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.