Footage Fridays: Looking at the squish in squish starts
Introducing Footage Fridays by taking a fresh look at a quick lead jammer play
We’ve all had it happen to us: the jam starts and before you even have time to think, a jam ref is blowing tweet-tweet to signal that the other team’s jammer has been awarded lead. It happens, and not by accident. Today we are going to take a look at a nearly perfectly executed quick lead jammer start. After that, we’ll look at some other jams that didn’t go quite as perfectly and try to identify some things we can consider to help us execute quick lead jammer plays while we avoid having them happen to us.
As always, I am not going to be writing about the intent of the players on the track because I am not them and I do not know their intent. What I will be writing about are the effects that the player's actions have and how understanding those effects can help us be better roller derby strategists.
All the jams I will discuss today are from the October 1, 2023 game between Rose City Wheels of Justice and Denver Roller Derby Mile High Club. The full game can be found on the WFTDA Twitch channel. Thank you to everybody who worked to make this footage available for us to analyze.
A Near Perfect Squish
How will we measure “near perfect”?
In this video, I take a look at jam 2 of the first half. According to me, this is a near perfect execution of the squish start. Once again, I’m not in Rose City practices or meetings so I don’t know what their opinion is of this start but I want to point out the things that I think make this near perfect. But before I do that, I want to talk about two concepts that we should all be thinking about when we look at video of roller derby:
Did the team or player achieve the outcomes that they wanted to achieve in a given situation?
Did the team or player follow the technique, tactics, strategy and process that they have been taught, regardless of the outcomes of the jam?
The first question presents a couple problems. How do I know what they wanted to do? I know what I value from a jam, not what they value. Outcomes I would be curious about are:
Did the team get lead jammer?
Did the team score points?
Did the team deny the other team the opportunity to score?
Those are the things that are important to me and I have an order in which I would prioritize them as a player and a coach (if you’re curious: #1 is my top priority, then #3, then #2). A second problem is how does knowing if a team achieved an outcome help that team get better? If you’re a coach and you say to your team, “At last weeks game we didn’t score as many points as the other team so let’s try to get more points than the other team in our next game,” you’re not adding anything. That’s outcome focused coaching and no player or coach can control outcomes. The *how* of getting those outcomes is what we can control. This is where we try to measure whether a player followed a process that *should* lead to successful outcomes.
There’s a further problem here though. We only really know our own team’s training. (Going to take a moment here to say that you should absolutely be watching video of yourselves to make sure you are doing the things you have been working on at practice during the game.) No two teams play exactly the same system and strategy of roller derby, so if you want to judge another team’s tactics, strategy or process you have to do a little bit of guessing about what each player has been instructed to do.
For the purpose of the video above and this writing, I am going to go about guessing what a player was instructed to do by looking at the effects of a players actions on how they impact the outcomes that I value in roller derby. If a team has a different value system or set of priorities, the video breakdown above might not make sense for their tactics and strategy and that is ok. What I hope we can all see is that you can start with a set of outcomes that you would like to see, build tactics, strategy and process around trying to arrive at those outcomes and then measure your ability to follow the processes you have laid out.
One thing that will help you as you try to learn from video of other teams without knowing what they were trying to do: channel your inner Ted Lasso and be curious, not judgmental. Try hard to see how a team could be trying to achieve their own goals with a tactic, strategy or process as much as you try to see if it fits into your own goals.
What is Rose City trying to achieve?
With that in mind, I’m going to lay out some of the outcomes I think matter to Rose City based on watching them play.
Getting lead jammer so they can control the jam. Almost all teams want this but it is important to remember as a goal when talking about how their strategy helps achieve this outcome.
Getting lead jammer quickly to keep their jammers fresh late in the game. Wheels of Justice run a relatively short jammer rotation when games are close so they want to get easy wins for their jammers as often as they can.
Denying the opposing team the opportunity to score. Rose usually employs a classic point-denial strategy of calling the jam before the other team scores. There are exceptions where they choose a long jam strategy that seeks to outscore opponents or clear the penalty box but for the most part, they choose point-denial.
Those are some of the outcomes I think they are looking to achieve. Now, let’s make some guesses about their processes. I believe that Rose City use some of the principals of gap defense but not all of them. For the videos today, I will be assuming that they are coached according to strategies and tactics that value numbers 7-10 in that list:
Applying our rubric to grade the jam
First let’s check the outcomes:
Rose City is awarded lead jammer 1 second into the jam, allowing all players to focus on keeping the Denver jammer in the pack from that moment forward. This absolutely accomplishes outcomes 1 and 2 above.
Rose City holds the Denver jammer scoreless while having their own jammer complete a full first pass and partial second scoring pass. Denying the other team points while getting to the second scoring pass is a great outcome in a jam where both teams are at full strength.
We cannot really ask for much more from an outcome perspective. But where this jam really shines is when we measure process. In the video above, I spoke about how Wheels of Justice narrow the effective playing area that Mile High Club are playing in resulting in two effects: 1) Tarantula and Elicia Nisbet-Smith have smaller gaps to defend and 2) There are 3 or 4 Denver blockers in the path of their own jammer.
The first things I see in this moment are the obstacles in front of Klein. If Klein goes to the left of her teammate #999 Chinaski, she runs into a waiting #28 Elicia Nisbet-Smith. If she goes between Chinaski and #8000 Killifornia, she runs into #401 Tarantula. If she goes to the right of Killifornia, she will run into her own teammate #357 Bria Fraid. This is an incredibly sound defensive setup from Wheels of Justice because the blockers on the outside have narrowed the space the defense has to cover by driving Denver blockers toward the inside line and the Rose City blockers responsible for the gaps on the inside are playing very close to the spaces that Klein could use to pass her own teammates. These are wins on:
“Play through your opponents, not around them” for #210 Tenacity Remington and #247 Mia Palau
“Use your opposing blockers against their own jammer” for all 4 Rose City blockers
“Defend from the entry to the gap” is not an obvious win in this picture, but in the next frame Chinaski steps forward putting Elicia Nisbet-Smith’s hips right between Chinaski and the inside line. I assume Elicia Nisbet-Smith expected Chinaski to come forward and planned accordingly so this is a win for her on this metric.
“Know where your defensive help is and funnel toward them” for Elicia Nisbet-Smith and Tarantula because they are the first line of defense and have to hold Klein until Tenacity Remington and Mia Palau arrive to play a more traditional style of defense (three forward facing blockers with a clockwise facing brace).
From the process rubric we set up, Wheels of Justice really did a great job. Why was it *near* perfect then? I see a couple things from the Wheels of Justice blockers that I would try to clean up in the moments while defending Klein and waiting for Mutch to arrive on her scoring pass and then during that first scoring pass. But if you’re just measuring the time to get lead jammer and whether Rose City retains the Denver jammer in the pack, it’s perfect.
Let’s measure some more squishes
We built a rubric to measure Rose City success on the squish play so let’s apply it to some more jams.
Open space in front of the opposing jammer
The next jam we are looking at is jam 3 which starts at 00:17:40 of this video. In this jam, Wheels of Justice get awarded lead jammer about 1 second after jam start, which is a successful outcome. However, they do not retain the Mile High Club jammer, #50 Scald Eagle, in the pack and are only able to win this jam by a score of 1 to 0. It is still a win from an outcome perspective, but there is more that could be achieved. How about process? Was there anything in this jam that Wheels of Justice could change that would help them fit our rubric better? (Remember, they have their own ideas for how this jam should play out, we are only guessing.) At about the same time of the jam that we captured above for jam 2, jam 3 looks like this.
The first thing I notice is that Scald Eagle has better options available to her than were available to Klein in jam 2. There is a narrow lane up the inside line that Scald can challenge. Also, the Denver blockers on the outside, #27 Gobrecht and #2 Taryn have done a good job of resisting the squish and trying to close the lane Rose is building for #0 Zip and Denver blockers #22 Scara ta Death and #10 Unprotected Lex are pushing the Wheels of Justice brace up the track, creating a diagonal gap that Scald Eagle will eventually pass through.
In this jam, #23 Gal and #360 Big Bang Fury are tasked with defending a wider space with fewer Denver blockers in that space to help clog things up in front of Denver jammer Scald Eagle. Also, I have not seen a tag team attack on a brace like we saw from Denver’s Scara Ta Death and Unprotected Lex at a jam start. It seems like Denver is saying they trust their jammer to be able to beat Rose City’s blocker Gal one v one before Rose’s other blockers are able to come help. Even if Gal is one of the best blockers in the world, Scald is one of the best jammers and the gap Gal had to defend is pretty big for anybody, even an elite blocker, to defend one v one.
If I were looking at this jam, what would I bring to practice to adjust before the next game? I’d try to figure out why there appeared to be an open lane on the inside line early in the jam. #360 Big Bang Fury does an excellent job of closing that space and driving #10 from Denver Unprotected Lex into it, but in doing so Big Bang Fury is susceptible to the clear from #22 Scara Ta Death. One of Big Bang Fury or Gal should be responsible for that gap. If I were to guess, it’s Gal and that Scald just puts a really great juke on her. Still, that’s going to happen. Scald Eagle is going to put some great jukes on everybody so the plan should account for how to recover from a great juke. Here are two possible options:
Big Bang Fury, sets up a little further inside and closer to the jammer line changing the angle that Scara Ta Death would have to use to push her up the track and possibly denying her the space to generate the power she needs to do it.
Gal can commit to keeping Scald on her outside hip no matter what, even if that means Scald can step forward. This plan relies on feeding Scald into the path of #757 Morgan Levy. From the gap defense fundamentals: know where your defensive help is and funnel toward them.
Something that makes sense within the Rose City strategy that uses concepts familiar to them.
No matter what they choose, I’m curious how they will adapt at Hometown Throwdown in November.
Don’t squish me, I squish you
Now let’s take a look at jam 4 which starts at 18:25 in the same video. I love this jam because it’s the Spiderman pointing-est jam I’ve seen in a while.
Both teams are trying to create lanes for their jammers, Rose is trying for the inside line and Denver is trying for the outside line.
Both teams defeat the squish by pushing the blockers that are trying to open the lane back into the lane they are trying to create.
You can even see in this picture that each team decides to move on from the squish play at about the same time as the two blockers Rose’s Mia Palau and Denver’s Bria Fraid switch sides to turn their 2-walls into 3-walls.
Let’s apply the rubric. First from an outcome perspective for Rose, they succeeded at getting lead jammer. It was not immediate but it was relatively quick, 8 seconds after jam start and win the jam 11-0. Now from a process perspective:
The first thing I want to point out is something both teams did really well, they made the space the opposing jammer was trying to take very congested. For Rose, #210 Tenacity Remington and #401 Tarantula pushed back against the Denver blockers to close the gap between them and the outside line. For Denver, #999 Chinaski does a great job of pushing Rose’s #24 Beans back toward the outside line while Denver #8000 Killifornia does a great job of sliding underneath Rose’s #247 Mia Palau to remain in front of Rose’s jammer #16 Beyond Thunderdame.
The place where this jam changes is when #24 Beans starts to drive forward with her jammer. Eventually Denver is able to slow their progress but by that point the Denver 3-wall is defending the full width of the track in the turn which is a lot harder than defending half the width of the track in the straightaway.
Let’s grade the same 4 criteria from above:
Full credit for “Play through your opponents, not around them” for #210 Tenacity Remington and #401 Tarantula on Rose plus #999 Chinaski on Denver.
Full credit for “Use your opposing blockers against their own jammer” for the same players as above.
Full credit for “Defend from the entry to the gap” to #210 Tenacity Remington and #401 Tarantula for fighting across #1337 Glittoris to catch Denver jammer #151 Cotten on the outside.
Full credit for “Know where your defensive help is and funnel toward them” for #247 Mia Palau because she did not allow Cotten to cross behind her and enter the undefended inner half of the track.
I like this jam more from a process perspective for Wheels of Justice than I do jam 2, the one I called near perfect. The things I like about this jam are that even though the squish play did not happen, that was more down to the circumstances of what Denver was doing than what Rose did. The Rose blockers put Denver blockers into their own jammer’s path at the start of the jam, then used those opposing blockers against their own jammer, defended the entry of gaps and funneled the opposing jammer toward the defensive help. The process went right and some good outcomes came from that, even if the idea of a quick lead jammer did not (because Denver did a lot of things right in this jam too).
Ok. That’s a lot of words on watching video and squish starts. If you’re a fan of any of this or even have feedback for me on what you’re interested in me writing about, feel free to reach out in the comments or find me at rollerderbylabs on social media. If I have used the wrong name or pronouns, I apologize. Please let me know and I will do better in the future. Thanks for reading!