Roller Derby Notes Dot Com Scratchpad

Minor musings, feature previews, and behind-the-scenes insights from RollerDerbyNotes.com

[cobrakaiderbycoach-deactivated2]

WFTDA's Bottom 10 and How They Got There

Before we start: I am NOT shaming any of these leagues. Just the opposite, in fact. In the end, what I think puts the majority of them into the bottom 10 are things completely outside their control, not anything about how they play. Also, before you say anything, yes, these ranking are at least a month old.

When WFTDA rankings come out, everyone looks at the top of the list. But what about the bottom? When the first rankings for this season came out I got curious, kept scrolling down, and found myself looking at the bottom 10. Doing that sent me down a path of trying to figure out how and why those leagues were ranked that low.  Every league is different, of course, but the more I researched, I kept coming back to four main factors that seem to explain their rankings. To crack that bottom 10 you have to have at least one, if not more, of these things going on: Geography. If there aren’t any other leagues within 200 miles of you it’s a hell of a lot harder to assemble a team, schedule bouts, travel to bouts, and get good officials. That said, it can also be a problem if there are too many bigger, more experienced leagues near you. They’ll attract the best players and monopolize the schedules of the best officials in the area. Ideally you want several similar level leagues within bout-day driving distance of yours. That way you get good competition and everyone benefits. Population Density. This often goes hand in hand with geography. Think of it this way… There are probably 100,000 people who, with a little training, could pass minimum skills within 20 miles of Gotham’s practice space right now. Whidbey Island, on the other hand, might be able to find 10 in that same area, if they’re lucky. One of those leagues is going to have an easy time filling their roster with great athletes, the other is going to struggle to have a full bench on game day. Experience. Teams just starting out, or new to WFTDA, haven’t gotten enough game time in to be competitive. This applies not only to skaters but also coaches and officials. This one relates to geography as well. It’s much more difficult to get experience if you are far away from other leagues. Also, if your ranking is based on only 3 or 4 sanctioned games the math can get wonky. One bad game can have a huge impact on your ranking. A larger sample size of games makes the formula much more reliable. Drama, disorganization and other issues. This one is sort of the X factor. We all know drama happens and drags teams down. But without being in the league it’s hard to know how much of it is going on behind the scenes. I only raise the possibility of a team’s position being due to this category if they don’t seem to have any of the other factors working against them. Particularly teams that have fallen in the ranks recently. And even then it’s just a guess. “Other Issues” could be be things like not creating a culture that draws and retains good officials, not having a bout venue, losing key players, coaching staff changes, etc.

Alright, let’s get to it… #274 Belfast Roller Derby

Geography: Europe. Derby culture there is much smaller than in the US. Population: Over 286,000. It’s the 2nd largest city on the island of Ireland. Experience: Established 2010, bouting since 2011, WFTDA membership December 2014. Drama and disorganization: I’m not going to say anything that might make the nice people of that lovely island angry with me.

Looks like a combination of geography and experience is to blame here. They’re just starting their 2nd WFTDA season and the culture of derby in Europe isn’t anywhere near as well established as it is in the US. It’s very difficult to find experienced coaches and officials in Europe. Derby is just too young there. To put it in perspective, they’re in the bottom 10 of WFTDA but in the top 50% of the United Kingdom Roller Derby Association’s rankings.

#275 Southern Maryland Roller Derby

Geography: Based in Waldorf, Maryland. An unincorporated community 23 miles from Washington, D.C. Population: 67,752 Experience: WFTDA membership January 2016 Drama and disorganization: Probably not. SMRD has the deck stacked against it. They’re a brand new league in a small town. And they’re close to a number of larger, more well established leagues like the DC Rollergirls that have multiple home and travel teams. Those teams are going to monopolize the best players and officials, making it that much more difficult for a new league to get off the ground.

#276 Rollergirls of Central Kentucky

Geography: Lexington, Kentucky. As the name implies, they’re in the middle of the state. Population: 314,488 Experience: Formed 2006, WFTDA 2013 Drama and disorganization: Seems likely. None of the first three factors are enough to explain their bottom-10 status. They’re in the 2nd largest city in the state and in their 10th season as a league. Plenty of other mid-size leagues within bouting distance, everything from D2 to co-bottom-10. Something else has to be going on with them.

The math is weird with this ranking. They had the biggest increase since the previous rankings, going up 12 positions, but were still in the bottom 10. I won’t even begin to try to explain how that happened. #277 El Paso Roller Derby

Geography: Far west Texas, on the Mexican border. Population: 649,133 Experience: Founded 2010, WFTDA 2014 Drama and disorganization: Possible. They’ve been on a losing streak, only getting 2 wins out of their last 15 games, including a 434 point loss. Geography may play a significant role here. Have you ever been to Texas? There’s a lot of derby there, but everything is so damn far away from everything else. Other than that, it’s hard to tell. They don’t have much of an online presence and I can’t find a lot of info about them. #278 Vette City Roller Derby

Geography: Bowling Green, Kentucky is a small town with a number of other leagues near by. Population: 63,616 Experience: Founded 2009, WFTDA 2013 Drama and disorganization: Definite, but most likely beyond their control.   From what I can tell they’ve been having problems. I found a Facebook post saying that they lost their bout venue and/or practice space and weren’t able to have any home bouts in 2015. No indication of why they lost the venue. That’s a big blow for any league. Not having a venue could easily explain how they went from having winning seasons in 2013 and 2014 to losing every game in 2015 and sliding down in the rankings. No place to practice, no place to play…what are you going to do? #279 Portneuf Valley Bruisers

Geography: Pocatello, Idaho is in the center of a triangle made up of Yellowstone National Park, Sawtooth National Forest and Salt Lake City Utah. Population: 54,255 Experience: Established 2010, WFTDA 2014, unranked until 2016 Drama and disorganization: Probably not. (Disclaimer: PVB is my favorite underdog team. They’re plucky. If you say anything bad about them I will fight you.) They’re in a small town in the middle of nowhere. It took PVB two years after getting WFTDA membership to play enough sanctioned games to get ranked. There isn’t a venue in Pocatello large enough to host a sanctioned game, which is a big obstacle for any league to overcome. They often play with a roster of only 9 skaters, because it’s difficult to find people who want to do derby in their area. #280 Whidbey Island Roller Girls

Geography: Located in Oak Harbor, Washington. There’s a lot of highly competitive derby in the Pacific North West, and WIRG is on an island about 50 miles away from any of it. Population: 22,075. That’s half the population of the next-smallest team on this list. Experience: Founded 2010, WFTDA 2016 Drama and disorganization: Probably not. WIRG became a WFTDA team in January 2016. They’re brand new and in a very small city on an island. As of these rankings they’d only done 3 games in one tournament as a WFTDA team. 2 losses and 1 win for an over 900 point total deficit.

#281 Spindletop Rollergirls

Geography: Beaumont, Texas. South east part of the state, near the Gulf of Mexico, 90 miles from Houston. Population: 118,296 Experience: Founded 2008, WFTDA 2010, merged with Bayou Outlaws in 2012 Drama and disorganization: Very likely, following the merger. Spindletop’s 2012 merger with Bayou Outlaws coincided with the start of a 17 game, four year long losing streak. That can’t be a coincidence. Merging two teams can really disrupt a league’s culture in ways that can take years to come back from. My guess is that’s what happened with Spindletop. The good news is they recently won three games in a row. Hopefully that means they’ve gotten things sorted out and will be on the right track moving forward.

#282 Kokeshi Roller Dolls

Geography: Okinawa, Japan. What is it about Okinawa that results in two bottom-10 teams? And Japan in general with 3 in the bottom-10? Population: 138,431 Experience: Founded 2010, WFTDA 2013 Drama and disorganization: Is there something going on between the two leagues in Okinawa. Is it holding them both down? I don’t know.

Of the two teams in Okinawa, both of which look to be primarily made up of non-Asian skaters, this one gives the impression of trying to engage the general public more. There are 32(!) US military bases on Okinawa Island and this team seems to be made up primarily of military personnel and spouses.

Kokeshi only played two bouts in 2015. They played in a tournament in March 2016, with a record of 2 losses and 1 win for a combined negative 765 score differential. There’s very little WFTDA derby culture in Japan.

#283 Tokyo Roller Girls

Geography: Tokyo, Japan. Population: 12,613,660. By far the largest city on this list. By a factor of about 20x.  Experience: Founded 2010, WFTDA 2013. Very few bouts played.  Drama and disorganization: Probably not.

There are not a lot of derby teams to play against in Japan. Games are few and far between. Like thousands of miles far between. Tokyo has geographical isolation (as relates to derby) even though they’re in a huge city that could support multiple leagues. WFTDA derby culture in Japan is tiny.   They’ve only played 10 games total in the last 3 completed seasons. 9 of those were losses. TRG’s 2015 season was only 2 games. Their March 2016 tournament results were 3 losses for a 794 point deficit. #284 Devil Dog Derby Dames

Geography: Okinawa, Japan. What is it about Okinawa that results in two bottom-10 teams? Population: 138,431 Experience: Established 2010, WFTDA 2014. Drama and disorganization: Okinawa drama! I don’t have any idea if that’s what’s going on, but it sounds cool.

Not much information available about DDDD. Seems to be even more restricted to military service personnel and spouses than Kokeshi. They’ve won 2 games out of 12 played since 2012. Participated in the the same March 2016 tournament with Tokyo and Kokeshi, tallying an over 800 point deficit across 3 losses.

As with the other two bottom-10 teams in Japan, it’s really difficult to get games there. And there’s basically nothing they can do about it. Some other considerations:

-This post is based on publicly available information about each league I found online. I tried to connect those dots as fairly as possible. If you’re part of one of these leagues and I’ve missed something important please let me know. And let me know if you’d like to be kept anonymous. -Are rankings even valid at the bottom of the scale? Like many things in WFTDA, the rankings seem most valid for teams at the top of the list, determining who is D1, who goes to champs, etc. Is there a meaningful difference between #188 and #288? Maybe not. Maybe the bottom 100 shouldn’t even be looked at that way. What good does it do anyone? Maybe a First Season of Gilligan’s Island rule would be better. “D1, D2…and the rest!” -Most derby is not ranked derby. There are over 1000 teams worldwide using WFTDA’s rules. Less than 30% of them are ranked member leagues. Is the lowest ranked WFTDA league better than 600 non-WFTDA teams? Is that even a valid question? -Frankly, I think public rankings of amateur sports teams beyond the ones that go to championship tournaments is ridiculous. Is there a world-wide last place in any other amateur sport? Is that something that gets WFTDA closer to it’s stated goals? Does it empower anyone? -What do low ranked teams get out of WFTDA membership anyway? Besides casting a vote on administrative issues, what does a team that for reasons beyond their control has no shot of ever playing in a D1 or even an A team regional tournament gain in return for their dues? That WFTDA logo isn’t selling additional tickets or merch to offset those costs. Is it? What good is membership in the cool kids club if it costs you half your lunch money? Is it just something you’re “supposed to” aspire to, whether or not it actually benefits you? -I could have come up with some sort of average over the last 12 bottom-10 lists or something, but I think that would be missing the point in a lot of ways. Right or wrong, these were the bottom 10 on the day I started writing this post. -Go Portneuf!

[cobrakaiderbycoach-deactivated2]

an invisible power shift in WFTDA derby officiating

Is your league struggling to find refs and NSOs for games? Does it seem like all the experienced ones are “busy that weekend”? It’s been building for a while, but this season we seem dramatically closer to “peak derby schedule” than last year. Between A, B, rec, juniors, men’s, tournaments, etc there are more games being played every weekend than ever before. But there aren’t more experienced refs and NSOs to work those games. I’m not going to get into why the number of officials hasn’t increased, not yet at least. What I want to talk about are the choices this allows officials to make. Good officials now have 2 or 3 or 5 games to choose from within their travel distance almost every weekend. To begin understanding which ones they will decide to work, you have to understand why officials officiate.

Just like improving their ranking is more important to most teams than an individual win or loss, the goal of most officials isn’t just doing a good job at their position in your game. It is improving their resume. A better resume gets them staffed in higher level games and tournaments and both of those give them the opportunity to improve their skills, to be the best they can be.

Of course that’s not the only factor in play here. There’s also certs and evals to think about, but that process is so broken it’s going to have to wait for another time. I can’t sum it up better than what an NSO told me the other day when talking about which game she was going to do next: “(League A) is a 3 hour drive away. They give a good travel stipend, feed us well, are genuinely appreciative that we volunteer our time to make their games happen, their HNSO puts together tournament-level NSO crews for almost every game. She demands competence, but is easy to work with. Working their games improves my skills and looks good on my resume. They do all the paperwork, correctly. There are very few game delays due to NSO issues, and when they do have them they’re resolved quickly.” “(League B) is a 10 minute drive away. They act like we should be thanking them for the opportunity to work their games. They struggle to get bodies in all the NSO positions, much less people who know what they’re doing. Its fresh meat and derby widows who don’t care about doing the job beyond the bare minimum. There are always multiple time outs for fixing problems with the score board, penalty tracking, etc. Their HNSO doesn’t know how to do half the paperwork. All sorts of issues are missed, some of which impact game play. I end up a worse NSO after working their games because of the chaos and disorganization. It’s a waste of my time.” Guess which one she’ll be working for this weekend? Which gets us back to my initial point…Leagues haven’t figured out that the officiating environment they’ve cultivated is now, more than ever, determining the quality of officials they get because competent officials have a ton of options for which games they choose to work. All the posts you see about “being more polite” to officials aren’t addressing 10% of the issue. And until more people realize that, at the league level and at the level of how rules and procedures are structured (also a subject for another post), nothing is going to get better.

[derbynotes]

When you’re watching WFTDA.tv and you realize they forgot to turn off facial recognition on the camera

[derbynotes]

What Makes Roller Derby Special Isn’t Unique (And That’s Okay)

I was reading an article earlier today that made me appreciate something. Here are a few excerpts from it, which all echo a common refrain.

Roller derby changes you. There’s just something incredibly intoxicating about this sport. You literally become a different person. It supports a culture of camaraderie and respect amongst teammates and opponents alike, regardless of your size or background. That’s why pretty much everyone who plays this game develops a deep attachment to it.

It’s always been a tantalizing prospect to people who follow the sport closely, because in so many ways roller derby feels like a natural fit for what sports fans in the United States look for when it comes to entertainment. It checks off all the major boxes: Big hits? Check. Fast pace? Check. Fun to watch while drinking? Big, big check.

But come game time we put in our mouth guards, threw on different jerseys and spent 60 minutes trying to kill each other. As soon as the clock expired, though, regardless of the score, we were friends again. That’s the culture this game inspires. That’s roller derby.

We all have embarked on a unique journey to get to this point. And now, we all share a passion for what we’re building here. We’re making history. And there’s no other group of girls I’d rather be doing it with.

Think of your personal experiences with roller derby. Playing it, watching it, being a part of the community. All of the above rings true. It's hard to imagine roller derby being any other way.

It might be even more difficult to put any other sport up against roller derby for being as uniquely embraced by its players.

Or is it?

Because truth be told, I was being slightly dishonest when I was relaying those quotes. Although all of the author’s words sound exactly like roller derby, the sport he was talking about was, in fact, not roller derby.

The article these quotes come from is titled An American Rugby League, written by Phil MacKenzie, the captain of the San Diego team of PRO Rugby. He and his team are part of the just-launched professional rugby union competition, the first of its kind in the United States.

Reading the article, I couldn't not see the parallels between the culture of rugby and the culture of roller derby. Anyone that's played both, of which there are certainly quite a few of you out there, will know what I'm talking about.

But the way MacKenzie described rugby, from him discovering the game as a young person all the way through to his efforts in undertaking a "historic opportunity" for the sport, would literally be no different if a modern skater was talking about roller derby, from her discovering the game to helping the WFTDA effort to make some history of its own.

I mean, you could just as easily swap "rugby" with “roller derby” in most of the article (which I did above) and still completely agree with it (which I’d bet my house that you did).

What fascinates me about modern roller derby is how it’s the very first organized sport that many of its participants, primarily women, have ever played. That the sport just happens to be roller derby is all kinds of awesome.

However, a lot of the stuff that derbyists hold so dear about roller derby, what makes roller derby special—the sports(wo)manship, the camaraderie, the respect for your fellow competitor, the “we’re all in this together” mentality—isn’t actually unique to roller derby.

What it is, is unique to sports.

Other sports have all of that stuff, too. The two most similar to roller derby in that regard are rugby and hockey. But other team sports like football, baseball, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, auto racing, Ultimate, you name it…all of these sports have, at some level and in their own ways, the same kind of culture of togetherness among teammates and competitors alike.

Granted, roller derby is unique in that it’s one of the few organized sports out there that is almost exclusively run by the players that play it.

But when it comes to the culture of the actual sport, as played between the whistles? It’s special, yeah. But it’s not unique, because the culture of other sports played at the amateur level can be and often is just as great.

Just one of many reasons why sports are special—and why we should be thrilled that we can say roller derby is a sport, too.

[derbynotes]

When What Derby Says Doesn’t Always Jive With What It Does

I saw this post on Facebook today. It’s a perfect example of a major point of annoyance I have had with the modern roller derby movement up to now. (A general annoyance, not specifically with Bay Area, who are of course awesome.)

Do you notice how derbyfolk constantly use words like “athleticism!” and “strategy!” and the others to self-describe themselves to people outside of the community? In some sense it has been necessary to try and differentiate the modern sport from the game that was played in the 60s and 70s. But is it necessary anymore?

It’s 2016, and more and more of the people with disposable income nowadays aren’t old enough to know, or care, that there was an old roller derby that wasn’t “athletic” or “strategic” in the manner being implied here by Bay Area, or any flat track league looking to attract attention or promote the sport overall. All people see now is an organization asking you to pay money to watch the games they put on, no different than any other team or sporting club that does the same thing.

All sports are athletic, to varying degrees. All sports are strategic. All (team) sports require teamwork. Is there some specific reason why roller derby needs to continue to state the bleeding obvious, when all other sports do not? Especially for a sport that’s emerged enough to be carried on an ESPN platform?

(You should watch basketball! It’s athletic! It’s got strategy! It requires teamwork! Basketball!)

There’s no debating that today’s skaters aren’t athletes. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the important (”strategic”) things that happen in a typical game of WFTDA roller derby are athletic, or as exciting to watch, as skaters are convinced they are.

If today’s roller derby was as exciting/athletic/strategic to outside fans as it was five or six years ago, the majority of roller derby leagues would be pulling in the crowds they were five or six years ago. It’s as simple as that.

Lately, things appear to have at least stabilized. The crowd at WFTDA Champs in Minnesota looked quite healthy. That’s good, but it still doesn’t change the ease with which the everyman appreciated derby back then, as opposed to the difficulty many leagues face in convincing them now.

This ties into something else about the modern community that irks me, which is how people balk at the notion of making the modern game more “entertaining” to help with attracting and retaining fans. Perhaps still put off by the over-the-topness of Ye Olde Roller Derby, this subset of modern derby doesn’t want to do that because they feel it will detract from the pure sport and pure athleticism of what today’s game is all about.

But aren’t sports fundamentally entertaining? Why does someone plunk down money to watch a baseball game, a basketball game, a football game, a hockey game, a soccer game, a lacrosse game, an Ultimate (Frisbee) game, a track and field meet…at the pro, collegiate, high school or any other level?

It’s because people want to appreciate athletes going up against each other in a well-contested, exciting, entertaining game. They want to see athletes out-athlete each other, in a manner that constantly piques their interest. 

Roller derby today is not doing that very well. Certainly not as well as it was doing in 2009 and 2010 when roller derby was enjoying record attendance from regular people. Back then, we liked to say that people came for the flash and attitude, but came back because the roller derby was pretty damn amazing.

Today, they’re coming because roller derby says it’s a great sport that’s athletic and strategic. If fans aren’t coming back, it’s because what roller derby is saying isn’t jiving with what it’s actually doing on the track—like doing things that are not actually athletic or strategic.

Because if fans are being promised “exciting athleticism, strategy, and teamwork,” but WFTDA skaters are still playing a game where a jam like this…

…is still entirely a thing that can possibly and legally happen under existing rules, all they’re doing is setting up a situation where someone else can come in and give the fans the athletes and compelling gameplay that they’ve been missing for half a decade.

[derbynotes]

Analysis Preview: The Home Team Challenge

Like most of us, I go to home team games put on by the local roller derby league. Unlike most of you, I’m fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of a banked track roller derby league, and to go to home team games put on by that league.

That league is, of course, the L.A. Derby Dolls.

When L.A. moved into their new home, the Dolleseum, they jumped right into a 12-game home season over the course of just six months. It was the first time they played in a double round-robin format for as long as I’ve been around, not to mention that many games in such a short period of time.

It was also an extremely competitive season. Of all of those games played, I could only recall one truly “bad” game, and maybe one or two mediocre ones. But every single game past that, including a stretch of five or six in a row, was extremely close through the first half at least. Many more games went deep into the fourth quarter, and a decent number of them went all the way to the last jam, including the championship game.

Out of curiosity, I went back through all of the games played in the 2015 LADD home season, just to see what this level of parity in competition looked like statistically.

Banked track data tracking isn’t as rich as it is in the WFTDA, so there’s no realistic way to calculate PPJ or MJD without manually tracking it at every game. But we do have the final scores, and the average score gap of all games played throughout the season.

I was a little surprised at how many games weren’t as close on the final scoreboard as they felt watching them live, and that this average wasn’t lower than I thought it was in my head.

It was here that I realized something: Just what is a good home season supposed to look like, anyway?

Every year, I track the scores and stats at the WFTDA Championships to check up on the progress of interleague competition among the top WFTDA teams. More close games and fewer blowouts is ultimately what everyone wants to see, and a lot us use this as a gauge to measure progress in the competitive aspect of the sport.

However, the level of parity in high-level interleague competition means very little to leagues that rely heavily on having a popular home team season to get fans to come out and spend money on tickets, concessions, merch, etc. Especially in the places where home teams are more popular than all-star travel teams, which is quite a few places.

In reality, the home seasons are where we should be focusing on to determine whether or not roller derby is getting more competitive in general. Every league has full control over their teams. Through various means, they can balance competition within their league, like allowing the weakest team the first pick of graduating juniors or top fresh meat skaters every season.

Ideally, a well-managed home league should more-or-less have balanced rosters leading to consistently putting on good-to-great games for their fans a majority of the time. Certainly, a low amount of bad games or blowouts. There will always be unbalanced teams here and there due to injuries or league transfers, but among several leagues over several years we should expect that these bumps will be smoothed out due to the law of averages.

This has inspired me to undertake an absolutely massive analysis project, which I am calling the Home Team Challenge. I will be collecting and organizing the home team scores of a significant number of WFTDA leagues, and any non-WFTDA leagues (RDCL, MADE) big enough to support a full home season, to see what there is to see.

And not just current or recent home team seasons, either. I'm going to try and go back as far and as deep as I can, for as many leagues as I can. I’m talking as many as 40 or 50 leagues, at least as far back as 2009 or 2008. (This seems to be the limit as far as statistical robustness goes in some of the league websites and Facebook pages I’ve dug through already.) With all of this data we can start asking, and getting answers to, some very intriguing questions:

• Was the massive drop-off of fan attendance from the peak levels in 2009 and 2010 in any way attributable to less competitive home league seasons throughout the country?

• How did WFTDA rule changes over the years affect competition within the isolated and more consistent environment of a home league season?

• Provided enough data exists for them to make a comparison, do leagues playing non-WFTDA rule sets have intraleague seasons that are—at least according to the final score—more competitive, less competitive, or about the same?

• Which leagues consistently have the most competitive or uncompetitive home league seasons, and why? Can this knowledge help other leagues put on more competitive home seasons as well?

• Do league championship games always pit the two best teams against one another? That is, are they always among the closest games of the year?

• Do higher-ranked WFTDA teams produce more competitive home team seasons? Does an all-star teams’ ranking have anything to do with how well that league’s home team season (if it has one) is doing?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as how useful this data may be once I finish collecting it all in one easy-to-analyze place. Something of this magnitude is going to take a lot of time, probably the rest of this year, to collect the data and make up some whiz-bang visualizations from it. For that reason, this will be a side project that I’ll try to work on here and there, hopefully having it ready to go during the 2017 pre-season.

Having just gotten started, I’ve got data from as far back as 2008 for three leagues: Gotham, Rose City, and Bay Area. To pique your interest in this analysis project, let me show you the numbers from the 2015 home seasons of Gotham and Rose City.

First, Gotham, which has four home teams play in a simple six-game season with a single Championship game at the end, and has stuck to this format since pretty much the beginning.

As it turns out, last year Gotham had its most competitive home league season in its recorded history, which since 2008—that’s over eight years and 56 games—had an average score difference of 45 points. Not too shabby!

How about Rose City, then? Recently, the Rollers switched to a huge 14-game home season with their four teams, including a championship double-header.

Holy shit.

The chart speaks for itself. But to just add to it, in 2014 the league average score difference in Portland was 75 points, so things up there are getting worse in a hurry. When half-games results are adjusted to full-game score differences, Rose City’s home teams since 2009 have averaged a final score gap of 65 points—or 20 points less competitive than Gotham.

Fascinating, ain’t it?

As I collect data throughout the year, including from the current 2016 home seasons, I’ll try to drop in here on Scratchpad with any interesting home league nuggets I come across. I’m not sure if anything will be quite this dramatic, especially from a strong and stable league like Rose City. But with the size and depth of what I hope to collect…who knows?

[derbynotes]

MRW there is no new WFTDA rules update for me to do an analysis on this year

Read more here: http://rdn.link/1P6Kzwu

[derbynotes]

Well, this was unexpected

[derbynotes]

Roller Derby is More Prevalent in Finland than in the United States

No, it’s not. But yet, it is.

The WFTDA released the long-awaited results of the global roller derby census it conducted earlier this year. Participants were asked for some basic information about where they were and what their role in roller derby was, so that the WFTDA could get a better idea of just how many roller derbyists were out there in the world.

In the end, about 30,000 responses were tabulated from people in 79 different countries, though only 20 countries got enough responses (more than 100) for meaningful data. These 20 countries accounted for 27,399 census responses; the other 59 countries would have to therefore average out to around 30 to 40 responses each to make up the difference. That’s not too shabby!

The WFTDA inexplicably released the data as prettified individual PDF files for each country, rather than as a text table containing them all at once. A bit annoying for a spreadsheet jockey like me, but the data is always appreciated no matter what form it takes. Later on I may dig into things deeper and see what there is to see, but I had an immediate curiosity that I needed to satisfy.

Here is the top 8 list of countries represented in the census, and their respective number of respondents. The U.S. rules the roost in roller derby, of course.

1. United States - 15,924 (WFTDA Census respondents) 2. United Kingdom - 2,478 3. Canada - 2,257 4. Australia - 1,639 5. France - 1,187 6. Finland - 505 7. Germany - 504 8. Argentina - 408

My initial thought at looking at this list: The United States is a very big country with a population of 332.6 million people. Other derby-faring countries, like New Zealand with a total of 4.6 million, are very small in comparison.

Let’s think about these survey responses in terms of ratios instead. For example, if 5 million Americans participated in a sport, that would represent 1.5% of potential participants. If 200,000 Kiwis participated in a sport, that would translate to a 4.3% play rate.

The total number of players may be 25 times less in NZ, but it actually works out to three times more players relative to the participant potential, making that sport much more popular in that country by comparison.

(By the way: These numbers represent a Wikipedia estimate of players in Ultimate (Frisbee) in the U.S.; and rugby in New Zealand, respectively.)

Since roller derby is still an emerging sport around the world, it’s played by a very, very small percentage of the population/potential player base of each country. But they count all the same. Which one has the most people involved with roller derby in relation to their population?

1. Finland - 0.00935% of the population is involved with roller derby 2. New Zealand - 0.00730% 3. Australia - 0.00694% 4. Canada - 0.00636% 5. United States - 0.00494% 6. Ireland - 0.00404% 7. United Kingdom - 0.00390% 8. Sweden - 0.00386%

Woah, Finland! It’s the most derby-mad country in the world -- twice as popular as the United States, if you go by the data in the WFTDA census. New Zealand had the 10th highest respondent count (336), but is second best proportionally. Australia and Canada swap spots from the headcount tally but still combinate the 3 and 4 spots. 

It’s interesting that the United States is fifth on this list. We have no way of knowing what level of accuracy this census has, if the 16,000 American respondents are really every single person in derby today or are only the 30% that bothered to fill out the survey.

But think about this: If the U.S. population participation rate in roller derby was as high as it was in Finland, more than 30,000 people would have filled out the WFTDA census in this country alone.

Not to read too much into things, but doesn’t that make you wonder if the growth of the sport in the United States is underperforming just a bit?

[derbynotes]

"River City Rumble," the 2015 MRDA Championships, are this weekend. Yeah, it's going to be kind of like that. Watch for our preview on Friday.

[derbynotes]

WFTDA Rollergames, Featuring the WALL OF DEATH !?!

As you may know, roller derby is set to make an historic appearance (or return, if you know better) to ESPN. Specifically, the sports giant’s streaming platform, ESPN3. Viewers in the United States can (must) watch the third and final day of WFTDA Championships, November 8, on ESPN3.com. Neat!

I regularly watch sports on ESPN3. The other day, I looked ahead in the upcoming listings to see the scheduled event. I found it. And then I giggled a bit.

Look at the category of sport ESPN is filing WFTDA Champs under.

Yeah, that says “ROLLERGAMES.”

Naturally, this was the first thing that came to mind:

I’m going to assume that you know exactly what this is. (If you don’t, you’re in for one hell of a surprise.) That ESPN would file a modern roller derby competition under an obviously generic “Rollergames” category, given the historic meaning of the term under a roller derby purview, is deliciously ironic.

But a minor oversight like this is trivial, and really not worth continuing on about.

Instead, I’ll share with you a brief history of and resurgence of the term Roller Games/Rollergames, which is suddenly popping up in a lot of roller derby places these days:

1) The origin of term Roller Games was born sometime in the early 1960s, as a rival promotion that split away from Jerry Seltzer’s Roller Derby. Headed by Bill Griffiths, Sr. (who passed away earlier this year), it would ultimately gain global notoriety and fame as Roller Games International through its most famous team, the Los Angeles Thunderbirds (aka the L.A. T-Birds). Roller Games was much more theatrical and over-the-top than Roller Derby was, and much of the “derby is fake” talk stems from Games much more than what Jerry did in the 60s and 70s.

2) The Japanese satellite of Roller Games ultimately turned into Roller Game (singular -- because, Japan), a high-octane full-throttle version of roller derby. The Japanese game was played with only one jammer on the track at a time (every jam was a power jam), but alternated between teams. It was also quite full contact; jammers wore full-face motorcycle helmets for identification and protection. Today, Roller Game Japan is still going strong, led by Japanese roller derby legend Hiroshi Koizumi. He puts on a few games/performances a year in his Tokyo roller rink, and last year opened an ENORMOUS banked track for training. He’s also got something planned for 2016…

3) In the late 1980s, a powerful television producer named David Sams, who already had big hits like Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Oprah on his resume, approached Griffiths at Roller Games to make a new kind of show for syndication. A roller derby TV show. The show, which would ultimately be called Rollergames, debuted in the summer of 1989, and was an instant ratings smash. Teams did battle on a one-of-a-kind figure-8 track that featured a steeply banked “Wall of Death,” a crossover jump ramp, and most famously an alligator pit used during “Sudden Death” overtime. It was one of those shows so ridiculously terrible, it was awesome. It also died before the first season was over, due to financial reasons.

4) Fast-forward a few decades. The International Roller Sports Federation, FIRS, begins an initiative to unify the world championships of the various roller-skating sport disciplines under its watch -- virtually all of them -- into a showcase event on the level of the X-Games or the Olympics. The Roller Games - 2017 FIRS World Championships will be held in Barcelona. It will also be the first time FIRS sanctions a roller derby competition…provided it can figure out just what kind of competition it will be and what teams/players/officials will populate it. Because it ain’t happening with the WFTDA’s support.

5) Back to Japan. Koizumi recently announced that he is bringing that monster banked track and his style of gameplay to the United States, starting off with a festival and exhibition to be held in Los Angeles in March 2016. It will be called, of course, ROLLERGAMES World Cup 2016, between Japan and a TBD USA team. This will actually be the third World Cup exhibition played in the Roller Game style, the last of which was held in Japan in 1994. The 1993 version was quite the ride:

I met Koizumi at Rollercon earlier this year, where I learned he has some very ambitious plans for a potential future professional version of (legitimate) roller derby. It’s something to keep an eye on!

6) And finally, ROLLERGAMES is the category that the WFTDA Championships is getting filed under in the ESPN3 listings. It’s a phrase that has a lot of history behind it -- history that ESPN is probably oblivious to. Who knows? Maybe if the WFTDA-ESPN deal is extended, the WFTDA will get correctly categorized as “ROLLER DERBY.” Ultimately, isn’t that what we all want to see?

[derbynotes]

What is Roller Derby? Let’s ask the Internet.

The perception of reality is often more important than reality itself.

[derbynotes]

What Immediately Came to Mind on the JFTDA Being “For the Skater, By the Skater”

“Hey kids, it’s time for dinner! I’ve made us a healthy, well-balanced meal we can all enjoy together!”

“Aw geez, mom! You know we don’t like broccoli.”

“Broccoli is good for you! It will help you stay healthy.”

“Well, about that, mom. Alice and I have been talking among ourselves. We’ve come to the conclusion that our dinner choices shouldn’t be in anyone else’s hands but our own. We’ve voted to declare ourselves an autonomous democracy!”

“What are you saying, Julie? I’m your mother! I love you! I want nothing but the best for your future. You can trust me to make the right decisions for you and Alice. I’ve got the experience and knowledge to guide you. Besides, you’re just barely 10 years old!"

“Sorry mom, you just don’t understand us kids. We’re going to vote for what we want for dinner. All in favor of ice cream, say aye! (Aye!) (Aye!) All opposed, say no!”

“No! You can’t have ice cream for dinner! You need to eat your veggies! I know you hate them, but they’re good for you and you need them!”

“Sorry mom, the vote has been decided, 2 against 1 in favor of ice cream. We’re going to go over to Grace’s house and get all the ice cream we want! Later!”

*mumbles* “That’s the last time I’m going to have Uncle Jerry tell them about what’s good for them…”

[derbynotes]

Using Statistics to Prove if “That Game Was Better Than the Final Score Indicates”

“That game was a lot better than the final score says it was!”

I hear this phrase a lot. Especially during the playoffs. ESPECIALLY when a game winds up being not-so-close in the end. Sometimes, it’s true. Most times, it’s not, if only because most times the final score is exactly reflective of how boring and uncompetitive a game winds up being.

Watching the WFTDA playoffs this year, however, I noticed that there actually have been a couple of games so far where the final score was quite deceptive. Two in particular stick out, including one from this weekend.

D2 Cleveland: Brandywine 216, Treasure Valley 157 (a 59 point difference) D1 Tucson: Madison 221, Arizona 171 (a 50 point difference)

If you didn’t see the games and had only the final scores to go off of, you’d just think these were merely borderline-competitive and perhaps not particularly noteworthy. But those that watched them happen know how crazy-tight they were, only for the games to fall apart at the end with one of the teams building a large gap up quickly.

This disparity between the final score and the equality of opponents has led me to develop a new statistic that can easily quantify (and remove personal bias in gauging) the closeness of a game from start to finish, as opposed to just its finish. I call it the Median Jam Difference, or MJD for short. The premise of MJD is to use a single number to demonstrate how close a game stays from jam-to-jam, and for how long it stays close.

It’s pretty simple to calculate: Record the score gap between each team after each jam, then take the median of all those numbers. That result is the MJD for that game, in points. I’ll give you the MJDs for the two games above to explain what the number means:

D2 Cleveland: Brandywine 216, Treasure Valley 157 (MJD: 10 points) D1 Tucson: Madison 221, Arizona 171 (MJD: 6 points)

Being a median value, the MJD is the dividing line that tells us how close the game was after 50% of the jams. Take the Madison/Arizona game as an example. Despite ending with a 50 point score difference, its MJD of 6 points says that at the end of half of the jams (21 of 42 in this case), the teams were 6 points or fewer apart on the scoreboard. That’s ridiculously tight for a very significant portion of the game!

It’s not a stretch to understand that a good number of the other jams had to have a score difference not much larger than 6 points. In this case, it happened that 36 out of 42 jams, or 85% of the game, saw the teams no more than 20 points apart. It wasn’t until the last three or four jams where the bottom truly fell away from Arizona.

Here’s the full rundown of all the jams so you can see what this looks like:

Obviously, the lower the MJD, the better the game. A lower number indicates it was harder for teams to open up a score gap and pull away from each other for a significant amount of time, which of course makes for a very tight contest throughout. This statistic can also be applied over groups of games as an overall measurement of how equal teams are in games across the board. (This is different than our Points Per Jam (PPJ) stat, which measures competition for points among teams during individual jams.)

Seeing as I just invented this idea three hours before I write this, I’m going to need more time to check it against the previous WFTDA playoff data I’ve recorded and see if there are some other hidden gems that are betrayed by the final score. When I get into a more proper statistical analysis for the Division 1 playoffs, we’ll get a good indication if the roller derby is indeed better than the final scores may indicate—or if players and announcers and are just bullshitting themselves to prevent a team’s feelings from being hurt.

[derbynotes]

Predicting the Ending of that Jet City/Columbia Playoff Game

Did you see it? Last jam of the game, Jet City is up by one point, with a brief power start. At the start of a jam, all of Jet’s blockers take a knee, deliberately causing a No Pack situation. Destroying the Pack penalty to Jet. They stay down. Failure to Reform Penalty on Jet.

Meanwhile, Columbia’s blockers are desperate to prevent Jet from getting lead status, which would end the game. But they can’t legally block! Blocking Out of Play penalty to Columbia. Weak wall, refs screaming No Pack. Columbia has to let the Jet Jammer go.

Jet waits for time to expire and calls the jam. Game over. Jet wins, despite committing two blocker penalties the other team had absolutely no way to take advantage of.

I predicted something like this would happen—4½ years ago.

“Is it really a good idea that a scenario exists wherein the only way to counter against an intentional penalty, is to take an intentional penalty?  We learned a long time ago that two wrongs don’t make a right.  One wrong shouldn’t make a right either, but somehow there’s a way for a team that breaks the rules can still gain an immediate and irreversible benefit from it: Points. [Or Lead status.]

...

“It’s completely plausible for a team in roller derby to violate the rules and immediately benefit from it, using the WFTDA rulebook to their advantage. 

“That doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever, and if something isn’t done to address it, there could be consequences. What if this happens during the last jam of a game? What if those guaranteed points [or Lead pickup] or a penalty smorgasbord directly leads to one team to beating the other? What if it happened during a televised game?”

…or perhaps, a game on ESPN3.

This is from The Pack Problem, the very first “White Paper” I wrote on the old blog back in April 2011. For all the improvements the WFTDA has made to its rules over the years, there’s still the One Big Issue it has not been addressing, and has been refusing to address. It’s the same issue I pointed out years ago, and have been continuing to bring up.

If two competing teams are required to cooperate to keep a pack together, they will not do it when it is to their advantage, ultimately “breaking” the game.

When “cheating” happened before, I infamously pointed it out. But here it is all again.

Here’s how you fix this: During a No Pack situation, do not eliminate the engagement zone. (The RDCL uses this method during “Split Pack” situations.) If a team wants to destroy the pack, let them pick up their penalties. But allow the other team to stay together and legally block to their hearts’ content.

That way, there is no possible scenario where a team can game the system. All playing passively or illegally would do is give the opponents free reign to remain in their wall and destroy the opposing jammer. Wouldn’t that scenario make much more sense than one where a team expends no effort, deliberately breaks the rules, but is still guaranteed victory anyway?

[derbynotes]

WindyMan’s RollerCon 2015 Schedule

I’ve finally got most of my RollerCon schedule pinned down. I’m not doing any seminars this year, but I will be trying out some PA announcing for the first time at Ye Olde Banked Tracke. I’ll also be handing out the Flat Track/Banked Track Rules & Strategy Guide flyers there, as well as at other times as noted below. Don’t forget to download the digital version to your phone if you haven’t already!

If you want to say “hi,” or some other monosyllabic words to me, here are some of the times and places we are likely to cross paths. See everyone there!

Tuesday

4p-6ish - Arrive/Registration Line (Flyer Handouts if you’re in line by me) 6-7p - Pre-RollerCon Walking Tour

Wednesday

9a-10a - Banked Track: Flat to Tilty: RDCL Rules Overview* 1:30p-2:30ish - Track 1: B&T vs. fiveonfive 2:30p-4:30p - Banked Track Challenges/Rules Guide Flyer Handout 5p-6ish - The Pool: International Happy Hour 6:45p-7:15ish - Track 1: All-Star Game 7:30p-8:30p - Seminar 213: RDCL Open Roundtable/Rules Guide Handout 9:30p-OH GOD WHY- Banked Track: WFTDA Rules Banked Scrimmage

*This happens every day at the banked track. Depending on how well I sleep during the week, I may come to all of these sessions to help talk up RDCL derby, pass out rules guide flyers, and gauge skater reaction to the rules differences. But definitely Wednesday/Thursday for sure!

Thursday

9a-10a - Banked Track: Flat to Tilty/RDCL Rules Overview* 10:30a-11:30a - Seminar 233 - RDCL Crash Course for WFTDA Refs 12p-1:30p - Seminar 235 - Mainstreaming Derby: Why & How? 1:30p-3:15ish - Banked Track Challenges/Rules Guide Flyer Handout 3:30p-4:15ish - Brown Paper Tix Booth: Roller Derby 80th Birthday Party 4:15ish-5p - Banked Track Bout/Rules Guide Flyer Handout 6:15p-7p - Track 2: Star Trek vs. Star Wars 7p-8ish - Track 1: Bitch Please vs. Side Eye 9p-Who Knows When - Ballroom: Riedell Party

Friday

9:30ish? - Track 2: Cupcakes vs. Twinkies w/Special Handout! (Maybe) 10:30a-11:15ish - Track 1: Riedell vs. Antik 11:30a-1p - Seminar 233: USARS Meet & Greet/Rules Guide Handout 1:30p-2:15p [ANNOUNCING] - Banked: Compression Shorts vs. Fishnets 2:15p-5p - Banked Track Bouts & Challenges/Rules Guide Handout 4:30p-6p - Track 1: Magic Mike vs. Chippendale’s 6:45p-8:45p - Track 1: Caulksuckers vs. Vagine Regime 9:30p-Retirement - Track 1: Dentures (over 50) vs. Viagra (over 40)

Saturday

10:30a-12ish - Track 1: Arizona vs. Richmond (WFTDA Regulation) 12p-1p - Seminar 231: Roller Derby Author Panel 1:30p-3p - Track 1: USARS Rules Showcase/Rules Guide Handout 3p-5p [ANNOUNCING maybe?] - Banked: Pacific North Best vs. Beast Coast 5ish-6:30p - Track 1 - Arizona vs. Dallas (WFTDA Sanctioned) 7:15p-8:45p - Track 1 - Dallas vs. Richmond  (WFTDA Regulation) 9p-’Till I Puke - The Pool: Black ‘n Blue Ball

Sunday

9:15a-10a (Maybe) - Track 2: Jane Fonda vs. Richard Simmons 1:30p-2:15p [ANNOUNCING] - Banked: LDS vs. RLDS 2:15p-3p - Banked Track: Charming vs. Nomads/Rules Guide Handout 3p-3:45p [ANNOUNCING] - Banked: SoCal vs. Great Lakes 3:45p-4:30p [ANNOUNCING] - Banked: Black & Blue vs. White & Gold Dress 6:30p-Until Demolition - Track 1: Riviera vs. The LVCC

[wftda-blog]

The Most Original Organization of the Year

http://wftda.com/news/wftda-releases-june-30-rankings-tournament-seeding

[derbynotes]

What a snazzy phrase! The WFTDA has some pretty smart marketing folks, and they really shine during the playoffs. I wonder what inspired them to come up with this one?

Oh... oh dear. Looks like I beat the WFTDA to the punch. By four years. Nice try, ladies. Maybe next time you’ll come up with an original idea that hasn’t already been used!

I kid, I kid. This is clearly a completely trivial and quaint coincidence. Unlike that thing about you adopting the flexible S-curve bracket seeding, which I came up with two years ago. But this being the most wonderful time of the year? No big deal! Ha ha, it’s a funny thing, huh?