It’s hard to capture what it feels like to be part of this team. The sheer amount of laughing you do. The training, the sweat, the particular smell of a wrist guard after training. The planning. The working together. The in-jokes, the bibs. The stress. The worry. The hard work, the determination. You see each other at your best moments, giddy and laughing or triumphant after a win or a great jam, and you see each other at your hardest, under pressure, up against it. After a tough loss. When you come up short.

It does something to you as a group. You show up for each other. You take care of each other. You put up with each other, even if you’re driving each other mad. It’s close to family, really.

Over a season, over the years, you develop rituals. Habits, traditions, jokes. They layer over each other until you barely know who started them anymore.

Someone will lay track.

Someone will plan training.

Someone will coach.

Someone will avoid wearing a bib at training, claiming their shirt is the same colour so it’s not confusing (it’s confusing).

When we go away for a game, someone will ask if there is a sauna.

Someone will tell the story of when Stef went into a sauna alone in Berlin.

Someone will #finddoom.

Someone will remind DD to put Pony on during our off-skates warmup.

Someone will ask if we remembered the panties.

Someone will (sometimes jokingly, sometimes sincerely) ask if we have time to pee.

No matter how many times you do a head count, someone will always be missing (even though that person is sometimes you).

It’s not ‘someone’ because it’s impersonal, or a chore, but these things are a part of us now. Everyone does these things. They’re as part of our ritual as warming up.

When we get to the bench, someone will put up the bunting. We take it with us everywhere. Everyone on the team has their own ‘bunt’, which means that as the team grows, the bunting grows too.

We started a new tradition this year, when we attended our first ever WFTDA playoffs tournament. Someone got everyone in the league to sign a shirt, and we took that with us too. Because it’s not just us that makes the team. The team is a big as the whole league. Every person who lays track, or stays to NSO, or refs our scrimmages, or plans our games, or sells our merch. We take them all with us.

That’s why being Captain sometimes feels like the biggest thing in the world and sometimes it feels like nothing at all. As long as you plot the course together and you take the team with you, it doesn’t matter who you are. You could be anyone.

 

 

 

They say it takes a village to raise a child.
In that case, it takes a city to play a game of roller derby.

Here’s some* of what goes on behind the scenes of roller derby, and why the Reserves are so grateful to ARRG roller derby community for helping us on our journey to British Champs playoffs:

1.      What’s App
Honestly, you can’t leave your phone for 3 minutes to nip to the loo without some ridiculous, hilarious, heart-warming, emotional or urgent appeal for a missing mouthguard pinging your way via team What’s App chats. Teambuilding. It’s not on track, it’s on app.

2.      Families and friends, aka my son’s face when I tried to wash him
You maybe don’t know if you’ve not been up close and personal with a skater or ref, but roller derby really smells. We all do our best to wash our kit, but we train 3 times a week and there will be times where your sweaty wrist guards end up sweltering in your stinky skate bag. So, the people who care about get you back from training smelling like some very old potatoes causally sidled up to you and asked to come home. I tried to wash my wee boy’s hair when I rushed back from training one day. He actually cried, “Can Daddy do it, I don’t want the smell on me”.

I can’t thank my family enough for making it possible for me to play roller derby – they support me, do without me, accept that I need to check forums and write emails, and even ask how training was, knowing that I will tell them, in great detail.

3.      Reffing and NSO-ing at training
Maybe sometimes you get to have an evening off scrims, or you get to leave after your group’s session? Nope, not for some! Many of our skaters come on evenings when they don’t have to, or stay later than they need to, just to make sure we keep to the rules, which some of us still fail to do. Thank you, officials, and sorry for keeping you so busy.

4.      Leadership
When you take on the job of Captain, Vice Captain, Bench or Line up Manager, it comes with a sense of pride and honour at being picked by your teammates. And then you read the to-do list and open the emails…
It’s a given that our leadership team organise travel, accommodation, tactics, training, where we will eat (most importantly), team selection, team development, gameday schedule, “do I have time for a wee?” questions. What you don’t know is that the All Star Reserves’ leadership carry a lifesize version of the whole team on an enormous sheet of paper and display her at different locations to make us feel good and special and part of a wonderful thing. Honestly. Teambuilding. It’s not on track, it’s in the boot of someone’s car being driven to a funny location to have a picture taken.

5.      Inters and AS playing against us at training
What’s harder than playing roller derby? Playing roller derby against a team that train together all the time. Kudos to our Intermediate skaters who prove to be amazing opponents for us. And we get the other extreme when our All Stars train against us at scrimmage… They came straight back from D2 playoffs ready to whip us into shape on track. Thank you. I think.

6.      Coaching
So, coaching. That’s just running a few drills and blowing a whistle, yes? No. It’s mainly working out where the coaching bag is. Like many leagues, ARRG train in numerous locations at various different times. We have people who book these illusive sports halls, plan the training rota, let the league know where they are meant to be, make a training programme, organise the coaches, invent and bring a track-making device. Then we work out (over an assortment of What’s App, email, Messenger, telegram and owls) who has the essential bag of track tape, whistle, bibs and helmet covers. And THEN the coaching begins.

And if we are lucky, once a year, someone will wash the bibs.

*and I haven’t mentioned fundraising and off-skates training and people driving mini-buses and spreadsheets and comms and google docs and pre-game breakfast chat and….

Auld Reekie, you’re so fine.