Next week ARRG’s All Star team head of to WFDTA Division 2 playoffs for the first time. Getting ready has been a huge operation, involving a lot of lists and a lot of bunting, and lists on bunting. Everyone has pitched in, bringing their own skills and talents! 

Here’s 9 things we’ve been doing as a team to get ready to take on D2…

1. A UNIQUE APPROACH TO FUNDRAISING.. (by Skinner)
Like many other leagues, we’ve had to raise a tonne of cash just to get our team over to Pittsburgh and our teamies and league mates have worked their socks off to raise funds. We’ve guest coached, put on a feast and flogged cake and merch until we could sell no more. But our most novel fundraising tactic yet….BINGO! Your nan would be proud. All Star teamies headed out to the bingo hall with the agreement that any winnings went into the travel fund. A couple of rule misunderstandings may have rustled some old lady feathers, but it was all worth it for the team bonding and amazing… drumroll….. £52 that was raised on the night! So that’s someone’s hold luggage paid for anyway.

2. THE EPIC TRAINING PLAN…(by Crazylegs)
My focus for Playoffs prep – as well as working out a lot – has been to make sure the team had a custom made all singing, all dancing ridiculously detailed training plan (aka The Plan) to help us feel as prepared as we can be.  With only 5 weeks between end of season and the D2 Tournament, the team needed to hit the ground running and feel supported and organised to work on training priorities. Like all good plans – it was built bit by bit, whilst sipping wine on summer hols!

Our goal has been to create an even more confident and unified team in a tiny amount of time, and we’ve shaped training differently to build up a story from session to session, increasing our confidence and improving along the way. We’ve brought common elements to every session for familiarity and routines that we are taking to Playoffs so we all feel focused, energetic, positive, dynamic and above all, teamy!!

Our league is amazing for helping us focus on this and providing extra resources for the team, and the team has been full of resilience, showing up session after session with aching bodies and tired brains and getting through it with silly jokes and a lot of R.E.S.P.E.C.T.  We’re coming to the end of The Plan on Sunday, and then we have two whole lovely unstructured days to stretch and sleep and relax until we board planes to Pittsburgh where we shall be following the next plan… THE ULTIMATE TOURNAMENT TEAM PLAN that tells us all where to be and when, and when to pee!!

3. PLAYING LOCAL RIVALS.. (by everyone!)
Playing local leagues Glasgow Roller Derby and Dundee Roller Girls in the last weeks before we head over to Pittsburgh has given us an extra training boost – thank you guys! It’s been a chance to hone our tactics against other leagues, skate on different floors, to work to specific goals for each game and to have fun.

4. TAKING OUR LEAGUE WITH US!. (by Cirque)
Getting to playoffs is a huge achievement not just for the All Stars, but for the whole of ARRG. Every single member has contributed: by playing against us at training, volunteering at games, answering emails and filling in spreadsheets, sharing ideas and the thousand other things that drive the league forward every day. And it was important to us to recognise this in some way. So we are organising a team shirt to take with us signed by everyone in the league that helped get us to Pittsburgh. Once it is printed, we will be collecting signatures from all of Team ARRG 2017. We’ll be bringing a little part of the whole of ARRG to Pittsburgh with us, so their hard work and support can inspire us as we take on D2!

5. OWNING OUR WARM UP.. (by our bench coach, DeeDee)
An on skates warm up is one of the last chances the team gets to warm up their derby muscles and derby brains before the first whistle gets the game underway. It’s a chance for the team to work some adrenaline out of their system and up their focus. It’s also something that other teams watch closely and there’s a big psychological element to warming up publicly, and owning your own game.  Early on in our playoff training odyssey, we worked out what worked for us specifically as a team, because each team will choose to prioritise different things during a warm up. We talked about what makes us feel our best as we line up at the start of a game. We’ve run this at every practice from then until we leave for playoffs so that we’re confident, calm and ready when the team takes to the track on game day.

6. REMEMBERING OUR VALUES.. (by Doom)
Amongst all the extra practices and scrims, we’ve also been making time to have some important discussions, where we step back and look at what’s important to us. What are our values in life, and what do we love about roller derby? What do we love about our team? We’ve talked about what, if anything, can knock our confidence and what things help or don’t help if that happens. We’ve talked about how we can support each other. We’ve been honest with each other, talked about some difficult stuff and come out stronger without even putting our skates on. I mean right then. We obviously DO put our skates on a lot, but this has been an important part of building trust in each other so we don’t hold back or worry about making a mistake on track – we just go for it.

7. SETTING UP A TOURNAMENT COMMS HUB.. (by team comms)
We want our league, fans and friends to know what’s happening at D2 and to be involved in the action! And for those who can’t catch the livestream, we’ve set up a tournament page on our website so folk can check out scores and game times.  We’ll also be Instagramming away throughout the weekend, for all the LOLs and updates from the tournament floor.

8. PACKING ALL THE THINGS! INCLUDING THE BUNTING! (by… please don’t forget the bunting!)
Tournaments can be crazy places: loads of people, noise, excitement, adrenalin. We have to be careful to let that feed our energy and not drain it. We like to grab a nice quiet spot and make a nice teamy place for ourselves between games. We make sure we have everything we need to make an ARRGy home from home when we travel: with our patented team bunting (grrr…), foam rollers, fave snacks, and Skinner’s never ending flask of hot tea. Sorted. We also have playlists which we train to regularly, to help get us in the right zone when we need to fire up our energy and our brains and bodies to get ready for the next game.

9) AND THE REST!..
Knowing when not to train is a massive part of smart training! – and in the last few days before we head off to Pittsburgh we will be resting, reflecting, ingesting a lot of protein. We’ll also probably accidentally be sewing our team shirts to our legs as we re-do our WFTDA patches and be obsessively checking they are still there  – *goes to check WFTDA patches are still there*. We want to be in a place where we feel fresh and ready when we take to the sport court on Friday 18th! So soon!

See you there.

We asked ARRG’s Temple of Doom to tells us all about the up and coming trip to D2 playoffs. Here’s what she said…

In only three short weeks from now, ARRG’s All-Stars will be packing their bags, heading over the pond and braving Trump’s America: all to compete as the number one seed in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association’s (WFTDA) division 2 playoffs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Getting to the WFTDA playoffs has been a long time coming for ARRG. In 2014 we were ranked 72 at the time of playoffs seeding and still had a few spots to climb before we would be eligible.  After working hard in 2015, we were just outside the rankings cut-off for D2, which back then was 60, and we were ranked at 63. In 2016, we qualified!… but due to various factors beyond our control, couldn’t send a team and someone else gratefully took our spot. So here we are in 2017 and not only have we qualified, but this year we’ve steadily climbed the entire D2 bracket and come out at the top! As a team, we draw confidence in the fact that every climb we have made over these last few years represents genuine improvement in our gameplayEvery game, scrim, extra practice, additional work with a guest coach, time spent analysing footage, off-skates session and early morning gym trip has meant that each rankings increase has been hard fought and deserved.  This year we’ve had the privilege of being pushed even harder by a B-Team that’s currently kicking ass in British Champs  and going from strength to strength. (Photo credit: Marko Niemiela Photography. Marko Niemelä Photography)

Despite being a long time coming, it is also a very good year to be joining the WFTDA play-offs structure. It’s the year that Gotham (NYC) has finally been dethroned of their world number one spot by VRDL after what’s seemed like a lifetime and the first time one of the playoffs locations has been hosted outside of North America (oh hai Malmo!). This year there are more “international” teams represented in the WFTDA playoffs brackets than ever before. I say “international” because, since it’s reboot at the turn of the millennium, roller derby very quickly spread beyond the USA. Yet “international” often still gets applied to non-US teams, even though really it’s just one big playing field (well, derby track) that we’re all playing a part in, whether you’re in the US or not. This year, in division 2 there are teams from Scotland, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, France, England and USA represented – how cool is that? We are the only Scottish team going to playoffs  this year, and we want to help build up Scottish derby on the roller derby radar. For ARRG, it is great for us to be taking part in what will hopefully be the year we can stop talking about “international” roller derby and just call it roller derby.

Pittsburgh is a long way to go, there’s no doubt about it – getting there will cost us in time, money and our collective carbon footprint. To some extent you could be forgiven for asking, “is it worth it?” But for us, totally, it’s worth it 100%. I’ve already talked about being part of pushing the boundaries of internationalism within the sport. There’s loads for us to gain as a league from mixing up the gene pool: Playing different teams with different behaviours and styles of play is really important for flexibility and depth in our own game. It stops weird rankings enclaves from building up. Put simply, when the same teams play each other locally all the time, this can skew the rankings (which has historically had a negative impact on teams outwith North America), big international tournaments can iron things out. There’s also the small differences in where refs and officials draw the lines of what is or isn’t a penalty which are good to learn from and adapt to. Then there’s the mental focus and endurance that’s needed to play multiple games across a weekend on an unfamiliar floor in a different time zone, which can only help build resilience and strength individually and as a team. Throughout this, we want to learn and assimilate new information so we can take it back to our amazing league and we can all level up.

So, that’s just some of the reasons why we’re excited about heading stateside in a few weeks – and why we hope you’ll be following us and the Division 2 tournament on the 18^th – 20^th August. We will be adding game times and scores on our our “Division 2 Tournament” page  so be sure to check back to see how we’re doing. Our first game will be on Friday 18^th August against Dublin (entering the tourney as 16^th seed), who we last took on and won against in 2016.

Then, if we’re able to repeat our previous success against Dublin we’ll be heading on to play No Coast Derby (hailing from Lincoln, Nebraska) or Ohio Roller Derby, and we’ll be charting new territory with either league. And as for the rest, we’ll update you with news as we have it!

Next week in our blog we’ll be bringing you some of the many things we’ve been doing to prep for this tournament so we are at our peak mentally, physically and as a team when we take to the track in Pittsburgh. See you then!

In the mean time….

Captain of the All Star Reserves, Cirque Du Slay, has written us a round up of ARRG’s All Star Reserves British Championships campaign and some great info about their secret weapon for the upcoming game on the 12th August at Meadowbank Sports Centre. Here it is with some excellent photos. 

This is the Reserves’ first year participating in British Champs and it’s been an absolute cracker. Our journey through Tier 3 Women’s North has been an exceptional development opportunity for all of us as individual skaters and as a team, as well as a ton of fun, and we’re doing pretty damn well! As we approach the final games of our tier on August 12th with one eye firmly on British Champs playoffs in September (fingers crossed!), it seems like a good time to look back on all we’ve achieved so far.

We kicked things off back in Aberdeen in April with an absolute nailbiter of a game against the hosts, and our tier’s current leader, Granite City Roller Derby. Top hosting prize for providing blowing bubbles and smiley face balloons, pals! Granite ultimately took the win with a heart-stopping scoreline of 201-199, with both teams playing some pretty epic roller derby along the way.

For our next challenge, we took on Spa Town Roller Girls in Halifax. We prepped good by fuelling up on noodles the night before at a hotel in Huddersfield, to take on a team from Harrogate in Halifax (Reserves’ English geography is coming on in leaps and bounds).

Obviously this was an excellent strategy as we won by a comfortable 453-58. Here we are celebrating. Aren’t we just sickeningly adorable?

After that we got to host our Tier 3 North pals in sunny Edinburgh, sharing our venue with a wee Iron Man competition, just in case anyone lacked for sporting inspiration that day. The crowd was full of cheering friendly faces from the rest of our incredible league and their support carried us to a second convincing win of 290-77 against Halifax Bruising Banditas.

Our fourth game took us back on the road (karaoke may have featured) to our third country of British Champs so far, taking on Furness Firecrackers in North Wales. Furness came out all guns blazing and there was a tense series of lead changes at the beginning, but we pulled away decisively to take yet another win of 308-134.

Next up, we are hosting all six teams for an exciting final in which we will take on North Wales Roller Derby for the chance to make it to British Champs playoffs in Stoke-on-Trent in September. There is everything to play for and we are sure of a great day for not just our team, but all of our wonderful opponents, officials, volunteers, fans, organisers, announcers, bout crew, designers, track layers, PA operators, social media updaterers and videographers who make all the good fun roller derby happen.

The Reserves are feeling pretty confident about this game, cos we have a secret (?) weapon and her name is Big Shirl. Big Shirl may be two-dimensional, but she knows how to make the most out of life (pictured below on a casual intergame fashion shoot), and she is the ultimate teammate. She is made up of every single Reserve who has played for us in this tournament, and of the combined strengths that every single one of us contributes to the team. She contains our goals, our successes, our best bits, our in-jokes and our reasons to be proud. She has been with us in Aberdeen, in Halifax, in Edinburgh and in North Wales and soon she will be back with us for our final game, cheering us on and reminding us of how hard we have worked and how much we’ve improved and all that we are capable of together. Come see.