Get on the Right Page

I have learned a lot about teamwork in the last 4 years in roller derby.  I have learned a lot about life too.  When I bring derby and life together and think about the community that derby provides for people I think about how it can be successful or not.

People pay to play derby for an outlet.  People, from all walks of life come together as they are, with all the broken pieces of their lives and with all their life battle scars.  Their scars could be an abusive relationship, grieving death, low self-worth, or a sexual identity crisis.  The list goes on and on. If the outlet becomes too stressful or too much work and not enough fun, it is no longer an outlet.  You have to find a way to balance it all.

I fight with my husband a lot among my other scars.  Bringing home grief to add to that fighting does nothing to help.  My husband knows I love roller derby but if I'm coming home to him bitching about it, he naturally wants to fix it for me.  However, he can't fix it so he just gets mad at the fact that I keep doing it even though I'm pissed off at some aspect of it.  We end up fighting about derby then too.  I need to learn to hang things up at the door at practice and at home.

For a community, marriage, or relationship to be successful, people have to work together toward common goals.  They need to edify each other.  Edify means to build up, uplift, construct, strengthen or establish.  People with broken pieces need to be built up to be successful.  Breaking down those pieces will take longer and longer each time to build them back up.  Your teammates will make mistakes, but tearing them down when they make mistakes does not edify them.  Mistakes should be an opportunity to strengthen a teammate. 

When people pay to play something, they are customers. Just like any other business, if you don't have good customer service, your customers won't continue to come back.  Roller derby is not a paid sport and should never be treated as such.  Therefore when dealing with the business end of derby, care should be taken when dealing with disagreements in the business.  You wouldn't fly off the handle to your boss or a customer and you can't do it in the business of derby either or it just won't be successful.

Success can be had if genuine care is taken and people cooperate.  Simply put, the whole team has to be on the same page.