Monday 22 September 2014

Excuse me, may I borrow your flamingo? - GYSD & The One Stopwatch method

This weekend I hoofed it up to Leeds to NSO at the Great Yorkshire Showdown 2014!  This is a full day tournament where 6 teams from throughout Yorkshire battle it out in single period games.  The winner gets bumped up to the next round until, in the eighth and final contest, a full length game between the two remaining teams.  Fun day out?  Eight live roller derby games in a row?  Getting my NSO on?  Sign me up!


Since so many teams were involved, instead of getting each team to field NSOs and Referees as they'd usually do, we all applied as individuals.  I didn't even have a team playing but no one really cares about that sort of thing when you're offering to officiate their game.  It's a testament to how undervalued NSOs can be that they had to extend the application date for them.  Of course it was a plus for me since I was guaranteed to get picked!

I wasn't the only one coming up from the Leicester area.  Two friends of mine, usually referees, were switching their zebra gear for flamingo tops.  I joined Team Biscuit (the other being Team Cake) as a Penalty Box Timer, and the two NSO crews staffed alternating games.  I'd done plenty of Box in the past, although not for a little while, however what I was less experienced in was Box paperwork - a record of the Box's activity during the game that the two Penalty Box Timers fill in as it happens.  I'd had one game where we tried to complete the paperwork but some almighty hoo-hah during play meant it got abandoned.

Also, for my home team's scrims we don't bother printing out paperwork, which is what allows you to do the One Stopwatch method.  Instead we get by with a phone app or a stopwatch in each hand.  I knew in theory how to do it, but theory and practise aren't the same thing.

So, what is it?

The One Stopwatch Method


Imagine you're timing in the Penalty Box.  You have two blocker seats to look after (because your Penalty Box Manager will be timing the jammer's seat in case you simultaneously have two jammers in the box, which we'll get to some other time).  Blocker A receives a penalty, skates to the box and sits down.  No problem!  You start the stopwatch as her bum hits the chair, and fill in the form you've been given.  The period and jam she got that penalty in, her skater number and position (blocker, pivot, or jammer), and then the stopwatch time when she arrived (0 seconds) and when you're going to tell her to stand (20 seconds) and let her go (30 seconds).  Nice and simple.

BUT WAIT!!!

Suddenly a Blocker B is also sent off.  She's skating into the box, but you have only one stopwatch.  What do you do?

  • First, keep your cool.  You can totally do this.  Direct her to her chair, but keep an eye on the stopwatch and immediately make a note of the time she arrived (e.g. 15 seconds into the penalty of Block A).  
  • You now have a couple of seconds to do some very fast maths.  If she arrived at 15 seconds and will leave in 30 seconds time then you'll be telling her "Done" at 45 seconds.  Write that down too, and figure out the standing time by jumping back 10 seconds from that (35 seconds). 
  • Never mind the period and jam number for now, you've already got that info from the first skater and can fill that in between jams.  Just get her skater number and the times down, and concentrate on getting people standing and leaving when they're supposed to.
  • By the time you've done all this it's probably time to tell Blocker A to stand.  From this point on you can continue to manage your box as normal, but when Blocker A leaves, don't reset your stopwatch.  Remember, you need to let it run until 45 seconds so you know when to let Blocker B go.  Once she's done, you can reset it.
  • If a skater arrives in the box between jams, there's a box on the form to tick, and you write the jam number down as the next jam, not the last one (which is what I did a couple of times.  Oops!)
It sounds pretty simple, and as long as you keep your head it is.  Just remember that in a worst case scenario you may have up to 3 blockers in your box at any time (because you can seat a second skater behind one that is already standing!) plus a jammer that you aren't timing but still need to make a note of.  In that case, even two stopwatches wouldn't be enough, so this is where the One Stopwatch method really proves its worth.  You've got one hand free for writing and can just keep that watch running and keep adding up more times for as long as you need to.

Let's do an example!


  • So here, we can see that jam 3 was very busy indeed!  We had blocker Red 001 enter the box with a penalty, so she's the baseline we start our timings from.  She arrived at 0secs, stands at 20secs, and is done at 30secs.
  • During that same jam, Pivot Red N02 also recieved a penalty.  We can see she arrived in the box 9secs after Red Blocker 001, so we need to keep that stopwatch running until it hits 39secs for her to have served her whole penalty.
  • During that same jam, Jammer Red K1NG also recieved a penalty.  Now, our Penalty Box Manager will direct her to her seat and time her, but we still need to make a record of it since she's on the Red team.  We can see on the form that she arrived when the stopwatch read 32 secs (when Pivot N02 was standing), and served a full-length penalty in the box, meaning that the other jammer didn't get any penalties during this time.
  • We can also see that she was still in the box when the jam ended.   The 'Stopwatch at End of Jam' columns record this, so we can easily work out how much longer she has left in the box at the start of the next jam.  In this case the jam stopped when our stopwatch, still running from when Blocker 001 arrived, hit 43 seconds.  She'll have 19 seconds left to serve when Jam 4 begins, and we will keep the stopwatch running into Jam 4 until it reaches her "Done" time of 63 seconds.

Don't forget to pause your stopwatch between jams and during team and official timeouts.  There's also a tally chart on the right where you keep track of how many penalties everyone has, but that's really simple so I won't bother explaining that.

If it's any consolation, it took me the space of the first game to get into the paperwork and I did makes one or two errors, as I said, but nothing major.  By the middle of my second game I'd gotten into the swing of it and everything went smoothly from then on, even in the busier moments.

Anyway, back to the Tournament

Aw, it was so fun.  All the teams were really enthusiastic, of course they all brought their own crowds with them from various parts of Yorkshire so the venue felt nice and full.  And, by some miracle (which was actually not a miracle at all but just very good planning), everything ran really smoothly.  The teams, NSOs and Refs all seemed to be where they needed to be with a minimum of hassle.   Everyone seemed to be competent at what they were doing, which makes for a fun and stress-free day for everyone.  Yes it was tiring (for the skaters too!) but everyone I met seemed in such a good mood and the atmosphere was positive all day long, which helped a lot.

All the games were really high energy.  Being only half an hour long seemed to give the skaters extra licence to really give their all, so there were some great antics to watch.  The final in particular was mental, and in the last few james I was fully occupied in the box so that I'm not even sure what the final score was!

Also, I sold a bunch of dino derby stickers.  Bonus!

Like I said, great day out, loads of live derby, what more incentive to be an NSO could you ask for?

2 comments:

  1. Fun fact: You can never have more than 3 blockers in the box because the refs will always retain the 4th blocker, even if penalised, on track to ensure there is a pack. (No blockers from one team = no pack!)

    When another teammate of that blocker has returned to the pack from the box, and there's a spare seat to sit in, the referees with direct that 4th blocker to the box. :)

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    Replies
    1. Straight from the zebra's mouth :) Very good point, I hadn't thought about it from a ref's perspective. I shall adjust the article accordingly.

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