Most of those reading this have probably been to a roller derby bout by this point - and if not, what are you waiting for? If you've been to a bout, you have some idea of how the game works. You also know what gets the crowd excited. Namely big hits, bodies hitting the floor, and jammer successes. That's the sweet, creamy filling of the game. Who doesn't love that stuff? And yet roller derby is a complex sport that goes way beyond the awesome brute force of contact, and it takes quite a while of watching it, and playing it, to see some of the beautiful subtleties going on. Newcomer spectators to the sport justifiably love those creamy filling parts, but sometimes the sweet finesse and strategies underlying those big moments get overlooked.

Fans especially love when the jammers, who are the point scorers of the game, break free of the chaos of the pack and make a run for it. When the hometeam jammer breaks away the crowd roars its head off. She's free! It happens more frequently than the really big hits, so it justifiably gets the most cheers. Jammers are also more easily visible than the blockers because they spend a lot of time racing around outside of the chaos of the pack, and they have that star and they get to do the hip-tap to end the jam if they've earned lead jammer status, and because of all these things jammers get a lot of glory.

But watching the jammer sprint in circles is usually the least interesting part of the game. Sure, if it happens to be a jam where the jammers are neck-and-neck and trying to beat each other to the pack and maybe engaging each other some on the way, that's fun to watch. But otherwise they're just sprinting, while in the pack you have a cluster of skaters strategically eyeing and gaining position on each other to create optimal situations for the next jammer's pass.

Every time you see your hometeam jammer breeze through the pack, that is one portion her skills and one portion the blockers' skills. The proportion of each may change on each pass, but by definition it's a bit of both in nearly every case. Those blockers are out there constantly adjusting, replacing, calculating timing and assessing about a dozen other factors at once. As a blocker you're thinking about where the jammers are, what blockers are surrounding you, what your teammates are doing, what you need to do first so that you can have the most advantageous position for stopping the opposing jammer, should you hit that blocker or use a positional block, can you give your jammer an assist to get her through the pack…that's just the tip of the iceberg, the list goes on and on. The action is so fast, by the time you figure out one thing four others have happened to change that. Blockers are brilliant strategic thinkers and fast reactors. They're not just brawn out there…they're mega-brains.

This is not to say jammers aren't brains too. Some may think jammers just skate really fast in circles and that's about it. As a jammer myself, I can say that jamming goes way deeper than that. There's a great deal of strategy in how you move through a pack, when you make a break around a blocker, what openings to take and what openings are deceptive, how to use and work with your teammates, when to most strategically end the jam in relation to jam-specific and overall-game factors…that list goes on and on too.

As a jammer I love the sound of a crowd roaring when I break the pack. As you learned in the infamous Perspectives from the Pack blog by Punchy O'Guts, being within the pack is not exactly a comfort zone. When I'm jamming and I approach the pack there is some part in the back of my brain screaming "Why did you think it was a good idea to barrel toward four vicious, terrifyingly strong women who are attempting to serve you your spleen on a plate?! Whyyyyy?" But then, as the jammer, I also have four vicious, terrifyingly strong women who are there to nestle me safely through that pack if they can. When the combination of strategic blocking combined with whatever quickness and agility I can provide sends me busting out the front of the pack my entire being is mostly taken up with massive relief, my heart pounding in my ears, and the need to dig deep and sprint as fast as I can to do it all again (or call the jam off if I can and the time is right). But then there's that part of my brain that can hear all those fans screaming through all that and thinks "WHOA. This is the coolest thing that has ever happened!" Those crowd cheers are not just for that one point-scoring skater, they're for the whole team that got her there.

If those cheers happen when I'm jamming and every once in a while I smile or raise my fist in a little triumphant cheer, that's not me saying "Yeah, I'm awesome!" That's me saying "Yeah team! We rule!" That glory goes to all of us.