Roller Derby Day 1
Philly Roller Girls Fans kick ass
Today was day one of the East Coast Extravaganza. Despite the icky "wintery mix" storm we had last night, there was an AWESOME turnout. And TONS of people bought raffle tickets. Sam is the best at selling raffle tickets. She goes right up to people and sucks the money right out of their pockets. It's really quite the thing to behold.
The Knit Uteruses (Uteri?) were a huge hit. Everyone was asking about them and wanted to know how they could buy one. We're respecting MK Carroll's copyright and not selling the wombs (just like I don't want people to sell things they make from my patterns). So we've included the wombs as part of our raffle. We gave away half the raffle prizes tonight and were able to raise a whole lotta money for the HERA Foundation, more than that, we were aable to raise a lot of awareness. I can't wait to see how much we bring home for the whole event. Roller Derby fans are very generous. Thank you to all of you.
Throughout the course of the day I got the chance to see a few bouts, and I think I'm starting to understand it. I'll have to read over the basic rules of roller derby again, so that I understand it better for tomorrow. But here's how I gather it works:
One girl from each team has a star on her helmet. She's a "jammer". Both jammers start off behind a pack of all the other girls, and their goal is to weave their way to make it through the pack. If they do so without going out of bounds, then they can score points. I *think* only the girl who is deemed the "lead jammer" can score points... and she's also the one who can decide when to call the jam off and play stops. I'm not sure yet what you have to do to become the lead jammer.... and I'm also not totally sure what a "pivot" does (she has a stripe on her helmet). All the other girls are "blockers" and basically --- they just try to prevent the jammers from making it through the pack.
There's certainly a whole lot of strategy in the game, and also a lot of endurance for those jammers to keep lapping the pack to score more and more points. I can definitely see the appeal of the sport. If I didn't climb so much (and if I had any coordination on skates), I think I'd definitely consider trying out. I really enjoyed team sports when I was younger, and being surrounded by such strong women would be so opposite of my day-to-day as a software geek in a male-dominated industry.... its an interesting idea indeed.