Let’s hear all those spicy takes from the Great Tailgate. Did you play? Did you watch? Did you officiate? Did you have fun? Did you hate it?
Seconding from a player perspective - SCAR hosted a fantastic tournament! There was very clearly a lot of work put in to make everything run smoothly. They should be very proud!
I loved some of the Montreal CC attempts. I also think the announcers did a fantastic job!
Up-to-date COVID vaccination or day-of rapid testing was required at registration.
Just want to point out because I have seen multiple events do this and then wind up being superspreaders that this is absolutely not a sufficient COVID measure and is based on a ~summer 2021 understanding of the virus. I'm glad there was an attempt, to me that means people really do care but just don't have the right information.
The vaccines we have do not prevent transmission or long covid and rapid test sensitivity is pretty low, especially if only one test is taken. The bare minimum mitigation is universal (kn95 or better) masks and ventilation/air filtration.
I'm sure I sound like a broken record in this sub but it's because I love this sport and I want as many people as possible to be able to participate in it as long as possible.
I have a hot take about WFTDA.
Having attended too many WFTDA tournaments in the last decade this playoff made me mad to see the lack of involvement. I know they helped with staffing refs/NSOs but their presence was minimal. Zero WFTDA banners anywhere, no broadcast presence or athlete interviews, zero social media presence on the main WFTDA pages with event updates, the MVP prize was a t-shirt (?!) with no plaque or speech by a WFTDA person? Usually, they also have a table or something with WFTDA people or merch where refs can buy patches or you can ask someone from the organization questions. Where were the patches to show you were at the tournament for the jackets everyone loves to collect? Where was the marketing? I didn't know the tournament was happening until the week before.
Where does #talk2WFTDA go in the absence of #derbytwitter and can someone from WFTDA for the love of god make a Discord channel or something???
Will the games live on SCAR's YouTube page and not WFTDA's...and the same for the other hosting leagues? How will people know to find that when we want to tell a person to watch a particular game? Does anyone know why WFTDA broadcast is no longer a thing?
It sounds like I'm a WFTDA shill but I am coming from a place that is questioning WTF their relevance is. These tournaments are supposed to be their THING. This is why we PAY as leagues and as members. Why am I buying into this. These are small things that make it feel like there's something bigger than your local league. IMO they are slacking and just confirming the sentiment many have about their purpose.
Thanks SCAR for putting on an amazing event. It feels like you weren't given the support past leagues have had with hosting events and producing a tournament isn't easy. WFTDA failed you and it's failed us.
Other than buying insurance and providing the rankings system, an average person’s experience with wfda is pretty minimal. Tournaments are their chance to convince us with a cool event why we care about rankings at all
I feel rankings mean even less now that the bigger teams can throw more teams into the mix. I know a few players from teams by me who are planning on trying to jump to bigger teams now because of it.
Where does #talk2WFTDA go in the absence of #derbytwitter and can someone from WFTDA for the love of god make a Discord channel or something???
I think this is a big one even though it seems kinda small at first. In the past post season tourneys always felt like being apart of one big community because of the discussions on twitter. I remember getting up suuuuper early when playoffs were in Spain to talk about the games with folks on there from all over. Learned a lot of rules/strategy stuff that way too. It's just not the same watching it mostly alone vs with that larger group.
Edit: I know folks are iffy on Mastodon generally, I am too, but this is a place where a Mastodon instance run by WFTDA could be useful
WFTDA is barely keeping their head above water after the pandemic. They lost staff and volunteers. Plus shitting on WFTDA without actually offering to help seems to be cool. It’s everything that sucks about being on a league BOD on a bigger and yet more thankless scale.
We rely on wftda for the ruleset, for officials, for game sanctioning for liability insurance etc. when wftda was going broke running tournaments the complaint was they were wasting money on tournaments that the vast majority of leagues would never participate in.
I was track side shooting photos for all the arch rival games, I feel like overall this tournament was pretty well run and I have been to dozens of them over the years.
Things I liked:
- Low bureaucracy factor - nobody chasing people around telling them where to go or not go, no dumb forms to fill out, staff were all pretty chill and friendly.
- volunteers were treated pretty well. WFTDA gave me a card even! It is a breath of fresh air from some tournaments in the past where some types of volunteers were treated more or less like inconveniences.
- venue was very nice, had about the average amount of "who designed this place?" logistical inconveniences - but I must remind myself that most pro/semi pro facilities are not designed with people switching between "audience" and "participant" at all, let alone multiple times a day.
things to improve at future tournaments:
- square it away with the venue, derby people don't eat venue food (generally) and they are going to bring their own stuff in. This isn't unique to Pegula, every big place I've ever gone to has had some size of cow over people bringing in food when there's approximately zero chance that it is hurting their potential venue food sales. So have the conversation early and often with them that it's just gonna happen. I think this probably caused more stress on the tournament organizers than everyone else though.
- easier access to water for volunteers etc. so they don't have to go all round the facility and back again while working.
(overall pretty minor complaints tbh)
I think that was why they directed participants down to gate C. I felt very few cows were had when I brought food in through there. Except the small piece of cow I brought. But other’s mileage may vary. Where can we see your pics?
Eta: specifically looking for some pics of Kla Woodward’s skates, which were gorgeous.
oh sure they got it in the door fine, but then they took it to the stands... haha. I mean in the grand scheme of crimes it is nothing but I saw some chatter from tournament organizers about how it was causing them stress so like, yeah, maybe just have that discussion firmly up front: our roller people aren't gonna buy a lot of crappy hot dogs sorry.
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBqRWJ for the tournament pics that I took which were mostly only arch rival games. I had a crappy travel experience getting home so it will probably be the end of the week before I put the championship game online.
The hotdogs were solid actually. Got one free for being an official. That being said, food is a big money maker for a lot of venues because of the profit margin. My home league almost lost their game space due to people bringing in food and leaving it in the stands. It's hard enough to find spaces that will let us skate on their floors without adding a "we wont follow your rules" attitude to it.
It looked like it went great! Great organization, and an awesome debut to post season again. My only complaint as a spectator was the camera angles, it was hard to see jam starts from the turn 4 and turn 1/2 camera, the turn 2 camera was very low so we couldn’t see anything behind the row of blockers closest to the cameras. I liked the angle of the 2nd straightaway camera, you can see movement, pack, etc but it was very zoomed out. I’m grateful to have a stream and a dynamic one at that, and live stream announcers on site, but I would prefer one camera angle above the first straightaway that can zoom in and out so we can see plays and players better
As an attendee, I want to give massive props to SCAR and how smoothly everything ran from a spectator standpoint! Having helped run a much smaller scale tournament previously, I know how much work went into everything and how hard it is to keep so many games running on time and moving swiftly. Almost every game was on time except for the game that went into overtime for the overtime jam (which was so rad), and even after that, everything was basically on schedule for the rest of the tournament.
I also know a lot of folks appreciated the opportunity to scrim on Sunday morning. I know at least one skater who didn't get a lot of play time during her team's games was happy to get to put skates on for the scrim, even if it wasn't a part of regionals play. I only heard amazing things about the hospitality provided, from the food and tailgate to the sensory room. It was great to get the chance to buy merch from non-local teams; I hope it becomes feasible in the future for more teams to bring merch.
I think my only complaints, which are very minor, stem from the venue itself -- nothing to do with SCAR. For those watching at home, the seating area behind the benches was roped off, which was due to wanting to limit the amount of staff who would have to clean the arena after the tournament (totally understandable and reasonable). However, everyone I spoke to wished to have been able to sit on the other side of the arena instead, right behind the jam and pivot lines. It could've been that the venue arbitrarily picked a side to rope off and SCAR couldn't set the track up the other way, not sure. It was just hard to make out who was doing what, especially during Sunday's games when the lines were so intensely jumbled.
It also would have been nice to be able to sit in the bleacher-style section (right around where turns 1/2 were). The blue stadium seats were hostile for wider hips, and since all of the other seating in the venue was roped off (including the benches/bleacher style seating), my partner was forced to spend three long days of derby in a very tight, uncomfortable seat that left her with large bruises on both hips. I'm sure she was not the only one. But that has nothing to do with SCAR and more to do with having a more flexible venue -- just something for folks to keep in mind when scoping out venues for future events.
The OT jam was sooooo much fun!
SCAR did such a fantastic job hosting! I’m really looking forward to reviewing the footage later — all of the different camera angles and the blocker lineups! Really top notch production.
It was pretty good to watch from the stream. The only feed back I have is that they should test the colors for the skater names before the streams. It was hard to read sometimes. It needs to be high contract when it is the jersey color but also when it turns red for while the skaters are in the penalty box
I didn't keep count but there seemed to be an unusually high amount of big comebacks or near comebacks (40+ points) this weekend. Also a lot of penalties called. Not sure if the two are related.
Loved the multiple camera angles and having the blocker names up on the stream too instead of just jammers. Lots of really good derby. Overall great watching experience.
Really upsetting (though unsurprising) to keeping hearing announcers say "post pandemic" "since COVID" etc though.
Hello! My background is in other sports that aren’t derby, and my takes come from that lens.
My spicy take is that regionals should be competitive. If they won’t be competitive, it probably makes sense to give teams byes to Champs or exclusively do champs. A blowout in the final for a regional tourney is sad for fans. It me. I am a fan. It might be better to do some other configuration of competitive pathways, maybe like soccer does.
A team not playing to win in an elimination tourney is weird and unusual within a sports context. Not that they would have won, and I understand there are rules about forfeiting, but still, we are doing this in sports. I understand that the rankings calculator no longer applies and this is good. I understand this game gave opportunity to bench skaters so that is good. But the system is sad.
Another spicy take is that the stream showed something like zero to three fans in the building, which isn’t a great look. Film the fans. And why host in in a big empty arena when we could do a way less expensive venue? Felt a little too big for our britches. Granted, I was happy that the stream was free, which meant I watched some.
Final spicy take is so minorly spicy. Identifying teams as “Boston A Team” and “Detroit Allstars A” is weird in a sports context, especially when there are no other sports in the tournament from Boston or Detroit. Yes, this was probably pulled directly from a spreadsheet, but it’s one of those minor details that’s handled in the weirdest possible way.
Did we watch the same tournament? There were several games within ten points of each other and there was at least one tie game with an overtime jam. The final game was not the one to watch either, the second to last game was the one that really mattered. No shade to Arch or Montreal, but they were playing for seed positions and already knew they were going to Champs. The final was an incredible game though.
I’m looking at: Game 1, 8/9 seed, close Game 2, 5/12 seed, non competitive Game 3, 6/11 seed, absolute blowout Game 4, 7/10 seed, absolute blowout Game 5, 1/8 seed, the largest blowout Game 6, 4/5 seed, close Game 7, 3/6 seed, non competitive Game 8, 2/7 seed blowout
{skipping consolation games because they aren’t part of the competitive format except 3rd place}
Game 11, 1/4 seed, absolute blowout, 4 seed did not play regular roster, appeared to not attempt the win in favor of trying for the 3rd place game Game 12, 2/3 seed, non competitive Game 15, 4/3 seed, non competitive Game 16, championship, absolute blowout
By my math that’s 2 close games, 4 non competitive games, 6 blowouts?
Sorry for the formatting, not sure why it ended up weir s
I was officiating 6 of the games and was on the floor watching most of the others. Every single team was playing to win. Just because seeding fucks you sometimes doesn't mean you aren't giving it your all.
I am talking about benching the athletes who normally get maximum playtime and rostering the least-rostered skaters. I believe those skaters were doing their bests, and I believe Windy acted strategically in making that decision. I’m not mad at Windy. Perhaps I’m mad at the structure of roller derby competition or perhaps I’m mad about the lack of parity between the top teams and everyone else, or both.
To your other point, it was a very hard to get to location in PA and that really limited spectator access.
I was watching the stream and thought the ai generated background art was lazy and uninspired, but otherwise good broadcast overall
I can speak from the announcer side of things, I was there all weekend, mostly on production but I also had a few in house and one broadcast.
SCAR Derby did a FANTASTIC job hosting. As an announcer/volunteer I was well-fed, watered, and had the resources I needed to feel successful. I mean, we were sitting in the Big10 Network (ESPN) announcer booths - that in and of itself is VERY cool.
I think the bar was set VERY high in terms of stream production quality. With the sunset of the WFTDA remote studio, host leagues were essentially left to “figure it out.” SCAR invested a lot in making sure the stream was top-notch quality and always had at least two people monitoring the stream to make sure things were running smoothly. I know there was sometimes a visual/audio disconnect but things like that are going to happen when you’re streaming from an arena with your own equipment and also reliant on YouTube. Lessons learned on day 1: YouTube DOES NOT ENABLE closed captioning until you have 1,000 subscribers. So if you want CC on ALL regionals and champs- go subscribe to the host leagues now. YouTube also does auto-generated captions, so there’s no point in asking for someone to sit there and transcribe. If you watch anything with any type of CC, you know they ALWAYS get something wrong, especially when it’s done live.
SCAR put together a lot of resources for people attending. There was a spreadsheet with local attractions, eateries, medical services, etc etc. There was no shortage of bathrooms at the venue, they were always kept clean. There was a sensory room available for people who needed a quieter environment between games. Two skate shops were there, as well as league merch.
Up-to-date COVID vaccination or day-of rapid testing was required at registration. Everyone was incredibly friendly and welcoming. By day 3 yes we were all tired but that is the joy of running a tournament. I was too tired to go to the after party but I heard it was VERY well attended.
Also I’m going to say it louder for the people in the back who might not know: WFTDA was responsible for staffing the refs and NSOs for the tournament. SCAR provided all announcers and other venue volunteers (stream, track maintenance, concessions, registration, etc). Applications for those positions were posted by SCAR Derby and WFTDA. If you’re interested in volunteering at one of the other regionals, keep an eye on the host-league’s socials as chances are they are doing more of the promotion for the positions they are responsible for staffing.
The only refs/NSOs SCAR provided were for the open-gender mixer scrimmages that happened off-stream before the start of day 3. I had the pleasure of reffing that morning, and while there was a minor confusion as to our hard stop time, that went smoothly as well and it was an awesome experience to be able to skate (1) in Pegula, and (2) during regionals.
All in all, I had a very smooth and good experience at The Great Tailgate. I think SCAR put on an amazing event and has set a very high standard for the upcoming regional playoffs.