Awesome pic – I love Heidi-Go-Seek! OK – now I sneak listen at work…

Just one more comment…toesocks are the bomb!

http://www.injinji.com

How cn we submit scores for bouts in Alberta. Quite a few new leagues popping up here as well, including 2 men’s teams in Calgary and Red Deer.

Great episode! My favorite topic. What we really need is a B Team tournament. I definitely feel like next season you will see B teams take on a much more important role in derby.

Thanks for a great episode! Charm City has had ups and downs with our Bteam/non bteam and we’re in the phase of currently underhauling it.

Very interesting discussion about B teams and where they fit in the scheme of things. I personally like the idea of 4 home teams, am All-Star team and a B team made up of girls looking to move up to the All-Star team one day. My question is that if WFTDA did make divisions where A teams are D1 & B teams would be D2, whee would apprentice leagues fit in? Would they be D3 or also D2 or maybe D1a? Or maybe B teams would be D3. There are a lot of good B teams that would either beat or give an apprectice league a tough bout.

Oh, as far as that score differential in that one bout at the beginning of the broadcast. Last year in a WFTDA sanctioned bout Texas beat the Oklahoma Victory Dolls 451-8. That’s a thumpin’.

There’s nothing better than Derby Deeds to listen to on a long flight. Please tell me you’ll have next week’s episode done by Thursday!

@Dick – Anybody can submit scores & info to DNN (probably the best way to get your info out there currently) at http://derbynewsnetwork.com/submit.
You can do the same at Flat Track Stats:
http://flattrackstats.com/index.php?nav=tools&subnav=addeditbouts

@Holly – Seems like every league I’ve talked to has had ups-and-downs with their travel B-Team program. RCR definitely has. I’m in hopes our next season with Axles of Annihilation will be even more successful than our last and maybe we’ll publish what we’ve learned for other leagues. In the mean time if you have questions or need guidance you’re welcome to contact me or Frenchie via RCR’s website- both of us love helping with program development.

@Vicorp – “My question is that if WFTDA did make divisions where A teams are D1 & B teams would be D2, where would apprentice leagues fit in?”
Part of a skill based division system is the ability to be placed in the proper division based on team skill level/bout performance. Apprentice leagues would probably enter official rankings/divisions at a moderately low level but would be able to challenge up to their suitable division. In fact the apprentice program lends itself well to a skill based division structure because an apprentice league’s bouts prior to their full entry into WFTDA would be used to place them in the proper division.

That doesn’t have anything to do with B-Teams specifically, though, as a league’s B-Team would also be placed in whatever division best suits their performance.

I brought up the B-Teams being sanctioned/ranked if WFTDA were to adopt a skill based division system completely out of the blue as an aside (thanks, Megatron, for that beautiful transition into my tangent). I think it’s a possibility/opportunity to continue to expand the competitive nature of the sport and bring more validity to strong programs… but it doesn’t exactly fit the model WFTDA has been following thus far. Ideally, though, I’d love to see to strong leagues like RCR, RCRG, and Denver able to field two sanctioned teams competing at different division levels- similar to the way MBL teams field farm teams that compete at the minor league level.

Thanks for having us Deeds crew! It was especially fun recording this show on cold medication.

Joe Rollerfan :
There’s nothing better than Derby Deeds to listen to on a long flight. Please tell me you’ll have next week’s episode done by Thursday!

Yes Sir!

Please consider Philadelphia — with PRG’s Liberty Belles A-team Liberty Belles and B-team Independence Dolls — one of those “piggyback” destinations for A- and B-team competition.

We run our A and B teams as two separate 20-person rosters, and the teams practice together & scrimmage against one another. No active A-team players are on the B-team roster.

The Cycrone! #63
Philly Roller Girls

Oh, how I loved listening to the B team talk!

For the 2011 season the LA Derby Dolls will be disbanding our (undefeated) B team, the Aftershockers. Why? Because we have a tough time selling our A team, the Ri-Ettes, to our home crowd, and our fans are apparently even more confused with the concept of a B team. Which I personally am very frustrated with as a skater, but that’s the decision the league has made.

What we’ll do is continue with the Ri-Ettes as our only all-star/travel team combo, with our home teams as our B teams. We’re already working on bringing in home teams from other leagues(*coughGraveDangerfromRatCitycough*), as well as sending out our home teams to play the newer banked leagues around the nation. We hope that this approach of bringing in more interleague exposure to our home teams will help pump up our skating skills across a larger swath of our skaters and will give them the bug to work hard to achieve a spot on the Ri-Ettes for future seasons.

Since we’re bumping up the number of skaters on our home teams, that will also help in getting more skaters out to skate more games; if a particular skater misses a home game for work, injury, etc., they can make up for it in an away game, still with their home team. And vice versa. We hope this adds versatility to our skaters’ schedules as well as giving them a chance to skate outside teams if they’re not on the Ri-Ettes.

It’ll be interesting to see how this experiment turns out!

Thanks again for another killer episode, guys! You make slow-moving Fridays soooooooooooooooo much more tolerable!

Tara Armov
L.A. Derby Dolls

P.S: I loveloveLOVED skating against Axles of Annihilation at Battle for the Coast! You girls are AWESOME!

Regarding ranking B-teams, I think even in the course of our conversation we raised a bit challenge with it: shifting rosters. WFTDA limits the number of times a charter can be changed per year: can we really do the same with a B-Team? Otherwise you’re ranking unknown/fluid entities. (which seems to be the rationale DNN has given for not ranking home teams- “Your team must have a stable roster that changes infrequently”)

Which brings up another question (topic?): do rankings matter? WFTDA rankings matter for tournament eligibility. If B-Teams aren’t tracking towards a tourney, is it just about bragging rights? Because Speedbump does that just fine already!

Hells yes I do!

Honestly I don’t care about getting a B-Team ranked, I’d just like to see their games eligible for sanctioning. As mentioned, one of our biggest hurdles is finding teams to play us because for all the time & money it’s not worth it for some WFTDA teams to play us since it doesn’t count toward their sanctioning quota. Add to that it wont help their regional standings even if they beat us.

Take Slaughter County (AOA’s most recent match-up) for instance- they’re a fairly new addition to the Western region pool so they need to prove themselves to climb the ranks. Their A-Team just beat AOA, but that doesn’t help them in their regional rankings and didn’t count toward their quarterly inter-league requirements.

The only reason B-Teams would/should be ranked is to benchmark against other teams. So if AOA was in the Division 2 bracket ranked… say… 6th and Slaughter was also a Div 2 ranked 13th, when Slaughter beat AOA they would have moved up in the Div 2 rankings.

Speedbump: gotcha, sanctioning makes more sense AND I think stands to be a big benefit for all involved. The newer teams can play teams that are competitive within their geographic region, avoiding some crazy blowouts just to get those games in.

It’s interesting to think about where we were in terms of sports-talk, recognition and discussion points just two years ago… and now we’re streaming HD or near-HD video, blogging, podcasting, commentatin’ and all sorts of great stuff to now include a long-overdue discussion on the finer points of B-Teams.

Derby Deeds, you are part of the natural evolution of the sport and derby is better for it. Thanks for your hard work.

This episode beat out the coaching episode from a while back as my current favorite. (I only got a half-hour into the Champs preview at this point, so…) As a skater from a young, would-be WFTDA apprentice league, hearing some of the inner workings and trials and tribulations of more successful leagues is incredibly helpful. I’ve made listening to this podcast a requirement for the folks on our training committee.

Megatron, are you the only Derby Deeds-er heading to Champs? Have enough fun that we can see it on DNN, but not so much that the Pavilion kicks you out.

Chrome Molly
Southern Oregon Rollergirls

Chrome Molly – THANK YOU!

We love hearing this. Let us know what you’d like to hear about on Derby Deeds!

I’m behind on this episode for some reason…..but wanted to say Naptown has an A, B, C team. Never had home teams. Our fans want to cheer for Naptown and don’t want home teams. Top 14 on A team, next 14 on B and then the next on the C team (which is our starting ground). The rest of the gals are called non-rostered and they are working for a spot on one of the 3 teams.
A lot of leagues are popping up in our area and those leagues are great to play our C team.
We have 6 home games a year and 3 of those are double headers. C team never gets a home game. Incentive to work up to an A or B team. We pay for 3 away games for our A & B teams. If you want to accept more, the team has to vote to pay for it themselves. C team always pays their own way and splits any money they get for their travel.

Random comment:

ahaha I <3 Derby Deeds and I am from BC and I think I busted a gut when you called Shuswap "SuuusWAP" instead of "Shoo-Sh-WAP" <3 americans.

Punchy :

Random comment:

ahaha I <3 Derby Deeds and I am from BC and I think I busted a gut when you called Shuswap “SuuusWAP” instead of “Shoo-Sh-WAP” <3 americans.

Actually that’s no kinda excuse. 3/4 of the DD podcast are from the Northwest which is ALL comprised of Native American city names or counties.

catching up on old episodes, love hearing you guys talk about the BC leagues!! The Raggidy Rollers vs the Reign Valley Vixens was an awesome game – we (Vixens) had so much fun! Looking forward to the rematch March 5th in Abbotsford.

Thanks Derby Deeds!