SCENE REPORT: A Skaters Visit To The Stats Side by Go Go Berserk

NOTE: Go Go Berserk plays for the Quad City Rollers. She is the author of this scene report

A Skater’s Visit to the Stats Side

I hope not to be showing a lot of ignorance in writing this but rather to help the casual observer of the rising sport of flat track roller derby gain a better understanding of what they are seeing at a bout.

When I started to skate with the Quad City Rollers in November 2008, we didn’t have enough girls to fill out a bout day roster. The way it would work is any bout we played in we had to borrow substitute skaters from friendly leagues so that we could put a full 14 on the track. The upside to this is that every girl got to play every bout if she was available to. The downside…some of us never had to work any of the other very important track side jobs like stats or score keeping and the like. Those jobs were always filled with friends, spouses or volunteers. So due to my timing of getting into roller derby I skated in 13 bouts before coming to a point where I realized that I had never done stats before and that it might just do me some good to give it a go.

Our league is experiencing some very welcome growth in numbers. We have plenty now to make up any given bout roster but the issue at hand has changed from simply needing warm bodies to put on the track to how we determine who gets to be on roster. As with many leagues we have in place eligibility requirements that basically mean that each skater has to meet a certain amount of practice time, skill and otherwise teamwork to get their name in the running for roster. When it came time for our Training Committee to make the roster for our April 17th bout I was among the eligible skaters along with a couple of our newbies who had not yet experienced their first. Those 2 had worked their tales off to become official team members and at that time the light came on in my cranium making me recognize how different our league is now from when I skated in my first bout. It was then that I made the Training Committee’s selection process just a tad easier by offering to be the alternate for April 17th. This would give at least one of those girls her reward for all her hard work as well as give me a chance to learn about stats which still were a bit of a mystery to me.

Stats people are expected to be neutral in action and attire during a bout not showing favorable representation to either team on the track. I had to show up on bout day not wearing anything that said Quad City Rollers on it. This also meant that I could not openly cheer on my girls. Seems like simple requirements but does feel very odd after skating with this bunch for a year and a half.

My job was going to be to maintain the large center track marker board which displays both teams and their derby numbers. On this board you mark down any minor or major penalties each skater picks up during play as well as tracking the number of team time outs called throughout.

When a skater picks up 4 minor penalties she gets sent to the penalty box to serve a minutes’ time. Those 4 minors then get wiped off of the marker board displaying that skater at a fresh start when she comes out of the box. The thing about those minors is that the referee making the call may not realize that it is that skater’s 4th and therefore doesn’t always send her off the track right at that moment. Ref then reports the minor to one of the stats people and they in turn report it to me and at that point I realize it is a 4th minor and look to see if that girl got sent to the box or not. If not, I alert the ref to send her off. So the delay on this relay of information does make it seem at times as though a ref is calling a skater off for no apparent reason. This then often drew both funny looks from the skater as well as the all too familiar shouts from the crowd of, “Ref, you suck!” So for those of you that ever thought this or said this please see page 8, section 7 http://wftda.com/Appendix-C-WFTDA-Hand-Signals.pdf where it shows the ref signal for fourth minor. I recommend watching for this at the next bout you see or skate in and consider this before you decide to serve that ref's head on a platter at the after party. ;0)

When my instructions were given on how to do this I sadly thought, “Eh, piece of cake”. Getting into the chaos of the bout though really gave me a new appreciation for this. During the first jam I only had to mark down a couple of minor penalties. No biggee. But once it reached several jams into the bout and especially into the 2nd half it got a little hairy at times. At one point there had to be about 8 or 9 girls that were sitting on their 3rd minor and sure enough one particular jam had me going a bit nuts with marking a 4th minor and hollering…even chasing a ref to get various girls off the track at once. Bah! Throw in the major penalties and the fact that you could not always clearly hear the penalty being called just added further stress to the situation.

Now what I haven’t said yet is that my team played a truly incredible bout that night in a tense, nail biting, always close match up against the Paper Valley – Flying Squirrels. My girls won in the end 105 to 94. It does sting a bit not to have been in the pack for such an amazing one but I’m super proud to have challenged myself to learn more about the stats because it ultimately means I now know better about the sport I’ve come to love so much. Roller derby truly is the ultimate in organized chaos!