Why I Coach

2009 Team Captain - Thunder Lips

I suppose every coach has their reasons for enjoying their job. Depending on the sport and the individual background, any particular coach would likely bring forth reasons for why they love what they do. For me it is no different, but it’s not what you might think. I came to the Dominion Derby Girls with no skating background. I wasn’t a rink rat, never performed on skates, I never so much as had a skating birthday party when I was growing up. In fact, I didn’t even have much of an athletic background at all! I took ballet lessons for years and years and I ran track in school. Aside from my 4×4 relay team, I had minimal experience with team sports. It was a caption in an article in the Virginia Pilot about our league almost 3 years ago that caught my eye. It said “We’ll teach you everything you need to know, all the skills required to play Roller Derby!” and that they did.

So, two years later I am a coach and the reason I love it is because learning to play this sport and acquiring all the skills required to do so is a long and hard process. Ladies from all walks of life walk with all sorts of backgrounds through our door every month with the hopes that they will one day (soon) play this game. Everyone starts off shaky on skates and scared of falling, then they’re scared of learning whips and then of being hit (making contact). But the tenacious ladies that really want to do this keep coming back and I take teaching them very seriously. I love watching the transformation!! Girls start to get steady on their skates and then seconds come bit by bit off a time trial because a girl starts to cross over, a Fresh Meat will get a good push on one of our vets, someone will unexpectedly produce a strong whip or shock me by really laying a good hit on one of us old timers. Little by little, a derby girl starts to shine through.

At the end of the Fresh Meat process, every skater goes through an evaluation and when you pass you get to start scrimmaging. None of us ever stop learning, this is an evolving sport but it’s so GREAT to stand by and watch a new jammer get lead for the first time, or a girl connect with a perfect hit, or recover from a fall lighting quick just when you may have counted her out and know that I had a part it this creation. I consider Derby to be a gift for the select few of us who want it, who need it.  Our coaching staff as a whole is dedicated to helping ladies obtain that for themselves and our end goal is to create a skater who is an asset to their team, add a new friend to the mix and give them something that can never be taken away – for once a derby girl…. always a derby girl.

-Thunder Lips