WOMEN’S FLAT TRACK ROLLER DERBY MAGAZINE ISSUE 21, FALL 2013
proud partner of the WFTDA
fiveonfivemag.com
The Hits Are Real. The Moments Are Unreal. It’s the classic tale of the underdog. A Cinderella story. Going from an unknown to a favorite in the blink of a power jam. On WFTDA.tv, the impossible becomes possible two minutes at a time. Every star pass, every assist, brings each team one whistle start closer to their quest for the Hydra. And you won’t miss a hit with WFTDA.tv. You follow the stories, the athletes, the stats. Now you can follow it all on WFTDA.tv. Proudly delivering the action you crave, WFTDA.tv will be there, broadcasting live from the Division 1 Playoffs and Championships in 2013.
WFTDA.tv
Bringing you moments you won’t see anywhere else. UPCOMING BROADCASTS:
SEPT. 6-8
SEPT. 13-15
SEPT. 20-22
SEPT. 27-29
NOV. 8-10
FOR T W AYNE, INDIANA
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
ASHEVILLE, NOR TH CAROLINA
SALEM, OREGON
MILW AUKEE, WISCONSIN
fiveonfive contents 34-37
4-5 advice
ask ms d’fiant and suzy hotrod!
WFTDA This year’s tournament season brings many changes. Find out what you can expect and which match-ups are must sees.
6-7 business free and inexpensive marketing techniques
yoga on skates athlete nutrition derby fitness: staying on track
Sean Murphy
8-15 health and fitness
18-21 games and coaching
what retired derby players want their former teammates to know
plates 201
40-41 junior derby 12 step program for parents to be better sports parents
James Calder/ShutterThug, shutterthug.net
order of operations balance in derby
26-29 gear
44-47 Retired skater Red ‘Stang makes a plea to the roller derby community.
50-51 in pursuit of the Hydra
42-43 rookie
Many have sought the Hydra but few have claimed her since 2008. Will it return to NYC again this year?
I didn't pass the skills test, now what?
Jean Schwarzwalder
54-55 international derby 56-62 art and media
health and fitness
athlete nutrition KRISSY KRASH, ANGEL CITY DERBY GIRLS
Whether you have been doing derby for six months or six years, the idea of eating like an athlete may seem like a daunting task. The majority of us have jobs, families, and millions of other things to work around. The high level of stress often means that our nutrition falls to the wayside; we expect our bodies to perform like high-level machines, but do not fuel our bodies so that they can do so. Seven years ago, when I discovered this amazing obsession called roller derby, I was no different. During my first few years of derby, my eating habits were awful. My day consisted of AMPM’s tuna pita pocket for breakfast on the way to work, an entire box of Cheez-Its for lunch AND snacks (unless I went wild and got some Carls Jr). Then, before practice, I would run home. I would dip a spoonful of peanut butter into a bag of M&M’s and shove that in my mouth as I was running out the door. And hydration was a joke. I did not drink water, but I DID average 2-3 double caffeine blue Rockstar energy drinks per day because I was mysteriously so tired all the time. Sound familiar? The reason I share this is to show you that eating healthy is not as difficult as we tell ourselves. I promise you: if I can go from THAT girl to the beast that plans out six meals plus her gallon of water daily, so can you.
10 | Fall 2013 | fiveonfivemag.com
While nutrition in our society has gotten complicated, I want to assure you that eating healthy and providing your body what it needs to perform optimally is anything but complicated. The key is designing a template for a perfect day and then simply inserting in foods that are yummy, quick and as portable as possible to support your lifestyle.
the basics Each day plan on eating three meals, two snacks and a recovery snack after your workout or practice. These meals and snacks ideally should be comprised of 1/3 protein (lean meats or veggies protein sources) and 2/3 complex carbs (fruits, veggies, whole grains). Healthy fats are also important so adding in snacks or meals that include some nuts and fish will help you easily reach a healthy fat intake without thinking too much about it. The key is to keep the machine fueled at all times. Waking up, skipping breakfast, and holding out till lunch is like jumping in your car for a road trip, notice the gas tank is empty and
thinking, “Eh, I am sure we will get there anyway.” The difference is your car will just stop. Your body, on the other hand, is pretty resourceful and will find other ways of accessing energy sources. It will begin by using up the muscle glycogen stores that your body was saving for practice later that night. After that, it goes for the next most available energy source: your hard earned muscle. Eating every 3-4 hours will help you provide your body with the easy access fuel it needs to keep running without going for these back up energy sources. If you walk out the door each morning knowing what you are eating that day, you will be setting yourself up to feel great by the time practice rolls around that night. Here is a quick cheat sheet you can create for yourself to plan out a great day. Use the structure below to fill in your meals from the guidelines from The Basics above. Breakfast: Snack: Lunch: Snack: Dinner: Post Practice Recovery:
3 tips for success: 1. keep it simple If you haven’t cooked a meal for yourself in the last year, and now you plan to make three meals, two snacks and a recovery, don’t be afraid to eat similar things all week long. I pre-cook enough chicken breasts and egg cups (ham slices in a cupcake tin and filled with eggs and veggies then baked) to last a week. I also stock the fridge with spinach, broccoli, and precooked brown rice packets and other ingredients that, depending on how I mix them, can be used to make salads, stir fry, or wraps. You do not need to have a festive unique meal every single night! Keep yourself sane and set yourself up for success by eating similar things all week, then if you feel so inclined, switch it up for the next week.
2. give yourself 21 days It takes 21 days to form a habit. Will the first 3-5 days feel like you are thinking a lot about what you are eating? Probably. By the next week will it feel a bit easier? Absolutely. By the third week it will start to feel normal to preplan, precook, and prepack your meals. Plus the extra energy you feel will make it all worth it. Just like learning to powerslide, repetition is the key to success. If you fall down, get back up and try again.
with a Timeline (SMART) is a perfect way to go from fast food queen to fueling like an athlete. This week, preplan breakfast and set the goal to eat it every day. Next week, shoot for half your body weight in ounces of water each day (e.g. 80 oz for a 160 pound person). The week after, focus on getting a lean protein source in every meal or snack. Before you know, it you will be preplanning meals and making healthier choices that are in line with your goals without a second thought.
3. set SMART goals I didn’t make the transition from CheezIt Queen to Healthy Eater overnight, and you probably won’t either. Setting small goals for yourself can help you make big changes over time without feeling like you are flipping your life upside down. Coming up with somes Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant goals
Most of us join roller derby as a fun hobby but very quickly realize that it’s a community and a lifestyle we want to be a part of for a long time. The bottom line is if you want your body to hold up over years of being knocked down, you have to put the right fuel in to allow it to perform optimally. Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live!
fiveonfivemag.com | Fall 2013 | 11
feature
in pursuit of the Hydra E L E K T R A H I G H V O LTA G E , T U C S O N R O L L E R D E R B Y
A lone skate of chrome sits atop a twisted swirl. At its base is the shrunken replica of our beloved flat track. The trophy silently speaks large volumes of glory with its majestic figure; the kind that is most profound to the modern rollergirl. It’s not the heaviness of chrome nor its peculiar aesthetics that makes it so desirable, but rather, it is the validation given through being the ones able to claim it. It represents the limits they pushed and the gallons of tears, blood and sweat they’d shed for it. What is the Hydra? “Blood, sweat, tears,” said Wild Cherri with the Atlanta Rollergirls, and also a former competitor with Gotham Girls Roller Derby at the time of their second claiming of the championship trophy. This is the story of Hydra, a trophy named after a forerunner in modern roller derby. The skater to which the trophy owes its name, Hydra, formerly of the Texas Rollergirls, was a founding member and the first president of the United Leagues Coalition, a predecessor to the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. The story begins with a girl – any girl who strapped on a pair of skates – who was curious enough to attend a bout, practice or a tryout, with little to big hopes at first of finding some shape or form of exhilarating entertainment to pass her free time. Maybe physical challenge wasn’t the initial attraction or the glory of the most prestigious trophy in the roller derby community, but whatever drew that girl to the local rink or a warehouse in her town, will incline her to stay and hope to, one day, compete in the WFTDA championship tournament. Roller derby is an addiction, bordering the boundaries of narcotics. Bodily harm, to a certain extent, isn’t a good enough reason to back out, and when it becomes clear that the addiction has put her past the point of no return, metamorphosis happens. A derby girl becomes a derby skater and the derby skater transforms into an athlete with true dedication and the motivation to sweat and cry to achieve a common goal that she and her teammates share.
50 | Fall 2013 | fiveonfivemag.com
For Sexy Slaydie of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby All-Stars, that common goal was taking home the Hydra for the second, now third, consecutive year. “We’ve had one goal all year,” said Sexy Slaydie before the 2012 WFTDA Championship Tournament. “To reclaim the Hydra.” Gotham Girls Roller Derby All-Stars successfully reclaimed the trophy there and will be aiming once again to keep the trophy in New York City this year. “We have taken that more seriously than ever,” Slaydie said. The history of Hydra began in 2008. There were championship tournaments prior to that, but the Hydra was debuted that year. GGRD All-Stars won that year, taking the trophy home to New York. Since then, the trophy has traveled to many places, including Olympia, Washington, with the Oly Rollers, and Denver, Colorado, with the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls. In 2011, Hydra returned to New York, and after its brief travel to Atlanta, Georgia, where the 2012 WFTDA Championships occurred, it returned once again to New York with the GGRD All-Stars. The Hydra is currently resting in New York, awaiting this year’s championship tournament where a new (or a good old friend) champion will claim it. Sacrifice of varying degrees is not uncommon in the derby community. At some point in one’s derby career, the amount of dedication put in by a skater exceeds the limit of physical, financial, social and/or other capabilities. The fact that modern roller derby is a volunteer sport adds to the burdens. It’s not easy to ask a whole team or a league to contribute more than their personal limits. But there are those who do, and perhaps that’s a big contributing factor to seizing the Hydra. “Gotham All-Stars was and still is a really focused and driven team,” Wild Cherri said. “Off-skates workouts are required of the team.” Her current team, the Dirty South Derby Girls of Atlanta Rollergirls, participated in the 2012 Championships. She said DSDG also incorporates off-skates workouts into their program so that when it comes time for game play, the team can focus on strategy and “not worry so much about endurance.”
And the hard work pays off in
r lde wa arz hw Sc an Je
more ways than one for any team that worked hard during the season. But there is something to be said about being the champions who earn the honor of holding the heavy chrome trophy. Hydra is an insignia. The object itself does not have significance to the skaters’ hearts and souls, but rather, it is what the trophy represents. “It was a high point in my life (to win the Hydra trophy),” Slaydie said. It was a moment when all the sacrifices – including missing out on hanging out with family and friends, and also building her career more – she made to prepare for the tournament felt validated. “It’s really heavy,” she joked. So who will it be this year? Will it be the Gotham Girls again? All we know is that it is up for grabs to the best women’s flat track derby team.
Joe Schwartz, JoeRoll erfan.com
s Tom Kluben
fiveonfivemag.com | Fall 2013 | 51