So it seems that when shit is going on I can’t write. I can’t find the time, I can’t find the words. I just stand and stare. Change is happening all around me right now; at work, at home, at roller derby. I thought instincts were supposed to kick in to fight or flight mode. Well, I’m definitely not fighting so this must be flighting, but it just feels like standing and staring mode. Staring as everything falls down around me, and not helping, perhaps even making it worse.

What I have been doing when not writing is reading. I’ve been reading a lot of Penelope Trunk. How to be successful, what I should be focusing on at this point in my life and how important it is to homeschool my children. Penelope puts a really high focus on Myers Briggs and I’ve discovered I’m ENFJ. Apparently ENFJ mothers struggle the most because they are ambitious and very committed, very committed to work and very committed to their children, simultaneously. NIGHTMARE. But no need to worry about that quite yet.

Anyway, all this insight has helped shed some light on my experiences with roller derby too. I’ve been ambitious as to where we could take things, what we could achieve and how we could do that. And, I’ve been highly committed, even when I had lost the ability and the love for the main function of the league, i.e. the skating.

A few weeks before our wedding things were getting tense at the dollies, people were feeling unappreciated and complaining to each other and I got wind of a group who were planning to meet and discuss whether to form a break away team. My unhappiness was so obvious that I was invited to the meeting too.

I sat on that knowledge for a few weeks, toiling over in my mind as to what to do. I knew a break away team would be even more work than the one we had. But I would be lying if I didn’t understand the frustrations that others were feeling. That seems ridiculous now when previously, as a league director, I had a lot of control over the running of the league but I’d given that up.

I emailed others that I know who have formed break away leagues and even they admitted breaking away is very rarely good plan – recruitment becomes even harder, venues even more difficult to book and resources are stretched further.

After we got back from Berlin it came to the day the meeting was scheduled and I decided that out of respect to my ex-co-directors I needed to warn them that I was planning to attend the meeting (here displays my commitment) and that I hoped the outcome of the meeting would be to list a set of requests and changes to improve things in the league. I hoped that the group would then wait for the directors to reply before then deciding whether to explore other options (how’s that for ambitious?).

As it happened the meeting was cancelled anyway.

Based on what I had said the directors called an emergency league meeting to try and understand and rectify any unhappiness within the league. There was much confusion amongst the league members as to why an emergency meeting was required and rather than explain this on the forum it was explained at the evenings practice. Unfortunately, my name was also mentioned as the informant.

The league meeting seemed to be very successful, everyone had their say and lots of grievances were highlighted and documented. The conversation continued on the forum with topics created to allow everyone to voice their concerns and suggest improvements. Lists of tasks and owners have since been generated to take that feedback and ensure the situation is turned into a positive.

My name being mentioned however meant that the friendship I had with the person who had invited me to the meeting, who thought I could be trusted with the secret, was shattered. Only when I explained my side, that I felt I owed it to my co-directors, that if I had still been director I would have wanted some warning, only then did I gain some understanding. I have been able to build on that and maintain that friendship, but still I am the person who betrayed the confidence, and that probably will never go away.

I had risked some of my closest friendships out of respect of my co-directors and that respect was not returned.

Over the following days and weeks more came out about the group, people came forward to admit they were involved and names were named. Despite that fact that I didn’t point the finger at anyone, and I hadn’t given any details, except that I’d been invited to the meeting, I was viewed as the informant of it all.

This caused tension between me and others in the league, tension that I had not noticed at first but when I tried to talk to some of my oldest derby friends and was told that they didn’t want to talk to me because I had named them as being involved, that is when I snapped. I explained that in fact that I had not named anyone, I had given no more details except that I had been invited to a meeting.

Of course by this point the trust amongst friends was wrecked, no one knew who to believe, who they could really trust.

I am a strong believer in making choices and sticking with them, no matter the consequences. I can fully understand if someone dislikes me for the actions I take, but I cannot stand the thought that someone would dislike me for something I did not do.

At this point I felt no other choice but to share the conversation where I had informed my ex-co-director, so that it was clear exactly what I did and didn’t say.

Sharing that conversation was a massive decision and it has proved to have massive consequences. It seems I’ve burned any bridges that meant I could still help out with the dollies and there are even some who don’t want to talk to me again. But I respect that choice, I made those tough decisions and these are the consequences which I must accept.

Today, I have stopped most of my involvement in the league; I definitely don’t skate, I attend some socials and if asked for help then I willingly help. All of this pulls at my committed side, I want so badly to see the league succeed in everything that they do. But now I’m focusing on my ambitions in other areas.

Perhaps I did the right thing, at times along the way it sure didn’t feel like it. It seems I’ve caused so much heartache I almost wish I had kept my mouth shut, but then that has always been my problem. And, what if I had? Would we be better off? Who knows?

One thing I do know, change is hard.

In my life I am a very decisive person. I have an opinion about everything. I know my mind when it comes to hot topics and pressing issues, I can make a decision in an instant and stick to it. That is, until it comes to roller derby.

I injured my knee over a year ago and it took a long time for me to recover. Physically not so long, but mentally it took about four or five months which is an age in roller derby. Four or five months in roller derby is three or more bouts, two roster selections, multiple team selections, umpteen fitness tests and hundreds of skills training drills missed.

Even when I came back to skating after those months I couldn’t face the idea of bouting again. The team had changed so much, the expectations of A-team players was much higher and I really didn’t have the desire or confidence in myself to meet those expectations. I didn’t want to do extra fitness hours, I didn’t want to “push myself” into skating harder, I even struggled in tactics sessions which, previously, had been my strength.

Of course some of my league mates noticed and were very supportive, trying to make sessions more fun and encouraging which I am SO grateful for. I even attended and contributed enough to make it back onto the B team roster a few months ago but with no bouts booked in I had nothing to work towards and playing against the A team each week in scrimmage just didn’t inspire me at all. I began picking and choosing which sessions to attend depending on who was coaching, what would be coached and who we would have to scrim against.

I would avoid any sessions which involved fitness, any scrims against the A team. But then mixed scrims were always nightmarish when I happened to be picked last every time. Of course none of this I blame on anyone else, I don’t feel bullied or left out on purpose. My heart was not in it and that reflected in my every interaction.

And yet, I stayed around. What for? The nostalgia of Vi O’Lence as she was? Not really. Out of habit? Possibly. Out of duty for the league that I had helped to build and mould? Definitely. Still now, I feel that duty.

Conveniently the month around our wedding gave me a break from feeling that I needed to attend roller derby. I was working extra hours to pay for the big day, then there was all the hours in the weeks before to get everything ready, followed by honeymoon and two or more weeks to catch up on work after I came back.

Through all that I’ve managed to keep in touch with everyone through attending most things outside of training; bouts, fundraisers, socials, and even league meetings. If ever I was worried that I would lose touch people if I didn’t attend training then that is now out of my mind. Roller girls may be busy but they’re not too busy for the people and things that they value – just like us all.

Last week I planned to get back to training but I finally realised that I would rather be doing my own thing. I love to watch roller derby, I love to be involved in such a female-focused movement and I love all the dollies so much but I am just not cut out for everything that comes with actually skating within a league. So many times I have attended practice just to see my friends, I don’t even want to put my skates on, I don’t really want to do the drills and I definitely don’t want to be told to try harder or focus on this or that to do it better.

I don’t want to be better at skating, I don’t want to be better at roller derby. I feel I have given enough; enough time, enough effort and definitely enough tears. It has taken me so long to come to this realisation, to understand my own feelings, far far longer that I am used to.

So a few weeks on from this realisation, I can tell you one thing, there is life after roller derby. Unfortunately it doesn’t involve having a cleaner house, that factor stays the same with or without derby, hah!

What this means from now on I don’t know. I would like to continue on helping out based on the three years of experience that I have. I have been helping the Raggy Dollz with some bench managing in last couple of weeks which was ace and made me feel really appreciated. I’d also like to do some thing with the list of league/bout production resources that I have been adding to, perhaps publish some of my ideas and tips here. One thing that definitely does motivate me is the idea that I am contributing to the growth of roller derby as a sport, especially within the UK.

Outside of roller derby I will be focusing on things that I do want to improve on, namely my design skills. I have signed up to Your Darling Blog design course in the hope that it will help to bring more creativity to my designs and more confidence in myself and my personal design style. This blog will be the one I use as an example throughout the course so you can hopefully expect a new look around Christmas time. Exciting!

Please don’t email someone and ask them how to do everything. Hack away at it first. Find your own way first, then ask for if there’s any suggested adjustments. Ask EDUCATED QUESTIONS.

Bonnie D. Stroir – Self reliance in Roller Derby

P.S. I made the Raggy Dollz roster (B team), I’m not sure whether we have any bouts in the next three months but at least I won’t be a “floating” skater when it comes to scrims, finally I belong somewhere. Hopefully that will give me something to work towards and a team to feel part of again. Hopefully.

Here’s the promo video we did for next week’s Fight to the Finnish roller derby tournament.

Eek! The nerves are setting in. Fingers crossed for a great turnout.

I also found this article which should prove very useful for future events: Promote your roller derby event for free.

Last week I posted Part 1 on how to promote your roller derby bout from 6 weeks before to 3 weeks before.

2 weeks before: We have coordinated the skaters to go out in groups to put flyers into shops, pubs and bars around Leicester. They have volunteered to be in “teams” of around 6, most will be on foot but 1-2 in each group will be on skates. I’ve sorted the venues into groups that are close to each other and each team gets a group of venues to visit. They will put flyers in each venue on their allocated flyer shelf (and try to give them a decent slot where the flyer can be easily seen). If anyone in the venue seems interested in what we’re doing then they’ll chat to them and maybe give them a flyer.

We have to be careful with flyering as we need to have a license to hand them out to the public in the city centre and if we are found to be doing so we can be fined, especially if the flyers are dropped on the floor and are causing litter. The good thing is, we don’t need a license to put them into pubs and bars as long as they are on the designated flyer shelf.

The flyer design includes a voucher for £2 off the door price – everyone loves a discount voucher! Our door price happens to be £2 more expensive than the advanced ticket price so anyone using the voucher will just pay the same amount as the advanced ticket buyers.

In this week we will also do a press release and send it to our contacts at local newspapers and websites. This should generate links and things to promote on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook in the build up to the event.

At the beginning of this week we will post on our forum to encourage league members to help with bout promotion. We ask them to use the poster as their profile photo on Facebook, we ask them to share the event with their friends and to make sure they like/tweet/share/reblog any of the press that we receive. We know that the more interest is shown in these articles, the more we can be featured in local press.

1 week before: The final week of promotion is really a last push for people who plan to attend the event to buy advanced tickets. In my experience it is now too late to get new people interested in your event because most people will have already planned what they are doing on that day. So, you need to concentrate on those who have already shown interest by sending out Facebook messages to all the event invitees.

This final week is also when we use Twitter and Facebook to build up anticipation for the event, get people into the theme and promote the “extras” at the event – key raffle prizes or half time entertainment. You may also create some other “hooks” such as friendly rivalry between skaters who have similar names (e.g. Rogue Runner vs Wiley Peyote, Holly Hotrod vs Holly Sheet) or our favourite thing to do is to guess what outfit our mascot will be wearing on bout day.

We often use a hash tag for the event to use on twitter and encourage others to use it too. For Fight To The Finnish the hash tag will be #fight2finnish, we even included this on the bout poster. Reply and retweet anyone who is talking about the event, we also like to follow anyone who mentions us on Twitter.

In the final two/three days we will make it clear that people only have a certain amount of time to buy advanced tickets (state what time ticket sales will close) and only a limited number will be saved for the door. If you can offer a cheaper price for advanced tickets (or a more expensive price on the door) this should help you to push people to buy in advance.

At this point if you’ve had very little interest or ticket sales don’t panic. There is nothing worse than posting in desperation to get people to buy more tickets. Just make sure that after the day you evaluate why your interest was low (too much competition from other bouts, too hard to buy tickets in advance, your price was too high), and what you can do to improve things for next time (HINT: start earlier!). You may find that lots of people arrived on the day and next time you want to focus on pushing advanced ticket sales or overall attendance was poor and you need to work on selling your event as a whole.

On the day: Tweet pictures of the set up for the day and reply or re-tweet anyone who tweets to say they are on their way or sad they are missing the event – keep building up that community around the event.

After the event: Write a review of the event and post it on your website, also do a cut down version for local press and other websites (including DNN if this is really big event). Promote any photographers who came to your event by posting their photos (with credit) on your Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr – you can even include their pics with your review.

If you can, create the Facebook and website event for your next bout within a week. This will catch your attendees while they are still on a high and they are more likely to share with their own friends. Even if you have no poster or bout name yet just use your league logo and the names of the teams that will be playing.

And the whole process starts again… good luck with promoting your bouts!

Our next home bout will be a tournament featuring Helsinki Roller Derby. Tournaments are difficult things, much more difficult than normal bouts. At a bout our break even costs are much lower but with the extended booking at our expensive bouting venue we need to ensure a lot more punters through the door at a tournament in order to break even.

Here’s the promotion plan we put into place for Fight to the Finnish:

6 weeks before: We set up the website event and Facebook event for the tournament. Some leagues do it even earlier than that to secure their bout’s name. We always write an exciting description for the event and make it really obvious how to buy tickets – I like to have the buy tickets link in the first line of the description if possible.

We put up a teaser graphic on the website and Facebook to give people a feel for the event’s theme. At this stage we do a little bit of Twitter to highlight the event to people.

We also ensure that any general league promotion (magazine features, interviews, etc.) states when the next home bout will be and who it will feature. We are due to be featured in The Monograph this month, a Leicester based music magazine. The article is not Roller Derby related, it just features some of our skaters and their favourite music venue in Leicester but it’s good promotion for the league and it will say at the bottom when our next bout is.

5 weeks before: We challenged our league members to “break the record” for most invited friends to the facebook event (The challenge was 1600, we have currently got over 2000 invited to the event!). This really helps all league members to get involved with bout promotion and reiterates that promotion can’t be left to the last minute. This also helps us to focus on friends of our skaters – locals and not just the roller derby community.

Keep tweeting on things surround the event, links that relate to theme, #followfriday to promote the teams you’ll be playing against.

4 weeks before: We put posters up around the city centre in local shops and bars. Our city does not allow fly posting so we only have a limited number of venues that we can put up posters. We usually place around 20 posters in our “key locations” – vintage shops, alternative clothing shops, skate shops, music shops, and alternative bars. We then have another 40-50 posters handed out at training so skaters can put the posters up in local shops (chip shops and takeaways are great places to put your posters up).

3 weeks before: For this tournament we launched a Facebook advert campaign for the first time. Facebook adverts can be very targeted so are an excellent way to promote your event. Whenever someone clicks on the advert you will be charged between 30p-60p depending on your choices when you create the advert. Facebook will tell you before you give your payment details how much each one will cost.

We selected to target users within 80km/50miles of Leicester, aged 18+, both male and female who have shown interest in roller derby, whip it or roller skating, but that aren’t already invited to the Facebook event – that’s almost 4000 people! We also placed a small limit on the campaign so once we have reached a certain number of clicks the advert will not show any more and we won’t be charged. We need to keep our costs low but if we can push just a few more ticket sales then it is worth it.

At the end of this week we will release the bout poster and a matching cover photo on Facebook. We tag the photo with skaters who will be in the bout as well as anyone else who has a heavy role in promotion. If you run out of tags (this often happens to us) you can also tag people in the cover photo. This usually creates a lot of buzz and helps us to increase our facebook reach – sometimes by double.

Check back next Saturday for Part 2!

Last weeks roller derby bout went very well. We had a good crowd of about 150-180 which is smaller than we usually get but very good to say there were so many other derby events on the same day – one only an hour away. We couldn’t rely on the local derby crowd from the Nottingham, Derby or Rutland teams as we often would so really it forced us to build our local fan base and that can only be a good thing.

We had fantastic response to the bout reviews, we’ve been featured in the local paper, a niche sport website and there is a review due to be printed in a UK roller derby magazine. We’ve even put up a review on our website – all in the space of a week! My writing elf has been very busy indeed (thank you Andy!!).

We are now full swing into promoting the next bout, the response to the facebook event has been great so far, we’ve even sold a few tickets already. That just goes to show that launching a facebook event immediately after your last bout really helps people to look forward to the next one and make sure they don’t miss out.

We have poster, flyer and sticker campaigns planned, probably a facebook advert campaign and maybe some printed adverts in local press too. That’s all on top of press releases which will hopefully feature in the local newspaper and other local sports websites. We’re even hoping to pull off a big secret thing which will hopefully draw a lot of PR attention to the event… watch this space.

This weekend I’m off to Anarchy: Euro Crash (plus a bit of shopping in Camden). One of my league mates, Rogue Runner, will be playing for the Euro All Stars against London Brawling who have been training very hard in preparation, as you can see below: