Follow the Douchebag

Alternative names: Follow the DB, Douchebag -drill

Objective: Paying attention, speed control and pack skills

Typical length of drill: 10-15 mins

Materials needed: A full track or just four cones to mark the inside track line

Skill level required: None

Description: First off you need a very good skater to be the leader.  All the skaters pack up in a huge pack behind the leader on the track. Their goal is to stay in pack proximity to each other and as close as possible to the leader.  The leader's job is to be a douchebag: vary their speed, stop suddenly, race around the track, etc.

The rules are if any member of the pack:

• bumps into another girl (even no impact bump)
• touches the ground with anything but her skates
• skates out of bounds at all
• is lapped by the leader
• or is unable to stop before her hips pass the leaders hips

...they jump off the track and do 10 push-ups. Then they rejoin the pack as quickly as possible.  Keep it up until everyone is getting really annoyed at you or is getting tired and sloppy.

Additional notes: This can be an excellent warm-up drill to get a practice started and I personally really like it and think of it as a fun game to break up endurance or skills practices.  The drill has been posted multiple times on the roller derby coaches Yahoo group by many different people and with a variety of names (all usually referring to "douchebag" at some point) and after some research I have found that the name Follow the Douchebag was given by Doc Holiday of the Rose City Rollers.  Though it is not completely clear who the originator of the drill was, Cupples Skate of the Rose City Rollers used to run this drill as a warm-up before the league's weekly scrimmages four years ago so it may have started there.  Because I like to know the history and stories behind drills I'd love to know if anyone has any additional background information about this one!

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