Curtis E. Lay

To this day, I love the old Roadrunner cartoons. Poor Wile E. Coyote. His wonderful, fundamentally flawed plans always ended with him falling off a cliff, blowing up, or falling off a cliff and then blowing up. With the money he spent on giant crossbows and earthquake pills from the Acme Company, he could have just ordered take-out roadrunner from the nearest diner, but damn it if he didn’t keep plugging away…but I digress.

Recently, I had cause to update my referee résumé. In the past 12 months, I reffed 65 full-length bouts under the WFTDA rule set. On average, that’s about one bout every 5.6 days, along with who knows how many scrimmages and a handful of short challenge bouts. The bouts featured teams from 45 different WFTDA leagues and took me from one end of the U.S. to the other.

I am watching a bout at the 2011 WFTDA East Region Playoffs. From my high vantage point, I can see the front pack ref blow call after call. “You are freaking HORRIBLE,” I roar. Another jam, another bad 20-foot call, this one issued at about 17 feet (as opposed to the previous jam, when he issued it at around 31 feet). He is maybe getting some of the interior, chippy stuff right that I can’t see from up high, but…blaarggh, another bad call. I am seething. “You suck, ref.”

We each have a mental shortlist of reasons that we love roller derby. Near the top of my list is the work that roller derby leagues do with local charities—the deeply-rooted ties to the communities from which our leagues arose. Roller derby and community outreach are inseparable in my mind. One of the leagues I ref for, the Rat City Rollergirls, supports many organizations around Seattle, and my most personal connection is with the Ballard Food Bank.