Featured, League News, Sierra All Stars

We are now a full WFTDA Member!

sierraregionalrollerderby

What is a WFTDA League?

The WFTDA is the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. It is the main international governing body of roller derby. Member leagues are official parts of this organization and are eligible for a great number of benefits including voting rights on changes to rules sets and tournaments, international rankings, and more competitive and well-structured gameplay.

What does it mean to be a WFTDA Full Member League?

Being a full member league can mean a lot of things to different people. For me, its a chance for my team to be recognized by our sport for our hard work over several years to be a cohesive organization as well as a competitive travel team. I’m really excited to start competing for rankings this year because I have seen the current all-stars roster work so hard and grow through so many things, and they deserve to see the rewards of all that hard work. It also means we get to be active participants in the shaping of this sport because we now have voting rights, and it is an exciting time to be a part of that because our sport is so young a progressive and always evolving. Finally, we have access to such a wealth of resources, like training information, education tools, marketing tools, tournaments, branding, rules explanation, and certified officials, it really is a game changer for us both as a team and as a business. For more information on what it means to be a WFTDA member league, go here.

What did the league have to do to get that designation?

We had to participate in the WFTDA Apprenticeship program, which is a one-year program to prepare leagues for membership. We had a lot of learning modules to complete, had to demonstrate our working business model was in fact working, had to demonstrate our dedication to fair and sportsperson-like competition and an ability to host a WFTDA sanctioned bout, did a ton and a half of paperwork. It was a lot of work that took a whole team to pull off, for sure. For full information on the WFTDA apprentice program, you can go to the website.

What do the rankings mean?

Rankings, I think, are fantastic! They use a numbers based system to organize teams based on strength according to recent gameplay. Info on the rankings calculator can be found here.

Basically, this helps teams when scheduling their seasons so we can find teams in our region and skills-range to play close and challenging games with. Just passing the AP and being eligible for rankings, we have been scheduled with entirely new teams this year. It also give us a way to set goals for the year. Like this year our first goal is of course to get on the rankings board ASAP, but we also want to enter as a top 100 team.

What is needed to keep this distinction?

We pay dues to the organization, have to participate in sanctioned bouting, participate in voting, and have assigned representatives for skaters and officials to the organizations whose job it is to share pertinent information and keep our registration of league members and their paperwork up to date.

How many leagues in our area are WFTDA Full Members?

There are currently 418 full member leagues and 39 apprentice leagues.

Where would someone go to learn more about WFTDA?

~Spacey Lords | Sierra All-Stars