Woman-Hulk: How do I do a roller derby in Russia
In early February in Manchester will be held the world championship roller derby - predominantly female sport, for which the only Russian team of White Night Furies will go, led by captain Zhanna Yurieva, nicknamed the Hulk. Even if the name sounds unfamiliar, most likely, you have seen such matches in the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore “Go for it!”.
Roller derby, contact sport on roller skates (those whose wheels are arranged in two rows) were invented back in the 1930s. For most of the story, he remained a sports show, in which aesthetics traditionally valued above athleticism and strategy. In this sense, the roller derby, with the "formidable" nicknames of the participants and (often) pre-written game scenarios, was somewhat like wrestling.
The situation changed in the early 2000s: the powerful rise of the female amateur roller derby not only led him away from show business towards pure competition, but also turned him into a kind of feminist totem - a sport for which the principles of partnership, support and rejection of gender stereotypes are more important than commercial perspectives. By the way, not the worst: the average annual salary in the existing parallel professional roller-derby is about 59 thousand dollars.
A match (or bout) in a roller derby consists of two half-hour periods, which, in turn, are divided into segments (jams) with a duration of no more than two minutes. During the jam, the participants of both teams ride the track counterclockwise. Each team consists of five people, among whom there is a jammer (in a helmet with stars) and four blockers. The task of the jammers, who start a little behind the blockers, overtake each other and become a leading player - only he brings points to his team for overtaking the players of the opponent. The task of the blockers is to help your player to break through the barriers and at the same time block the opponents team's jammer. The game is complicated by the presence of a pivot-blocker in a helmet with a stripe, which can become a jammer as the game progresses.
How girls come to roller derby
I met a girl Kat: at eighteen she traveled to Iceland, where she met many scooters - it was in 2011. She liked it so much that she was set on fire with the idea of making a derby in Russia. For six months she played in Belgium with a local team, and in early 2013 she returned home and said: “Let's do a roller derby here, see how cool it is!” My first reaction to the video on YouTube was: “Well, this is some kind of *** [horror]. They all beat each other there, I don’t like it.” But still, we began to discuss the idea - and in May there was the first training session.
Everything matched well: Kat wanted to assemble a team, but didn’t know where to start, and I was ready to help her find the right party. In April, I saw the announcement of the roller school (then it was called the Roller Pride): they wanted to assemble a team for the derby. I said to Kat: "Look! Maybe we can unite with them?" She contacted the school, and for the first two and a half months they helped us to invite people to train. The school has a large audience, and the girl who organized all this, until the fig friends. Then we disconnected from them, but we already had some kind of base by that time, several regular players already went.
It was such that the girl from the team had to tell her friend about us for a year before he watched a couple of games and said: "Is that you have a strategy there? That is, you don’t just skate around?"
Almost from every girl who came to our team, I heard: “Oh, and I didn’t think it could be so cool to play sports, to be in a team.” They like to be part of a large family, psychologically it helps a lot. It helped me too: looking through old posts on LiveJournal, I see that I wrote about how bad I was, and then how to remove this condition - it was enough to “attach the command to myself”.
Many of our girls still have to convince friends that it is normal to engage in a roller derby. Or they stop talking to those who believe that this is not a female sport. It was such that the girl from the team had to tell her friend about us for a year before he watched a couple of games and said: "Is that you have a strategy there? That is, you don’t just skate around?" Hurtful comments may have been at the very beginning (a couple of pieces in roller groups where we posted information), but mostly they support us. The more people learn about the roller derby, the more they get involved, the more they begin to understand the game itself. For ourselves, we decided simply: if they want to join us, well, if not - not scary.
Weekday Roller
If this is a training day, I get up fifteen or twenty minutes earlier than usual, collect a backpack with equipment, go to work, finish work at six o'clock. Training for two hours, after which we all happily go home.
Rollers mostly suffer from hands, wrists, forearms and ankles. Sometimes there are broken legs. Quite often - concussions; but it is not deadly, it passes. And of course, when you fall on your ass, your tailbone hurts a lot. Physical activity depends on the level of competitors. If you play with kittens, then, in principle, not hard - an hour passes very quickly. And if this is the second fight of the day (as we often have when we go, for example, to Finland) and the rivals are strong, it also happens that you look at your watch and see that it has been ten minutes - although the sensations are all forty. At such moments it is difficult, and it does not matter whether you win or lose, time passes slowly.
How popular is sport
Can we say that people are divided into those who love roller-derby, and those who do not know about him? Perhaps yes. Historically, acquaintances, friends and relatives of those who play in it come to the derby. But besides them, there are fans and fans who may not be ready to ride themselves, but like to watch matches. And we do our best to get them involved, we arrange demos for them. We definitely have someone who comments on what is happening - most often it is me. We try to tell you that this is not just scouring on rollers. This is a strategy! This is beauty! This is power! See, that's cool. It is important to make it clear that roller derby is a team sport, everything is built on this.
We do not earn games, on the contrary - we invest and invest. We do not have regular sponsors, although there are one-time ones. We ourselves arrange actions like open matches for donations. So we three times helped to collect money to familiar and unfamiliar people in the operation. Last September, when we went to the Slavic tournament to Warsaw and some players did not have enough money for the trip, we made a fundraising bout - collected money for them. In St. Petersburg, we hold open matches - we play with each other so that people can see what it is. We go to Europe to compete, because in Russia we are the only team so far, and we cannot call anyone to ourselves because of inappropriate conditions.
From Drew Barrymore to Olympics
The boom roller derby happened eighteen years ago in Texas: the girls there decided to revive the sport - there is a movie "Scram!" with Ellen Page starring. The film itself, by the way, is very truthful, although much has changed since it came out. Today, roller derby is not so bloody sport. Most rides on a flat track, and not on a slope (sloping - it is very expensive). Much more attention is paid to strategy, work within the team. The film shows a small league in which some girls just hate each other. I don’t really imagine such a situation now: the roller derby movement is based on kindness, help and support. So such conflicts and such an evil competitive spirit, most likely, will not happen.
The closest world championship in Manchester is super-sign. He is the third in a row (the previous ones were in 2011 and 2014), but the first one that takes place in Europe. That is why a lot of teams were able to gather at it (Among the participants are teams representing Iran, Korea, the Philippines, South Africa and the indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada. - Approx. Ed). The last time there were a little more than twenty teams, now it's thirty-eight, and in order to accommodate so many people, they will be holding the tournament in four days. The championship itself is organized by the committee of The Roller Derby World Cup Committee, and before that, everything was in charge of the roller derby magazine, Blood & Thunder, perhaps this time they decided to arrange the tournament more seriously and officially.
We try to tell you that this is not just scouring on rollers. This is a strategy! This is beauty! This is power! See, that's cool. It is important to make it clear that roller derby is a team sport, everything is built on this
The roller derby has chances to become an Olympic sport, but so far this idea seems very doubtful. Many players - including us - are skeptical. The biggest problems are related to domestic politics. WFTDA - Women's Derby Association on a flat track - is engaged in communication with the Olympic Committee. Over the thirteen years of its existence, it has developed a policy aimed primarily at ensuring the comfort of the players and everyone around them: this is a gender policy and a policy of supporting volunteers. The Olympic Committee is a test for doping and uncomfortable questions about gender, and WFTDA will sooner or later have to deal with this if it has not already encountered. Perhaps, the roller derby will be able to turn something around in the Olympic system, and the WFTDA standards will become standards for the IOC, but there is little hope for that, to be honest.
Roller derby is a sport enthusiast, and money will surely spoil it. This has already happened with snowboarding, judging what the riders themselves say: first there were guys who just skated and learned from each other. Then snowboarding became an Olympic sport, and everyone started to pry.
Photo:Slava Shatrova
