Thank you Mater & Carmen. You two are rad teammates.

And yes, Sheeza Hater. And Sheeza Dickted to 4Loko. HA.

Sheeza had a bad reaction to a procedure on her shoulder. No biggie, but was loopy and would have been spaced out the whole time.

This weekend is going to be AMAZINGG!!! Watch out LADD. Danger & Legit are about to rob the bank! Yeah, I said it.

Another nice show. Great to hear Carmen Getsome & Re Animate-Her. Can’t wait for this weekend of awesome banked track action from the Doll Factory. But no need to send a Direct TV dish to Bellingham so they can watch (or not) CSI:Miami. Bunny ears work just fine for HDTV.

Loved the latest podcast, it’s great that “the”derby is becoming a cultural hit. I was slow on the uptake but I’m all in now. Love the shirt idea…but ya gotta have fatty girl sizes too. I want to wear your shirts to represent…can you do something about that? Looking forward to watching the bouts in LA on DNN. Woooot!

Megatron, I hate to be that guy, but the Bella Donnas are Oly’s freshmeat team, not their B team. The B team is the Dropkick Donnas.

Pitchit, in what world is a 199-137 shellacking constitute the Bellas having “a little bit of a rough time”?

Aitchbee :

Pitchit, in what world is a 199-137 shellacking constitute the Bellas having “a little bit of a rough time”?

Sorry. I ALWAYS expect a game with the name Oly in it to be separated by 100+ points.

Aitchbee

Pitchit, in what world is a 199-137 shellacking constitute the Bellas having “a little bit of a rough time”?

I’m going to back Pitchit up on this one: In a world where scores like 238 – 93 are not uncommon, as was the case with last weekend’s Rain of Terror vs. Fairbanks bout. 62 points is a fair amount but not insurmountable. You figure that you have a few grand slams, get helped out by some penalties on the other team, maybe throw a powerjam or two in there and that 62 point cushion doesn’t seem so comfy after all.

Pitchit :

Aitchbee :

Pitchit, in what world is a 199-137 shellacking constitute the Bellas having “a little bit of a rough time”?

Sorry. I ALWAYS expect a game with the name Oly in it to be separated by 100+ points.

And then of course there’s that.

I had finally just stopped saying “blunt… force… trauma” and now you got me on it again, thanks, five minutes for Yeeeeaaahhhhh in “The Derby” gazebo Sin Bin for you, Mega…

Great show, I just started listening to the podcast recently and I noticed the heavy push for banked track on the show and I wanted to say a couple of things. Banked track is quickly becoming the hot thing to do in derby and it will definitely keep growing. It’s fun to watch and a lot of fun to skate because in my humble opinion it accentuates skating ability and the nature of the bank makes it a faster sport. But we need to learn from our past, why did banked track derby die in the 80s? So here comes my thesis: Flat Track roller derby is the best bet for future long term success of derby from the amateur to the professional level and here’s why.

What are the most popular sports in America and why? Football, Baseball/softball, Basketball, Tennis & Hockey are the most popular sports. All of those sports can be played by fans with minimal investment without significantly changing the game, rules or strategy. This is exactly why flat track derby has become so popular. Fans can take the exact same rule set and play with minimal cost. How much does a banked track set up cost? Exactly! So the number of people that can participate goes down quickly, just look at the popularity of Ice Hockey in areas where ice is hard to come by and the diminishing fan base of hockey in those areas; and in hockey we are only talking about renting ice time and ice rinks are used for lots for things verse building and renting banked track time which can only be used for banked roller derby.

American sport fans love strategy. I know that derby has taken a major twist since “cutting” was added a few years ago and many long time fans have a hard time with slow play, but this rule has added to the strategy of derby. I think that everyone would agree that there is more team strategy involved with flat track derby vs banked track. That’s part of the reason I think a lot of long time derby skaters like playing banked track, they get to skate more and think strategy less, which is a welcome and fun break from all the strategy. While that’s great for the skaters to take a break, if the derby world wants to build a strong consistent fan base you need strategy that fans can see. The speed of banked track and the psychical set up makes it hard for new derby fans to see the strategy. I have talked to tons of fans at their first flat track derby bout, at half-time they say “wow, did you see that girl fall” or etc, but at the end of the game 90% of them are trying to give me strategy advice on how to win. The fans immediately start to see strategy and they usually barely understand the rules. Americans love strategy and I think that is one reason Football is much more popular than soccer in America. American’s love smart sports, even basketball has a lot of strategy, especially the last two minutes. What is everybody’s favorite part of hockey other than the fights? Powerplays, because that’s when the non-skating hockey fan can really see strategy at work.

Ultimately we need Derby to be a sport and not a show. What will make it a sport to the average American is if they can easily go play it themselves. Look at NASCAR, any big fan of NASCAR knows that it is a strenuous sport to drive those cars for hours, but to most of the fans it’s a show and not a sport. They watch it for the big wrecks and the show of it because they can’t easily go out and play it themselves. Banked track will always be popular with the derby crowd, but public interest will die off just like it did before if the derby world puts more emphasis on banked track than flat track. We will repeat the same cycle we did in the 70s and 80s. The public will at first go “wow” that looks cool, they will come watch and be a fan for a little bit and then the public will move on because they or their kids will have limited opportunity to actually play banked track themselves. So as the fan base starts to level off or diminish for banked track, teams will have to resort to more showy games to keep the fans entertained and coming back. The cycle of the “fake” roller derby will start all over again before derby eventually dies again.

Bottom line: Flat track is the key to derby success, we don’t have to ditch banked track but realize that we as a derby community should continue to push flat track to the masses first and make banked derby a fun side thing in addition to flat track.

Coach Pain Newton
Sin City

@Coach Pain Newton

Well there go all my notes for tonight’s show.

I agree with everything you’ve said here. I’m the lone holdout on the podcast I think because I remain unconvinced that banked track is “the way of the future” for roller derby. It’s entertaining as a diversion but give me a good, shrewdly played flat track bout any day. I like that there’s strategic bending of the rules in flat track. I love that some teams employ the slow play strategy and that everyone hates it. I love these things because they reflect things that I love/hate in mainstream sports. And I just don’t see much of that in banked track. The overlying strategy I see in banked is to interrupt an opposing skater’s forward momentum so that they run afoul of centrifugal force and fly off the track.

The other issue I have, which is arguably bigger than the strategy, are the rules. I really think that in order to be taken seriously there needs to be a complete ironing out process of the rule set. Now I know that everyone who comes together to play banked track has agreed on and abides by these rules but they’re haphazard at best. I think they may have been fine in the infancy of the sport, just as a jumping off point to give the sport some structure, but now it’s picking up steam and more and more people are getting into it and leagues springing up. And the more people who play by these slapdash rules, the more they highlight the issue and the more ungainly banked track looks.

That’s my opinion.

I have a show suggestion. I’d like to hear Megatron and Matt Faure just geek out for an hour. They can take the Jet City and Rat City rosters for the home teams and the travel team and talk about skaters, teams, coaches, who going to the win their home championships and how well the travel teams will do. Just an in-depth total geek out.

@Southbay

to quote directly from the classic movie Freaks:

“One of us! One of us!
Gooble, gobble! Gooble, gobble!”

Yeah, I love a good geek out, too. A lot of valuable insight and knowledge is shared in a good geek out between established, kick ass roller derby minds…

It’s important to note (in reply to Mater’s comments about tournament structure and divisions at Battle on the Bank):

BOTB1 in Los Angeles back in 2008 did have that division format: A Bracket and B Bracket. So if enough people want this and are vocal about it, there is def a precedent.

@matt and @coachpain:

Front pack wall, rear guard shutting the door, hammer and nail, slowing the pack to put a single team front wall out of play, slowing the pack by goating a player to optimize scoring, recycling, waterfalling, blocker forcing an OOB skater to retract back to the blocker’s nearly stopped position within the engagement zone, jammer on jammer defense that drags an opposing jammer back into the engagement zone, escaping a goat pen, breaking up defensive walls, assists of all types, use of your own players as munitions, ice breaking, engine and caboose, and jailbreak. There are more, that’s just off the top of my head.

Nope, no room for strategy at all.

@Busta Armov

I looked back over my post and nowhere in there did I say there’s no room for it. I don’t know if that was maybe more a reference to what coach said. What I said, and I’ll stand by it, is that I don’t see as much of it as I’d personally like to. Now, you can attribute that to any number of factors – the sport is in its relative infancy, the rules needing firming up, etc. – but I think my case was pretty well made for me last weekend in the Legit/LADD bout when a group of flat track skaters who in their own words “practice via email” beat one of the top banked leagues. There’s a much heavier reliance on strategy in flat track and I know I’m not the only one who thinks so, though I won’t out another influential figure who echoed my sentiments. I’ll simply say I stick by my initial statement until such time as I’m proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be wrong.

I am an agnostic after all. We like to hedge our bets.

@Busta Armov
The following is my view when I separate my brain from my heart and look at this from a marketing perspective and long term success for derby. My point is not to bring down banked track and say it’s not as good as flat track, but rather to push the derby at large community that our focus to the masses should be flat track for the many reasons I previously listed. I want to see derby be a lasting sport and not a 10-15 year fad and ultimately for derby to have a permanent place in World sports. We as a derby community need to look deeper than what is the most fun to skate and look at other successful sports to make sure derby will be one of the leading women’s sports in the world. Professional women’s sports have always had a hard time because they compete directly with men’s sports and Derby is the one women’s team sport that hopefully claims its spot at the top. Women’s Derby has massive potential if we learn from derby past. If banked track is pushed out as the professional version of derby I think derby will have the same fate in the media it did before, but if we push flat track as the premiere level I think it will take root for long term success in the US & World. Bonnie D. talked about skateboarding with street vs. vert skateboarding and as a long time skateboarder that grew up in SoCal in the 80s, she was right, vert was pushed as the pinnacle professional level, but vert quickly went out of style and skateboarding went through a lul. Skateboarding then made a comeback in the late 90s with a bigger focus on street skating and while vert was at the x-games it was the street competitions that fans loved and that brought the crowds out and eventually the Xgames removed vert skating from it’s lineup in 2008, so sorry Bonnie, and we as a derby community should not use vert vs. street as a model for banked vs. flat.
So back to the strategy talk: I don’t deny there is plenty of strategy in banked track, but like Matt & I previously said there is less strategy and I think it is harder for the fans to pick up on banked track strategies than flat track. The flat track adds another layer of strategy to derby, all the same strategies you listed above become harder to execute when the track flattens and going out of bounds/cutting the track is involved. The flat track creates a huge advantage for the inside of the track, where banked track opens up the whole track to be just as advantageous, thus decreasing the strategic importance of one side of the track versus the other. Is it more fun to skate on a bank track, yes…but that doesn’t mean that banked track is the future of derby. There is definitely room for both in derby and I write all of this because I don’t want to see the derby community shoot itself in the foot by selling banked track as the top of the sport.
Well I’m off to Coach my 1st game with Sin City RG this weekend.
Much Love Derby Deeds,
-Coach Pain Newton

Ah…the inevitable. A conversation of Banked vs Flat.

Derby Deeds has NEVER placed one over the other in terms of “the best derby sport”. I don’t think we have ever even discussed it to this extent.

I skated Flat Track from 2006-2009 and adore it. It is 2 hard minutes of hitting and endurance. When derby first started no one had any idea to call the jam, since why call it when you can get lots’o'points? oh, cuz the other jammer can too? ha. the beginnings were fun. i was a derby fan that turned 21 and immediately tried out for a league.

banked track kinda made its way into my life by accident. i got an oppurtunity to help friends move their business from tucson to san diego and got to skate the infamous “Greenie” track of the SDDD. The first 5 strides were terrifying. And yes, I had the visions of chairs and fake fights and no helmets and everything else the 80′s did to derby. Thank you Quadzilla for being a member of Rollerjam! Seriously…ha.

I skated Greenie for only a few hours and I was hooked. The speed, the ability to hit inside/down, the 1 minute jams. Its incredible. They are both derby. They are both important and vital to our sport. Without banked track existing flat track wouldn’t change up its game. Without flat track bank track wouldn’t change up its game. Strategy is learned from eachother and shared.

There is a seperation, but I think that is EXACTLY what Derby Deeds wants to change. Both are derby. Isn’t that what is important?

Skating the flat track and then taking on the banked track is incredible. Due to the difference of 1 minute jams, flat track skaters’s VO2 capcity allows for them to go a bit longer and a bit harder for a longer amount of time. Skating the banked track then skating the flat track allows for a LOT more backwards play, the ability to slow without stopping with a group and coverage of the track.

Flat pushes Bank to be better. Bank pushes Flat to be better. I love them both. They both deserve to be recognized as “the Derby”. Bottom Line.

…all this brought to you by a skater turned coach who has USARS AND WFTDA insurance. gotta love it!

Thank you, Sheeza, for inspiring my contest entry: Sheeza Likesitbothways.