Some Derby Math (April 2012)

Here's another post -- this one's from April of 2012, but I think the points still apply.

I've been thinking about this topic for a while. Most of you know I switched jobs about six months ago, from a pretty posh corporate day job (soulsucking but well-paying) to teaching (in public schools, part-time, for barely any money at all, but my quality of life is a lot better).

This change has had a couple of interesting effects. More to the point, I've been paying closer attention to exactly how much it costs for me to work a bout, both in terms of the financial aspects and the emotional aspects. I know that sounds a little hokey, but let me explain.

The financial stuff is pretty straightforward: getting to and from a bout within a 90 minute or so range of my house usually takes about $20 worth of gas and often there are tolls. The range beyond that, say, three hours, usually doubles that total (unless I have to deal with the Throgs Neck tolls, which are now a whopping $6.50 each way). So, we're looking at about $20 to $50. I try to carpool as often as I can, and I'm almost always carpooling with another ref. These long drives are great for debriefing on rules geekery and catching up, so that's an added bonus. If I can network a newer ref into a league I like working with as a ref, all the better.

Before I worked in public education, I didn't do a lot of this kind of math because, honestly, I didn't worry about making rent every month. Now I do; it's one of the things I knew was coming as part of this job change, but it's made me think a lot more about saying yes to coming to work bouts.

Here's the bottom line: I wish every league made it a priority to compensate their visiting officials. Gas money is a good way to start; gas is expensive ($3.85 a gallon when I filled up to head to a bout yesterday). Water and snacks are awesome and should be standard in locker rooms: whatever the home league provides for visiting teams, they should provide for officials as well. Most places do. I know it's expensive to do these things, but it's also expensive for me to come work your bouts.

Compensate is a broad word. When I first started officiating, leagues couldn't give me gas money because they were still starting out and trying to break even, but they could totally swing giving me a t-shirt. Some leagues have a table with food for everyone by the locker rooms. Some leagues have food for everyone at the afterparty. Some leagues have both. Some places run a bar tab for their officials or have free beer for officials when the bout is over.  And some leagues do regularly slip their officials $20 to cover some gas costs.

But this sort of gets into the emotional aspects of derby. If I'm driving three hours each way to work for a league who I know is going to kick some cabbage my way to help cover gas costs and they're actually excited about my being there to ref, I'm going to say yes to as many of their requests as I can. Even if they're not able to give me gas money, but their players are nice when I show up and treat me like I'm part of their derby community, I'm going to be more inclined to go there. In fact, if the choice is between a place where I'm going to get gas money but be treated badly or a place with no compensation but where I'm going to be treated like a professional, I'm gonna take that second option. (In an ideal universe, it will be both: treated decently and given a little something to help with time and travel.)

The inverse of that is also true, by the way.

I respect everyone's opinions about officiating, and though it personally drives me a little crazy when there's post-bout ref bashing going on, either verbally or online, I still fully believe in free speech.  You have the right to say it. I have the right to disagree with it, but I generally try not to butt in and bust your chops on it, unless it strikes a really sour note with me. I know it's maddening to be mid bout and have to deal with certain aspects of a bout that are less than ideal. And, you know, sometimes I actually agree with you; there are instances where the officiating isn't ideal.

But I'm also not a robot, and in the big picture I think public ref-bashing does a lot of harm.

The reality right now of roller derby in the densely packed derby arena of the Northeast means that there is a major shortage of officials, primarily for the non-WFTDA leagues. Most WFTDA leagues that I know generally have enough officials to cover their bouts. Other leagues -- and this includes men's derby -- don't. They just don't.

This situation is sort of an unfortunate perfect storm. There are probably 20 or 30 different leagues within my 3-ish hours travel radius, and of those 20-30 leagues many have bouts on the same Saturday, because derby  happens pretty much every Saturday from now until about October.
Of these 20 to 30 leagues, I can think of maybe two or three that have enough officials to staff their own bouts. This means that everyone's frantically borrowing from everyone else; there are too many bouts and not enough officials to go around. And, for the record, when I say officials I'm including everyone, from refs at my experience level all the way through to the rookies working their first or second bouts. People are at different places in their officiating development, and the training resources aren't really available in equal measure to leagues.

WFTDA folks usually (not always, but often) prefer to work WFTDA regulation or sanctioned bouts, because those bouts are what you need for certification, development, and advancement within WFTDA.

Non-WFTDA bouts are often left scrambling to get things staffed. I know this, because for two years it was my job at Pioneer Valley Roller Derby where I was head ref, and now it's sort of my job again as the head ref for the Connecticut Death Quads. I spent a year making good on PVRD's debts, in one of those "you work one of ours and I'll work one of yours" trades. Between March and October, I could potentially be working every weekend. (Conservately, let's say I work 3 bouts a month; we're looking at 21 weekends at between $20 and $50 per trip.)

I love derby, but this is a wholly unsustainable model from an officiating perspective. We don't have enough people to officiate. We don't have a central training body or resources (i.e. one WFTDA clinic a year isn't enough). We don't have a New England union or consortium to help trade officials and resources and training. We sometimes are forced to staff people before they're totally ready, or we have an infield crew who have never done their jobs before and have to learn on the job, and this leads to things getting missed or calls sometimes being not quite right on, which leads to people getting frustrated, which turns into ref-bashing, which makes people not want to ref.

See how it's a nasty cycle? WE NEED TO FIX THIS. All of us. If we want better officiating in the Northeast, we all need to step up and start working on it.

So here's my call to action, in no particular order.

1. Skaters: I'm not saying that you shouldn't express your feelings about how a bout went. You totally should -- just do it in private. Do it with your team. Please don't do it where some rookie ref is going to see it  and think, "Man, I'm never working that team's bouts again." If you're later able to boil it down and tell your head ref something constructive (i.e. "Do people understand how direction of gameplay works?") maybe that turns into training that means next time they get it right. If you don't have a head ref, tell me. I'll make sure the information gets out for people to think about.

When I was teaching college and handing back papers with grades, I used to tell my students to pick up their paper, get out of earshot of me and the other students, take a quick 360 look around to make sure nobody was in earshot who shouldn't be, and then cut loose. Same basic principle here.

2. Teams: I know that the bulk of your league's money comes from bouts. Please know that when you schedule bouts the same weekend as a number of other leagues in the region, it's going to affect the staffing available to you.  Scheduling non-conflicting bouts just doesn't seem to be a viable option; that's just what derby looks like right now in the region.  That said, think about how you want to appear as a league in order to get people to come in and work your bouts. Do you cuss out officials from the track? Do you come in and thank the crew after the bout, even if you think it was the suckiest suck that ever sucked? Gas money? T-shirts? Cookies? Cards that the league signed? (I know it sounds hokey, but you can't underestimate the warm fuzzies stuff like that engenders.) Whatever you decide to do, do something that recognizes that someone just drove 90 minutes to get to you, has a 90 minutes drive home, and was just on skates for anywhere between 1.5 to 4 hours for no pay.

Related, if there's officials training happening somewhere, cover your officials' gas to get there or part of their entry fee or something. Make it worth their while to get there, because their participation and learning is going to benefit your entire league in the long run.

Also related: you play like you practice. If your league is in the habit of bullying or badmouthing officials in practice, that's not productive. If you have a skater who does it, address it. Redirect it. You wouldn't let skaters talk to their teammates that way, would you?

3. Announcers/boutcasters/textcasters: AFTDA has a great Code of Conduct. Make the bout fun, do good reporting, but make the skaters the stars of the show, not the officials. Ref-bashing helps nobody. Some of the very best announcers I've seen keep it lively, keep the crowd engaged, and keep the focus on the skaters.

4. Officials: I know it's hard to hear criticism. But make it your job to hear criticism when it's presented in a respectful way. You don't have to take lip from skaters, but don't dismiss the content out of hand either. File it away to think about later, but don't let it give you the yips mid-bout. Work with crews and respect your head ref. Be a team player, even if you've heard the head ref's captain's meeting before. Pay attention. Support one another--and this includes the NSOs too. This is especially important if you're an experienced official and there are rookies on your crew. Be a good role model. Be professional in everything that you do. Be nice to each other.

I am making these my front runner goals this season, particularly that last one which I don't always manage to pull off.

5. Rookie officials: Your first year is going to be crazy hard and discouraging. You're going to miss stuff. You're going to get stuff wrong. You're going to not be in the right place sometimes as an OPR. Bouts are gonna run late. Things are gonna happen. You're gonna end up as an OPR a lot, so skate more outside of practice. People are gonna yell. Take it in stride and make it your goal to get better, work harder, skate more, reread the rules, ask questions, and work every bout you can stand to work.

6. Officials: Say no to bouts sometimes. You're gonna burn out if you don't, especially if you've recently worked a bout that felt like you were getting kicked in the gut repeatedly and you're feeling cranky about derby. It happens. Not every bout is gonna feel like a win. Carpool with other refs and debrief in the car on the way home, or at Denny's, or at a ref afterparty. But if we're asking skaters to be mindful of where they debrief and how, that goes double for us. Every skater gets a clean slate before starting a bout, no matter what foul that skater committed, no matter what he or she said to you on the track last time, no matter how much it cut to the quick. Do what you need to do to learn from the bout, but make sure you're learning and improving.

Everyone:
Get trainers in for your leagues.
Work on your own training.
Think about how we can make this better.
Derby is awesome, and we have to find ways to make it awesome for everyone.
Inspire and support new officials.
Recruit people into reffing not like it's a second-choice option or a consolation prize, but as the real, viable option it is. If you talk about it like a next-best choice, people are going to treat it like that. Skaters, if your captains will let you (and you don't already ref), come ref a few practices. It'll blow your mind and give you a kind of interesting, different perspective.