One of my favourite bloggers over at Jim Dandy Goodness decided to get into with me about whether or not Roller Derby should be covered in the London Free Press. I wrote a letter to the paper, and he contends that I am incorrect. Below is my rebuttal to his original post, which he also put on his website.
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I attended the November 6 Roller Derby bout at the Western Fairgrounds, and so did nearly 1000 other people. It was packed. The game was full of action, and our local team showed skill, charisma and undaunted endurance during their hour of play – for those of you who don’t know, derby bouts are usually two 30 minutes halves. At halftime, the score was an unbelievable 148 to 8, and they relentlessly played their way to a final score of 268 to 18. The Mid Michigan Derby Girls, a WFTDA apprentice team (WFTDA is the governing body of women’s flat-track roller derby), got their butts kicked, and it all happened in London, Ontario.
The bone of contention is that I called highschool basketball “neat” and basically said that roller derby is more important and newsworthy than highschool basketball. Both sides of this debate are subjective points of view. I don’t think there really is a truth to be found. After all, it has to be said that journalists look for good stories first and foremost. We also have to take into account the level of journalism we can expect from the London Free Press. Ahem. Was that a tactful way to put it?
Roller derby is the first sport I’ve ever truly loved. I love playing it, despite my questionable ability to do so. I love watching it on Derby News Network online (DNN) and I love the culture of female empowerment that comes with it. I love seeing women come together with nothing but a flat open space and often mish-mashed equipment, and a printed off rules set, to train themselves to become experts at a sport that is harder than it looks. The story, from a journalistic standpoint, is inherently there. I can’t think of a derby league or team that starts out as anything more than a group of underdogs. Plus, they are women, and women in sport is always a fascinating place to start.
The other thing is that I hated highschool sports. I hated all the smug assholes who played them. I thought the people who got to university on sports scholarships were undeserving, especially as a A-grade poor kid who was lucky to get a $1500 bursary. The only sports events I attended during high school were the ones that got me out of class, and even then I tried my best to duck out and head to my favourite downtown coffee shop.
I can appreciate true athleticism. If you’re in the NBA or something, sure, that’s admirable. You worked hard, you deserve the glory. In hindsight, I probably should have been more respectful of the work it took to be highschool athlete, but I can’t escape, even to this day, even with a better appreciation of how much work it is to train and succeed, the cliché and trope of the washed up highschool baseball player whose glory days ended after graduation.
This is all subjective. But here are some pointers for people who might decide that good old Jim Dandy has one up on me:
Do 1,000 people show up for highschool basketball games? I’m not talking regionals here, just any old game. I don’t think so.
One of Dandy’s points, again and again, is that the skill level of local roller derby is low. He’s just wrong. I would contend that he doesn’t know enough about derby to make that judgment in the first place, and that when our local team is kicking the butts of WFTDA apprentice leagues, they’re above average.
There are no overweight and slow athletes on the Thames Fatales. To be brutally honest, that was one of the reasons I co-founded LOCO Roller Derby, a recreational derby organization that fosters the sport in women of all skill levels without as much risk of injury (www.locorollerderby.com). We take all the retired, fat, slow derby girls (including myself, by the way) and skate Friday nights for fun. Some of us are better than others, but we don’t pretend to be elite athletes. The reason I don’t skate with the Fatales anymore is because, while they are welcoming to beginners and are willing to train anyone, I really had no hope of achieving their skill level. My personal experience, and the resulting time and energy I invested in starting an alternate league, shoots down your point about athletic level in local derby. In fact: the existence of LOCO Roller Derby proves that FCDG and the Thames Fatales are an elite athletic group.
Derby is no longer come one, come all. Yes, it is inclusive, but people who lack skill and commitment are naturally weeded out. You have to be able to practice at least twice a week – and from my experience, that’s not enough for most. You have to live and breathe derby. These women skate every day. They work out at the gym. They go on bus trips and practice with other teams and attend training schools and retreats. Some of these retreats, like Rollercon in Nevada, attract thousands of participants.
They work just as hard as those douche Knights that went to my best friend’s highschool ever did. And they treat women better.
Maybe I just was born with a distaste for highschool sports. In the end, I think that Jim Dandy and I can agree on one point – derby deserves to be in the paper as much as anything else. It’s really up to the reporters. I was trying to raise awareness, and I did so at the expense of highschool sports, and that’s really because I was a geek in highschool.
So all the geeks can come over to my side of the room…
UPDATE:
I realized that some people might think this post infers that A. All the LOCO girls suck at derby and B. All the Fatales are hardcore and aspiring derby skaters don't have a hope. Neither of these things are true. There are amazing derby skaters in LOCO and newbies who get on the roster with FCDG. The point is: FCDG is "elite" and those women exhibit extraordinary athleticism.
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