Home Teams Draft New Skaters

On Thursday June 6th, Rocky Mountain Rollergirls drafted skaters to our four Home Teams: Dooms Daisies, Red Ridin’ Hoods, United States Pummeling Service, and The Sugar Kill Gang.

Congrats to our most recent draftees:
Animal Style # 323, Amber King – Drafted to the Red Ridin’ Hoods

Bad JewJew # 81, Vicki Haber – Drafted to the United States Pummeling Service

MayQPay # 99, Nicolette Cusick – Drafted to the Red Ridin’ Hoods

Melter Skelter # 1441, Melanie Fien – Drafted to the United States Pummeling Service

Nerd Rage # 1337, Jacquelyn Culley – Drafted to the Dooms Daisies

Nucleic Asskick # 113, Megan Mitchell – Drafted to the Sugar Kill Gang

Postal Servix, # 408, Devon Jones – Drafted to the United States Pummeling Service

Queen of the Fight # 67, Gabriela Elvir – Drafted to the Red Ridin’ Hoods

Reverend Pain # 234, Julie McNitt – Drafted to the United States Pummeling Service

Torch # 35, Shannon Boyle – Drafted to the Dooms Daisies

Rules Corner: Direction of Game Play Penalties

The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) develops and publishes the rules of Flat Track Roller Derby in Française, Español, and Deutche. Please visit the entire 2019 Rules of Flat Track Roller Derby.

This month we will discuss the direction of gameplay penalty, which is outlined in the WFTDA rules section 4 “Penalties.” Specifically, rule 4.1.3 “Other Illegal contact,” which states “Initiating a block is legal when a skater is moving counter-clockwise, in play, upright, and in bounds during a jam using legal contact zones…accordingly, skaters cannot initiate a block while down, out of bounds, out of play, airborne, stopped, or skating clockwise.”

When a referee calls a direction of gameplay penalty, the referee will blow one whistle tweet and speak in a loud clear voice stating: 1. team color, 2. skater number, and 3. what the penalty is. Here is the hand-signal for the direction of gameplay penalty.

We hope to make rules discussions less dry by offering skater essays on their personal learning experiences with the rules of derby. Our skater Bad JewJew (# 81) will cover skating clockwise vs. counter-clockwise in her discussion below.

Ah, the directional penalty. It seems like a straight forward, no confusion type of rule: skate derby direction (counter-clockwise on the track). The truth is, the rule can be a bit more complicated to new derby skaters in practice. Skaters must fight the instinct to drive the opposing skater/jammer backwards while skating inside the track.

A helpful visualization for me is I imagine a 360 degree circle around my body. In the circle, there is a line positioned where my skates are on the track (diameter of the circle). The 180 degrees in front of me is a legal hit and block zone. The 180 degrees behind me is a NO HIT zone, which means I cannot engage, block, hit or assist in this NO HIT zone. The illustration below shows the hit zones (in green) and the no hit zones (in red).

A skater is permitted to stop and/or skate clockwise on the track, but If a skater does skate in non-derby direction, that skater must be careful not engage an opposing skater moving in derby direction on the track.

Hopefully, gaining a better understanding of the how the directional penalties work will ideally help you have fewer of them called on you. At least, that is my hope for myself!

Skater of the Month: Sweet Dee StroyHer

The weather is warming up (please disregard the thundering hailstorm we had recently and roll with this) and so it’s only fair that we pick one of our spiciest skaters, Sweet Dee StroyHer, for June skater of the month!

Dee originally came to RMRG from Las Vegas and the Atomic Roller Girls in 2017 and immediately fell in love with the Colorado weather. No one ever had to leave practice to go into the parking lot to pry her fingers off the steering wheel the first couple good snows we had and lead her inside to feed her nourishing soups and make soothing sounds.

Dee has two wiener dogs that she loves that only love her, and in addition to doing a killer job running her committee of NERD, she is also furthering the cause of our people by introducing another tiny skater into the world. Dee’s commitment and sense of humor make her a huge asset to Rocky Mountain and we dearly miss her on the track while waiting for her to produce her offspring. Happily, she doesn’t let anything slow her down and shows up to all the Rocky events anyway, as you can see from this profile picture at the Kill Scout’s Spring Mix Up (Chicks v. Bunnies) doing her best impression of a broody hen. Dee’s impish smile and tangy humor make her a much loved figure at Rocky, and we can’t wait to meet her newest project!