1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 TEEMU!

In March 2014 the first Men’s Roller Derby World Cup took place in Birmingham. It was an event packed with adrenaline and testosterone where the bench coach always had to stay within a smelling distance from the boys.

Photo: Zero G Photography

It’s evening when I arrive at a hostel in Birmingham. The hallways are filled with enthusiastic young men: the very first Men’s Roller Derby World Cup is about to start the following day. My role at the tournament is to be the bench coach for Team Finland.

Our team heads for dinner together. The atmosphere at the restaurant is calm, relaxed and nervous at the same time. The team has now been officially signed up for the tournament and all the paperwork has been taken care of. The roster for the game next morning against Team USA is announced and met with a round of applause.

In the morning the entire team heads to venue to prepare for the game. The weather is sunny and everyone is in good spirits. At the venue, there are no actual locker rooms; instead, tape on the floor next to the warm-up track shows designated changing areas for the different teams. Team Finland’s spot is right next to Team USA’s. Other teams start arriving at the venue and everyone seems to have ants in their pants. The superstars of Team USA flock around us and you can smell the testosterone in the air.

We gather together in a circle and let out our team cheer: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-TEEMU! The cheer is a tribute to the hockey legend Teemu Selänne who has just ended his career in the Olympic Games. The cheer seems to match the situation perfectly.

#jedimindtricks

As a bench coach, you give up the right to have friends and frenemies in your league. What you get instead, is an extended family. The ruleset changes. Everyone's business becomes your business, you become accountable to everyone. But what do you do when, unlike Annamiettinen, you have no prior experience with dealing with sibling rivalry, twenty different personalities and all the emotions in the world in one moment?

Jedi mind tricks.

Our travel team has been called the dark horse of Finnish derby. What is a dark derby unicorn made of? Common goals, determination, sweat, practice, practice, practice. One important factor behind our league's development during the past year has also been training our brain muscles and mental strenght.

As a bench coach, I try to provide skaters with Jedi tools and to encourage them to pick their own brain. I can tell you when to call the jam and give you a strategy for winning the lead, but the commitment, the drive and the will have to come from inside each and every skater. I can tell you to find your own motivation, but I can't find it for you.

A love letter to officials, or how NSO'ing makes me a better bench coach.

I'm going to tell you one of my secret weapons as a bench coach - NSO's. Trusting that all the non-skating officials will do their jobs right, and actually knowing what those jobs are, gives me a peace of mind.

I NSO every now and then. I'm not one of those kick-ass dedicated magical unicorns who can handle the penalty box by themselves in a scrimmage, or keep score and jam time at the same time. I am comfortable in the penalty box (even with just one clock! even with paper work!), and I actually enjoy keeping score. I've been known to line up track grudgingly. The scoreboard didn't explode when I was working it. I can get by as a NSO, but I'm by no means Army of Darkness -level awesome at it. 

There are two main reasons why I volunteer as tribute, ahem, as a NSO. First of all, officials, skating and non, rule. There's no roller derby without officials. Officials take great pride in knowing what they do, and always try to do their best possible work. I've rarely laughed as much as I do hanging out with other officials in cramped locker rooms pre-bout. There's this special feeling of camaraderie among officials. We're there to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible, we help each other out, we support one another. We're part of something great, something you have to understand to truly appreciate. 

And every single time I officiate a bout or a scrimmage, I learn something new about the rules or game play. That's the other reason I volunteer - it makes me a better bench coach. There's so much about roller derby you don't quite get no matter how many times you read through your rule book. Now I know to advise my players to go sit in the box during their warm ups, so they know what kind of force they can use without sending the chairs flying. I know that I can walk in to the box and bring my player a water bottle or a rubber chicken as long as I don't communicate with her, and just as well I know that I can stand outside the box and say whatever I want to her. I know the scoreboard may not have the official time, and the scores may be wrong, and that nothing in this world is official until the board says so. 

 Once you've stood in the penalty box with two jammers sitting time, the whole audience and half the players shouting at you, you KNOW what those situations are all about. Those 25 seconds teach me all about that situation that The Rules of Flat Track Roller Derby part 7.3.1. never quite could.

The level of officiating is rising by the minute here in Finland. We have amazing crews of officials who are willing to travel all over the country, all over the continent even, just because they love what they do. The days when any injured player or freshmeat skater was asked to work the box last minute are over, and I'm glad they are. 
  

I am happy every time I coach a bout, and I can name every single official working in the box that day, and I can trust that they won't fuck up. And even if they did, they'd do everything in their power to make it right, because that's just how it goes. It truly does.

There will be a day when my skills might not be good enough anymore to work bouts, but until that day I'll keep part-timing with my special super secret club mates. And you know, even when I don't, I'm their biggest and loudest fan, balloons and unicorn puppets and all, because that's what you do when you know a little about the magic that goes on behind the scenes. So I'd like to raise my glass to Team Awesome, you rule my world.

// Anna Miettinen

Roller derby - not just for those who skate

The only documented time I've been on skates.

I am one of those rare people who got into roller derby without the desire to skate. My depth perception is 50 shades of fucked up - I rarely catch any objects thrown my way, I stumble down the stairs weekly, I'll never be allowed to drive a car, I've more than once accidentally biked straight into a wall because I didn't realize the wall was there. So putting me on roller skates and making me hit people, not the best of ideas. But I was living in a small town, I was utterly bored, and needed a project, so naturally I jumped on the chance when my friends headed over to Helsinki Roller Derby open skate on a cold Sunday in March, 2012. The very next week we started our own league, and I was elected as the president.


What followed was 4 months of filling out forms, opening up bank accounts, trying to find practice spaces, recruiting new people, starting Facebook groups, and just generally trying to make everything work. While I was busy being an enabler, the others were learning the basic skills, squeeling over their brand new skates, and coming up with far too punny derby names which would later down the road be toned down to names we could actually pronounce. I was there too, in that 200m2 hall, every single practice, watching and taking notes, and roughly 4 months in, I started coaching.

I'd read what felt like every single roller derby blog on the internet, and watched every single derby drill video on YouTube, I'd taken 2 notebooks worth of notes, and as much as I thought I did, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I had never coached anyone in my life, I was one of the least athletic people I knew, but suddenly I had 15 people paying attention to me, trusting I knew what I was doing. And so I took on that role. I whistled, shouted, instructed, gave feedback, and saw progress. I read books about coaching, and against my own odds, actually got a hang of what I was doing.

At times I found myself mentally exhausted. I was constantly surrounded by people who were learning something new and exciting on skates. They were speeding around the track, they were getting oh-so-cool bruises, jumping the apex. They got to feel like flying. I was there, standing in the middle, not quite belonging. I couldn't share the excitement. I felt inadept as a coach - what right did I have telling anyone what to do, correcting them, when I couldn't do any of that myself? Yet I kept at it, practice after practice, because I didn't have anything else to do either.

The day I fell in love with bench coaching.

It took me more or less a year to come to terms with being a non-skater in derby world. It wasn't until I got properly excited about bench coaching that I felt truly at home. I realised that I actually had something important to give quadless, something I could learn and get better at myself. I could challenge myself, I had a role in roller derby that was for me. I wasn't there just to help others anymore, though granted that's exactly what I am training myself to do.

On game days, whether it be a full bout or a mixed scrimmage with 10 players and 4 referees, that's when I come alive. I don't need quads and a mouth guard to play the game. I'm not a jammer, but I can still make points. I don't get to hit anyone, but I still play the other team. With every scrimmage and bout I grow, and I find new opponents - my own team, the opposing team, the referees, the non-skating officials, the clock, myself. It's a never-ending process and I'm enjoying every moment, making up for all those moments I spent feeling sorry for myself.


Sure, I still don't feel like flying, but man, I do get the high.

// Anna Miettinen