The State of Derby Helper

The folks over at Roller Derby Inside Track have a nice series underway right now where they are interviewing different people and organizations to get an overview of the state or roller derby. This sorta smacked me to awareness of the fact that although I am now more active in the world of roller derby than I have ever been, the Derby Helper blog has been sitting here rotting like an 8-track tape factory.

"Welcome to Derby Helper world headquarters!"

There are a few reasons why my efforts are not translating into new Derby Helper articles and I thought it would be a good idea to let everyone know why.

1. Derby Earth
   The Derby Earth project takes a decent chunk of my roller derby time.  When someone submits an addition or change, I don't just blindly accept that it is accurate.  I dig around the internet to confirm the submitted information and often discover that there are pieces that missing or inaccurate.  My desire to make the placemarks zoom to the exact building location when double-clicked can lead to a ridiculous amount of searching around in Google Streetview to find a real position that was obviously wrong when the address is punched in to Maps.  Basically, my own anal-retentiveness makes Derby Earth marginally more useful while simultaneously condemning me to hours of tedious busywork that I probably could get by without.
2. Coaching Juniors
   Rather than continuing my old modus operandi of sitting on my internet high horse writing articles about how everyone else should do things, I finally put my money where my mouth is and co-founded a junior roller derby league that I help to coach and operate.  I can happily say that this has been one of the most wonderfully rewarding things that I have ever thrown myself into.  I can't even explain to you how fulfilling it is to me to have a new girl show up for the first time unable to even stand up in skates, to work with that girl on skating fundamentals 2 times per week and to see that same girl 6 months later playing jammer in a drill taking hits and giving them right back with a look on her face like every minute of practice is the best minute of her life.  Junior roller derby is probably the main reason why Derby Helper has been on unintentional hiatus, simply because that is where the majority of my available roller derby time gets spent.
3. Health
   My whole life, I've had a pretty high constitution (in nerd-speak, I rolled about a 16) so my whole adult life I never had to deal with any serious wellness problems with my self or anyone else in my household.  Until the last 12 months that is.  Suddenly in a ridiculous flurry of infirmity reminiscent of the Old Testament's Book of Job, I lost use of an arm, discovered I had a tumor, had to rush my wife to the emergency room multiple times, was told I had cancer (incorrectly thank goodness), took my wife in for several surgeries for the same problem, had surgery myself to fix the arm, shattered my tibia and fibula (kinda like this, if you're brave enough to watch it) , had two MORE surgeries myself and currently have to use a grandma-style walker to shuffle to the bathroom if I don't want to be forced to pee in a jug.
   
   
   
   Though come to think of it,  there is a third option...
   
   The upshot is that it's hard to come up with new insights in the world of roller derby to share with my reader base when I'm busy singlehandedly bringing the entire healthcare system out of the recession.  (If you work in healthcare and you've gotten a raise in the last year, you're welcome.)  I've been so physically and emotionally drained by all of this that it has been a challenge just to keep Derby Earth and the junior roller derby running.  The usual stream of ideas for article subject matter pretty much dried up as I sort of turned emo and started spending all my time feeling sorry for myself.
   
   
   
   They even made a t-shirt about me.
   
   Now that I've finally decided to cowboy-up, stop my personal pity party and grab life by the horns again, I'm hoping to start slowly but surely returning this space to being a consistent resource for useful roller derby information sprinkled with silly roller derby humor like it was in the good old days.  It may be infrequent due to points 1 and 2, but I plan to not let point 3 be a factor in it anymore.

So there you have it, the State of Derby Helper.  Thanks for all of your readership over the past 2 years and I look forward to doing everything I can to continue to develop and improve the body of information available to the world of roller derby for all of you. Remember, you can always send me your roller derby questions and you will get them answered either by my well-thought out, thoroughly convincing articles or by all the people in the article comments pointing out all the reasons why I'm an idiot. 

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What I learned from Derby Earth

When I got the idea to create a geocoded database of every roller derby league on earth, I was so excited about what it would be like when it was done that I sort of mentally filtered out all the tedious, mind-numbing work that would be required to make it happen. Fortunately, I wasn't ashamed to beg for help from the derby community and equally fortunately, some of them had enough pity within their souls to chip in. As I chugged through the web researching my portion of the list and consolidating all the volunteer submissions with my own work into one database, I made a variety of observations that I would now like to share with you. Enjoy!

Isolation
Usually roller derby spreads bit by bit but occasionally it makes giant leaps into uncharted territory, leaving one lonely league standing far off all by its lonesome self. For example, located smack in the middle of the Australia you'll find Malice Springs Roller Derby.

Or as I like to call them, Australia's belly button.

Almost all of the population of Australia is crammed into a ring that hugs the shoreline. The location of Malice Springs at dead center of the contenent puts them 784 miles (1,270km) from their nearest potential competitor. Imagine if you were the London Rollergirls and the closest place you could go to play a game was just southwest of Stockholm Sweden or if you were the Windy City Rollers in Chicago and your closest team was Assassination City in Dallas. Looking at Australia in Derby Earth makes you think that Malice Springs just farted and all the other leagues ran for air. My guess is they'll pretty much have to fundraise their butts off just to be able to play one road game a year. An honorable mention in this category goes to Pacific Roller Derby in Hawaii who has a couple of leagues nearby but has to fly 2,400 miles to be able to play a WFTDA sanctioned bout.

Uncomfortable Proximity

Hawaii makes another appearance on this list in the form of two leagues that seem to be in a perpetual staredown. Zoom in on Kapaa, Hawaii and you'll see the following scene:

Wicked Wahine Derby Association and The Garden Island Renegade Rollerz practice at locations that are within line of sight of each other. Whenever I see this, I like to imagine that they are mortal enemies who always schedule practice on the same evenings at the exact same time, glaring across the road at each other as they get out of their cars and making that two-fingered "I'm watching YOU!" gesture before joining their respective team's practice. I also like to envision them occasionally sneaking over to the other league's parking lot to let the air out of each other's tires. If this is completely untrue, please don't ever tell me.

Extremes

• Northernmost - The title for northernmost league known (as of this posting date) goes to Luleå Roller Derby from Luleå, Sweden who dot the globe at 65°35" north, beating out the Fairbanks Rollergirls by a mere 50 miles. At that latitude, I really hope they play on ice skates.
• Southernmost - This one is still not confirmed. The unofficial winner is Dead End Derby of Christchurch, New Zealand who have the southernmost confirmed location at 43°31". We don't have a confirmed address for Otautahi Roller Derby who are also in Christchurch so at any moment, they could possibly step forth and wrest away the crown by providing us with an address. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion.
• Furthest Apart - The UWCSEA Roller Girls, a junior league located in Singapore, is a mind-boggling 11,990 miles or 19,295 km away from Roller Derby Bogotá in Bogotá, Colombia. That is within 1% of the longest distance that 2 places on earth can be from each other. UWCSEA only beat out the Chili Padi Derby Girls of Singapore by a paltry 3 miles so if both leagues stay right where they are, plate tectonics should make this title change hands in a few hundred-thousand years or so.

Internet Agony
New leagues that don't have much money or high-level web savvy at their command tend to use free resources like blogging sites or social networks to get themselves on the internet. In the course of confirming all the information in the Derby Earth database, I have been to very nearly every single one of these pages and having done so, I would like to take this opportunity to scream from the rooftops:

MySpace su-u-u-ucks!!!

Seriously, make it stop. Try FaceBook. Blogger. Tumblr. Wordpress. Friendster. LiveJournal. Weebly. Google Sites. Please please please host yourself on something that will not vomit into my eyeballs like the average MySpace custom theme. And for for the love of FSM, don't make it impossible for people who are interested in you to find information about you! If your roller derby web page does not tell people where and when you practice/play roller derby or how to contact you about roller derby, you fail at using the internet to promote roller derby. Helpful tip to all of you out there in the Derbyverse - if your league's placemark on Derby Earth doesn't zoom right down to the actual building you play in, it means we couldn't find you which means that your web presence is not helping your fans and potential recruits find you either.

Facts
There are roller derby leagues in...

• 5 continents
• All 50 U.S. states
• All regions of the United Kingdom
• Altitudes from barely 10 feet above sea level (several) to approximately 7260 feet (The Naughty Pines Derby Dames)
• 10 different languages

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A big shout-out to the volunteers who researched and submitted all the league placemark information because without them, it would have been finished somewhere around January 2013.
Slay West - CNY Roller Derby
Skatee Frakoff - Dundee Destroyers
Brutali-Tease - Queen City Roller Girls
Lethal Dose - Alachua County Rollers
Crotch Rock-It - Pearl River Roller Derby
Coach T - Nashville Junior Roller Derby

Did you find anything interesting in Derby Earth that you want to share? Post it in the comments below!

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Welcome to Derby Earth

After triple-digit hours on my part and innumerable hours put in by volunteers, Derby Earth is up and running. Later this week I'll post something about the process and the interesting quirks I've discovered out there in the derbyverse. Thanks volunteers, it wouldn't have been ready before 2012 without your help!

www.derbyearth.com