Get in the Box

Being a banked track roller derby referee is not easy. Every person who picks up a clipboard infield or dons their stripes has a daunting task laid out before them. Each position has it's peculiar difficulties that must be mastered. Of these, most referees would say that Head Referee is the most difficult. Why is this? Recently, I was confronted with this question in the most unlikely of ways.

Last November, I had the honor of officiating at the inaugural BanxGiving Banked Track Invitational Tournament hosted by South Side Roller Derby in Houston, Texas. In addition to my normal Ref assignments, the unenviable task of wrangling the paperwork was bestowed upon me by my current Captain, Rev Knuckleface. Managing a tournament, in any capacity, leads to a lot of late nights and hard decisions.

One of the decisions that Knuckleface had to make was who to place in Head Ref for the Championship bout. This is usually the most difficult bout given that the best two teams in a tournament will be going head to head. He gave that bout to me, as my first Tournament Championship bout.

I fully expected him to take this bout for himself, as it the right of any Tournament Head Ref. Needless to say, I was shocked. Not because I didn't think I could handle it, but rather by the reason he gave me for this decision. When I asked him why, he simply responded that he thought I was a better Head Ref than he was. This was not the answer I expected. Knuckleface has the reputation of having a level head, a project manager mindset and the calm facade of Cool Hand Luke in the face of the physical punishment, psychological cruelty, sadism and masochism of the infield environment.

I spent weeks trying to figure out why this Ref, my Captain, thought I was a better Head Ref than himself. I ran through all of the best practices and analyzed what a Head Ref is responsible for during a bout. I reviewed my own past performance as Head Ref. I looked at other Head Refs in action. Nothing struck me as being the silver bullet to make a great Head Ref. Every Head Ref had their own style, their own idiosyncrasies. But none of them overlapped. Then it hit me while reviewing footage of a past bout. I was looking in the wrong place, or rather at the wrong person.

When looking at the footage, you need to look at the other Refs, Skaters and even the fans. It's like looking at the sun. If you stare directly into it, all you see is the bright spot. If you look around the edges, you see the corona. If you look at what it illuminates, you see the green worlds that flourish underneath it. You have to observe it indirectly.

You can teach a Ref to be the Head Referee. You can train them to keep track of the swirling mass of skaters, refs and penalties. You can condition them to have a thick skin, so they leave all the hostility on the track. You can mold a good Head Ref, but there is one thing that they must already have to become a great Head Ref.

They must have the mindset of an orchestra conductor. He sets the tempo for the bout. He emphasizes each position at critical moments to keep the bout fluid. He draws out the best in each skating team, while minimizing the hostilities and providing a level playing field. Each Referee plays a singular position, the Head Ref plays the Referees. The bout is his symphony performance. And just like a Head Ref, you never watch the conductor but rather enjoy the ephemeral sounds of a well conducted symphony performance.

But even with this insight, I was no closer to finding that silver bullet that separates a good Head Ref from a great one. That is until I started seeing the small underlying patterns that each Head Ref promotes. I watched Head Refs signaling to their Penalty Tracker for an incoming drop when the Front Pack Ref made just the slightest indication that they were headed in with a penalty. I saw them reminding their Penalty Box Admins to announce how many skaters are sitting in the box. And not every single time, but just enough to keep it in Penalty Box's foreground of thought. I watched my own performance during a bout as I pushed Refs to shorten breaks or allowed them an extra 5 to 10 seconds to cool off in response to the rise and fall of penalties or the apparent adrenaline levels of the skating teams. The pattern wasn't a best practice, but rather knowing your fellow Refs and Skaters and subsequently working to bring out the best in each one.

But that theory left a single gaping hole, Tournaments. In a tournament, you are thrown together with many Refs and Skaters that you have never met. You don't have past knowledge of their skills or personal habits to fall back on. In this case you have to ditch the well orchestrated symphony and learn to play jazz. You have to learn what instruments work well together and the proper tempos on the fly. You have to adjust your rhythm as you go to bring a unique sound that may never be heard again in the same way. Sometimes it's a disaster, but more often than not it's breathtaking to behold.

In the end, the Head Ref position is what you make of it. Nearly any Referee can be trained for the position, and most will be competent at it. But I want to be more than a good Head Ref, I want to be one of the great Head Refs. I want to conduct a Ref Crew in such a way that the skating teams give it all they have on the track, and the fans never even know that we were there. I want to be the invisible conductor that brings all of these talented people together to make Roller Derby happen.

Injury sucks.  I keep reminding myself that I could have been hurt much worse.  A little bit more to the left, or bending my leg just a hair more and I might never use my left arm again.  Yes, it could have been so much worse, but it still sucks.

I wish I had an exciting story to go along with this injury. Something like:

I was Pack Ref for the last jam in the bout.  The score was tied and on the last pass through the pack the lead jammer cuts to the inside to score the winning point.  As she passed the inside blocker to win the game, her skate caught the copping sending her flying into me.  We both hit the ground with my elbow bending in a most unnatural way.

Back in reality, it is always the little things that usually lead to the most pain.  I was assisting at AZDD Brats practice last Wednesday, just running a simple balance drill for the girls.  Whistle in mouth and stop watch in hand, when I lifted one of my skates to help demonstrate the proper motion for this exercise, I immediately felt myself falling backwards.  My other skate must not have been positioned correctly, or my balance was just slightly off.

In the split second that I was falling, I wasn't concerned.  I've fallen like this literally a hundred times.  Arms bent to act as shock absorbers, butt tucked in to protect my tailbone, and preparing myself for the insignificant bruising pain.  But that's not what happened next.

Legendary Derby Ref Bill Morrissey

I was hoping to have more posts on this blog before this one.  Although I am following this Roller Derby path, it seems that I truly have no real control over its direction.

Earlier tonight I took my first Penalty Skills test.  I have been studying for this test for three months, but I still felt that I was not quite ready for it.  After all, the Roller Derby Coalition of Leagues (RDCL) current ruleset (RDCL v1.3) is over 40 pages of nit picking detail.  I knew how devious Regulator Captain John Wilkes Boosh was going to be when devising this tortuous test.

I sat down to take the 10 page test before our League practice tonight.  Halfway though the test Boosh came over to me and whispered, "I expect no less than a pass from you, Castro."  Mustering all of the bravado I had left, I looked him square in the eyes and stated, "I'm shooting for 110%."  He gave me a smirk and a nod before leaving me to finish the test.

I had to wait until after the League practice for my results.  Surprisingly, I didn't worry about the results at all during practice.  After practice was another mater altogether.  Boosh hid himself away in a corner to grade the tests while the rest of us sat around nervously waiting for our results.  I knew I had passed when Boosh commented out loud to himself, "Castro is tearing this up."  What I didn't realize was I was going to score near the top of all the Regulators with a 92% on my first try.

So, what does this mean for me?  First, I think I can drop the "Young Gun" title and start calling myself a full fledged Regulator.  Second, it means that I am now qualified to wear stripes and call penalties in the Outside Pack Referee position.  In the next bout, I will be shadowing BamBam and Rev. KnuckleFace to get real world experience in this position.  I expect to be officially filling this position early next season.

Now I have to concentrate on my skating skills.  With any luck (and a new pair of skates), I will pass the Skating Skills test before Season 8 starts.

Everyone finds their own unique path through life.  Some people plan out each and every choice they make to reach a long term goal.  Others take life day by day, seeking their path through accidental meetings and serendipitous events.  My path most certainly follows the latter.

This particular path towards Roller Derby started in the spring of '08 when I picked up a Phoenix New Times to read during my lunch break.  I had gotten hooked on reading the New Times over lunch every Thursday due to their entertaining 'pull no punches' columnists.  This particular issue featured an article about Roller Derby in Phoenix with Arizona Derby Dames.  Since I'm always looking for that new experience, this sounded like a whole lot of fun.  I dutifully marked this event down in my mental calendar and promptly forgot about it when Real Life™ reasserted itself on me.