random truths – Day 1,023 (Wednesday) – the goat

The Facebook memories feature for today has photos from a memorable night. And not memorable just because I was looking at a photo of it. The photo is from 2011 and the earliest days of the Red River Sirens Roller Derby team. It was our first time on a track with another team when Vette City Roller Derby in Bowling Green, Kentucky hosted us at their rink for a scrimmage. Ready or not (mostly not), we skated with them and against them and learned a lot. 

Red River Sirens at our first scrimmage - January 2011.

It was an exciting and exhilarating and educational night. And I got to be “the goat,” but in this case we are definitely not talking the “greatest of all time” kind of goat.

A roller derby “goat” is when a player from one team is surrounded and trapped by several members of the other team. Trust me on this, it is not fun to be the goat. “Getting a goat” is a strategy to slow down the pace of the game.

If the pace is getting too fast, one team might target a slower, weaker, newer player from the other team (on that night, usually me). A few players will surround the goat and slow down, forcing the rest of the pack up ahead to slow down. The pack is defined as the largest group of in-bound, upright skaters from both teams skating within 10 feet of each other. The rules state that there can be only one pack, so if the group splits into two or more groups and they are more than ten feet apart, there is a “no pack” situation which affects scoring.

The worst part of being the goat was that every time I was surrounded, the other players would yell “we got a goat!” to signal their other team mates that things should slow down.

That first scrimmage was amazing. It showed us what we were working towards, what we needed to work on, and how to use the drills and skills we worked on at each practice. Roller derby was as much fun as I thought it would be when we began forming our team some seven or eight months earlier. Even all these years later, I still miss it. Except for being the goat. That was not fun at all.