to leave home and be on their own.
Money? Who said you're going to make any?
When I went home to tell my parents, "I'm joining the Roller Derby", my pay was $50 every three weeks including my room and board and travel. A saying I'll never forget from my dad was, "you will get paid peanuts and eat the glory." Traveling was my excitement, but leaving home at almost 17, I needed my parent's permission.
My coach at that time, Silver Rich, told my mother, "if we can't make a skater out of your daughter, she will be back at your doorstep."
Well, you know I never wanted to go back home!!!
Many had high hopes of maybe one day being a star and making lots of money, while doing something they fully enjoyed. Well, at least there was always the excitement!
When Roller Derby came into a new town, there were notices put out for tryouts to join this sport.
Skaters from all walks of life came to try out for this new venture, with hopes they had something that would attract the trainers.
Some had colorful ways of skating, their facial expressions, their body movements, their speed, or there was something that looked like they would make a team player.
At times, the trainers were also the coaches, and they were looking to add new skaters on their team.
A skater could move on the track in certain ways that made the audience actually sit up, stand and cheer. When you sell something, you are communicating to the audience and to television.
You know you're selling when the fans become aroused with the excitement you're creating. Even if you're just a pack skater, there was excitement in the action of the pack.
When a new skater was put on the team, my advice was to watch how the other skaters move on the track and then stay in the back of the pack until the jam has started. Then move to the front of the pack, learn to control the pace of the pack and stay out of everyone's way. If you had the guts to try and take on a more powerful jam on your first try out, I'm sure your teammates would be there to help you. And that's what skating was about, being a team.
This time, I'd like to share with you the art of skating through teamwork.
Roller Derby is a team sport. Women who came to Roller Derby with hopes of becoming famous sometimes had more difficulty with the teamwork aspects of the sport than the men would.
Psychologists tell us that men are preconditioned from early childhood to become team players while women are not. And also, I thought I would reinforce how the sport of Roller Derby has always required the women to become team players. In Roller Derby, women and men are considered equal on a banked track as skaters, more than any other sport.
The Jammers and the top stars of the game were important. But what many skaters and fans failed to see when they watched the games on television or at a live game, was that a big secret to the success of the sport was the teamwork that was required to make the sport exciting.
As a group of skaters, it is teamwork that makes the game become exciting. When this happens, the top Jammers and stars become even more exciting to watch. There was also another aspect. Having a great announcer who can view skaters from all different positions in the pack and sell their excitement to the audience is important, plus having the TV camera look for the excitement instead of staying on a few boring jammers.
Maybe, if skaters of today thought the camera was on the pack, they might put more effort into trying to be noticed.
Roughness in the pack can be as exciting as watching the Jammer action. This can be in the pack before a jammer breaks, and also at the rear of the pack when a jammer and blocker meet for the action of the play, to score points for the team.
Here is a professional game tip that helps to sell the girls' field. This is something that the women can do with a little practice and it will make the game draw millions of attentive spectators and make them yell and scream with excitement of the game. When the whistle blows for the play to start, the pack of women rough it up, before the jammer breaks out of the pack to start the 60-second jam clock.
This part of the game is one where everyone gets to have fun because it involves all ten skaters. They jostle positions and rotate so that the Jammers do not get a chance to break from the pack until the energy in the stands has been brought up a few notches.
The pack skates faster and louder and then finally a jammer breaks out. The jammer breaks from the pack like a quarter horse, taking a huge leap from the others to reach the rear of the pack, to try and score for her team.
No matter how many Jammers get out for the jam, the pack keeps moving, jostling, and roaring around the track. The skaters are staying close, not at a dead standstill, but together and exchanging positions from the upper part of the banks to the lower parts of the banks. When the Jammer or Jammers finally get to the rear of the pack there can be great blocking and have no score. This is called offensive and defensive skating, and teamwork using all the skaters on the track.
When the teams try this out, the pack of skaters will stay in control of the action, not the Jammers, as many people think. The team of skaters in the pack need to look at each other and the Jammers to communicate to one another as a team. As the pack picks up speed, they control how long it will take for the Jammers to get to the back of the pack.
The pack can even make the 60-second jam clock run out before the Jammers get to the rear. This helps to illustrate how Roller Derby grew from a speed skating background, and also shows that the sport involves offensive speed and team skills. The fans understand and love the action.
Pack skaters are very important. Another quick example is when the pack decides to set up the defensive blocking pattern. They need to talk to one another and have their defensive skater fall back a little to block out a jammer.
The pack is also sending back one backstop skater whose job it is to watch the defensive blocker and be prepared in case the jammer should score. Then the backstop skater must block the jammer. If the pack skaters are just skating forward in their own world and letting Jammers skate by them, then the game is lost to the television and audience. If and when this defensive part of the game is forgotten by the pack, then the sport is lost to the fans.
The lesson that I hope each of you have learned is one small lesson in how the sport requires teamwork, and how the pack is the most important part of the team. The lesson we learned in the 1950's was that if this part of teamwork breaks down, then the sport of Roller Derby itself gets lost. Then the fans stop coming to the events because it no longer seems like they are at a sporting event.
My final suggestion on this subject of team sports would be to watch videotapes from the 1959 championship games skated between the Westerners and the Bombers, the video of the Ravens and Braves from Seattle, or the game between the Ravens and the Chiefs. In these videos you can see three of the best girl's Captains skate. They were Annis Jensen of the Bombers, Gerry Murray of the Chiefs, and Mary Youpelle of the Braves. On my team, the Ravens, all the skaters were stars.
For those that enjoy good teamwork that helps to highlight speed, offensive and defensive skating, these videotapes are great and help to show what has been lost over the decades of the sport.
I've been told that a lot of tapes are on the market now from the 50's to the 90's. They are good learning tools & also show how the sport has gotten lost through the years.
I WANT THIS NOTED. The skaters in these tapes do not make a dime off any tapes that someone is selling. I want this to be known by all. My only interest is that it's a learning tool for future skaters if Roller Derby, the sport, is to stay alive for the future generations.
If your game loses these offensive, defensive, and teamwork concepts, then the game is left with just the wild antics. Everyone knows that if you like those types of things, then simply produce professional wrestling matches or watch professional wrestling.
The game of Roller Derby is much like a game of monopoly; it is a game with rules, speed and strategy. Then, out of that, the stars can build up the excitement.
If your game keeps these concepts, through the use of teamwork and communication on the track, I guarantee that the game will be a success. No one claims that tempers don't flair in Roller Derby games, but there are more exciting ways to generate excitement besides fighting every moment of a game.
Pleasure to be with you,
Loretta "Little Iodine" Behrens