The “Nice Girl” Mask, The Spawn League Mirage

By Brenda Holley /South Side Roller Derby Leadership

If you’ve followed Parts 1 and 2, you know the cycle: the “Nice Girl Mask” arrives, the “Shadow Tribe” forms in private chats, and eventually, the High-Conflict Personality (HCP) decides they are too big for the league. They leave, and they don’t go alone. They take the “innocent bystanders” they’ve manipulated and the other restless spirits, and they announce the birth of a new league.

In my 20 years at South Side, I’ve seen this movie seven times. I can name the credits: Clutch City, Rocket City, Gobstopper, Texas Outlaws, Third Coast, Midway, and Heartland.

Most of these names are now just footnotes in derby history. Why? Because you cannot build a sustainable house on a foundation of resentment.

1. The “Poaching Paradox”

When a spawn league starts, they usually lack the infrastructure or marketing “know-how” to build a fresh recruitment pipeline. They don’t know how to train a “fresh meat” class from scratch. So, they do the only thing they know how to do: they poach.

But here is the irony of the “Poaching Paradox”: You attract what you are. An HCP leader doesn’t attract the stable, team-oriented veterans. They attract the other high-conflict skaters from surrounding leagues the ones who are also unhappy with their refs, also mad at their leadership, and also want to change their uniforms for the third time this year.

They end up with a “League of Alphas” where everyone wants to be the boss and nobody wants to do the work. When your entire roster is made of people whose primary skill is “quitting when they’re unhappy,” the math for longevity just doesn’t add up.

2. The “Brand” vs. The “Business”

Spawn leagues are almost always obsessed with the “aesthetic.” They want the new uniforms, the cool logo, and the edgy social media presence. They focus on the brand because the business of derby is hard.

Running a league requires:

  • Negotiating with rinks (who often don’t want the headache of drama).
  • Managing insurance and corporate for profit and non profit filings.
  • Developing a standardized training curriculum.
  • Maintaining a fair, unbiased officiating pool.

Most spawn leagues fail because they wanted to “do more fundraisers” or “be more competitive,” but they didn’t realize that those things require a boring, stable foundation. Without it, they become “Nomad Leagues”—skaters who just “surf” between practices, never having a home, and only popping up to populate a team days before a travel game.

3. The Survival Trap

Of the seven splits I’ve witnessed, only a couple still exist in any form. Some only survive because they found a rink willing to host them, yet even then, they struggle to field a full roster of their own. They spend their entire existence reaching out to other leagues to “borrow” skaters just to play a single game.

If you have to poach from three different leagues just to have a bench, you haven’t built a league; you’ve built a travel team of league surfers.

4. Why South Side is Still Here

People ask me why South Side has survived seven splits. It’s simple: We protect the culture more than the roster.

When an HCP leaves and takes a handful of people with them, it feels like a wound. But in reality, it’s a pruning. We stay because we focus on the 95% who want to skate, the officials who deserve respect, and the boring, consistent work of being a legitimate sports organization.

The Lesson for the “Innocent Bystander”

If you are a skater being “recruited” to join a new spawn league, ask yourself one question: Is this league being built because they love the sport, or because they hate the leadership? If it’s the latter, keep your gear bag where it is. A league built on “anti-leadership” will eventually turn on itself. I’ve seen it seven times, and I’m still standing here to tell you: the grass isn’t greener on the other side; it’s just a patch of weeds.