Clock Management in Roller Derby

Roller derby teams rarely manage clocks effectively. This can be said of teams at every level. In every other sport with some kind of clock and limited "scoring opportunities" (soccer and hockey for example probably do not fall under this argument) clock management is incredibly important. This can be seen for example at the end of many close basketball and football (American football, sorry worldly folks I live in the U.S.A., more specifically Wisconsin where the Green Bay Packers are king) games where timeouts and clock stoppage are incredibly crucial for maximizing scoring opportunities.

In American football teams are often praised for effective clock management. A team with a slight lead will run the ball to keep the clock ticking away and out of the hands of the other team. Conversely a team playing behind will do things like throw passes to the sidelines (out of bounds stops the clock) and play a hurry up offense where they rush to the line as quickly as possible to limit the amount of time between plays. All of these things in both situations are meant to increase or limit the scoring chances of the team playing with a deficit. Coaches that manage these things are praised for their decision making in these situations. Losses in close games due to poor management are often blamed not on players or defenses but the coaches.

In roller derby we do not see coaches held to this same standard. Many times teams either allow another team extra time to complete a comeback or waste precious seconds that could be used to gain vital extra points.

Roller derby is a strange beast clock wise for two reasons. First there is the 30 second runoff between the fourth whistle at the end of one jam and the starting whistle of another. That means that in a 30 minute half if there were 22 jams there would be about 10 minutes of running clock during that half (depending on timeouts, how the final jam ends, etc) where skaters are not skating. The other oddball part of roller derby is that when the period clock shows one second there can still be two minutes of playtime in the period yet. As long as the previous jam ends prior to the clock showing zero you can stop the clock if you have a timeout or official review. This allots you one more scoring opportunity and depending on execution could be a huge swing in points.

To understand proper clock management we have to look at the scoring potential of any given jam under realistic situations. If we take out the very real possibility of a power jam on average you can generally expect to score between 4 and 9 points in a successful jam. (9 points assumes you passed the opposing jammer on the first scoring pass and they completed there initial before you could pass them a second time.) According to Windyman of Windyman.net in 80+ Division 1 bouts last year the average jam scored 9.1 points. This number is probably skewed due to obscenely large power jams that offset more common single scoring pass jams. With the new 30 second penalty rules I would have to imagine this average will drop.

 For clock management planning purposes I would never expect to score more than 9 points in a jam. That is to say that if my team was down by 36 points in the waning minutes of a game I would like to have at minimum 4 jams to close the gap.

This is the point at which clock management comes hugely into play. It is entirely possible to cram five jams into the final four minutes of a game that each encompass two full scoring passes. You would need all three of your timeouts as well as your official review to pull this off most likely but it is possible.

Jam starts at 4:00

15 seconds to get lead

20 seconds for scoring pass

20 seconds for second scoring pass

Call off-9points

Time out

3:05 left

similar jam sequence

Call off-9 points

Time out

2:10 left

similar jam sequence

Call off-9 points

Time out

1:15 left

similar jam sequence

Call off-9 points

Official review

0:20 left

Final jam (up to two minutes of scoring potential)

Obviously this is a best case scenario but with some momentum and luck it is entirely possible to erase a 36+ point lead without a power jam.

Personally I like to hoard timeouts for this very reason. I am happiest when I still have all three of my timeouts for the last fifteen or so minutes of a game. It amazes me how often you see teams lose close games with one, two, or even all three of their timeouts still in their pockets. Worse still I see teams all the time allow precious seconds tick off the clock between jams before they call their timeouts.

On the opposite end of the spectrum I think sometimes teams are even worse at clock management when it comes to holding a lead. Jammers will make super quick call offs in single pass jams when the other jammer might be six to ten seconds from beginning their scoring pass. These seconds seem insignificant at the time but sometimes it is the difference between being able to end the game or having to hold of the other team for one more jam at the end. When my teams play with a lead we do our best to grind the other team. Recently we started a final jam with the intent that we needed to kill a little over a minute before we ended the game. We got lead and when the other jammer escaped the pack I didn't panic and end the jam, I just told my jammer to skate smart and burn clock until it hit zero. I wasn't going to call it off and give the other team two more full minutes to try to reel us in. I knew if we stayed out of the box they didn't have a chance.

Recently at Quad City Chaos there was a major controversy that came up because of a team very smartly managing the clock and their play at the end. With a little more than a minute to go in the Ohio/Toronto game Toronto's jammer went to the box for a cut track. Ohio decided to have their jammer stop engaging. Brilliant move! Yet the announcers chided the team for it. They did exactly what they needed to do to win the game. For those familiar with American football, they took a knee. If you are a basketball fan, they dribbled out the clock. This kind of smart play should be applauded but because roller derby as a sport is still behind in a lot of ways we still expect them to "entertain" us to the final whistle. Last time I checked the win means something (well in WFTDA rankings maybe not as much) but it was important to Ohio to keep some kind of a point spread in there. With this being the third game of the weekend for both teams they weren't taking chances. I would do the same thing and if I had been there I would have stood up and applauded while that crowd booed. Sometimes brains wins out over brawn. As a coach, once we hit the track there is very little I can do to affect the outcome of the game. 90% of my job is the preparation that goes into the team. Clock management is a huge part of my role on game day. I take it very seriously. I hope to see more bench coaches do the same in the future. With 30 second penalties, point swings due to power jams are much smaller so teams are going to have to utilize the clock to aid in their comebacks. Without strong clock management teams will fall short every time.