Posted Nov 2002

Roller Skating Today (RST) How long has the Roller Supreme Skate Club (RS) been together?  What was the inspiration for you all getting started?
Derrick Craddock (DC) Approximately 20 years.  One gentleman by the name of Stanley Holmes, he was the floor guard at the rink...we had no concept of style, precision, skating it was just a little recreational, social sport for us to be part of, because all the other kids hung out at the rink.

Stanley, I guess he got tired of watching us waste our time and said “look, you want to learn how to skate, watch this.”  He showed us a particular move & from that point we just fell in love with his style of skating.  I would say he was our inspiration..Stanley & I were the actual members who started RS, he and I thought of the name one evening on the way to the rink and we slowly recruited folks to join.  It was at least 12-15 people strong but it dwindled down over the years... ended up being 9 of us total throughout the 20 years..I have been president 15 of the 20 years.

(RST)  Are any of the old skate groups still together?
(DC)Sadly enough, no.  I don’t see any more clubs...as far as Baltimore perspective.  There’s DC and their world they may from time to time, if there is an organized group they may put on a shirt & skate and show off their name, but you don’t see a lot of it anymore.  We are one of the only clubs that wore...when I say skate club, I think we were one of the most organized and serious about skate club group.  Whenever we’re skating against someone it’s very organized, we more or less wrote the book on how to skate in an organized fashion. You don’t have 4-5 people discussing what the next move is, the person up front would throw signals, maybe me or the 2nd guy in line.

Other clubs that we skate against, and this is during an actual skate competition, you’ll see 1 or 2 guys discussing, if not arguing, about the next move they’re going to do.  One person may turn around backwards and say “O.K., we’re gonna do that step that Larry made up last week...”  They’re discussing/arguing what the next move is, by that time we’ve already nailed 3-4 different moves.  Because we’re so organized all I have to do is throw up one signal, a hand, a motion and never turn around and there’s very little talk while we’re skating in competition...

We stood out so much that it was...I’m only speaking because we don’t have any other people to speak for us...but people tell me that 'you all stand out so much because you don’t see a whole lot of discussion, you see one person calling a move, you guys execute, everyone’s doing the same thing.  It may not be the perfect timing all the time but there is a sign of organization when you guys skate.'  This has been told to me by people on the outside looking in, and I’ve always wondered how they interpret us.  We’ve always strived for excellence, for doing it right.

(RST)  Do you think today’s skate clubs are missing a lot?
(DC) I would say yes to that and then maybe I could say no but I don’t know what to think because I don’t see anymore skate clubs, I really don’t.  If I could name any skate club that I see today I would say none, I don’t see any in Baltimore, I really don’t.  It’s truly sad, I skate enough still to see if there is a skate club that’s forming or trying to form.  I would be one of the first to even hear about them.  I’ve yet to see anyone come to me and say we’d like to form a skate club, could you help us out?  I’ve yet to see anybody out there with a shirt on, showing any kind of identity of a known group, I couldn’t name a skate club today in Baltimore.

(RST) Are you aware of skate groups in other states?
(DC)  I was in Chicago for the whole month of September and I went to 3 different rinks and I don’t know how to identify this, but one group that caught my attention was skating together in a rink called Orbit in Palatine.  It was a big skate party given by Vanessa Poindexter, a reunion, and there were some brothers that I did meet and approach and it really hurt because when you’re by yourself there’s like an identity of a person who is a club skater.  There is a club skater and a freestyle skater - I’m a club skater so when I do certain maneuvers it doesn’t even feel right because I’m doing it by myself.  But if I had one person next to me, behind me, beside me doing the same thing with me then I would feel very comfortable.

Because I’m a synchronized club skater, I can still skate by myself but it feels very, very awkward to me.  What may look cool for some people, it just feels awkward to me because I’m used to having someone up front, somewhere in my area doing the same maneuver with me....

There is a lot of synchronized skating going on in the Chi-town area, but I could never get any names out of anybody that would permit me to go on any skate site and give props to them.  I’d just have to say I went to Chicago, I went to 3 different rinks and I want to give props to all the skaters out there.  Me being a club skater, I saw some clubs out there, no names to mention because I wasn’t given any names.  There weren’t any names given to me in that whole month of visiting different rinks.  I went to Rainbow, Glenwood and Orbit.

There are skate clubs that I miss...Night Train, I miss those brothers, the Vice Squad, that was one of the first groups I actually met when we first became an organized skate club.  We went to Seabrook Maryland and we met the brothers in the Vice Squad and it was our first unofficial competition, us against them. It was a feeling of excitement like 'we get to show what we know against them'.  We both finished off shaking hands - it was a warm feeling of camaraderie...

(RST)  The groups you mentioned were they all synchronized skaters, because a lot of today’s skate clubs are more about hosting an event but they don’t skate together.
(DC)  I’m so glad you said that, what’s in a skate club? What is identified as a skate club?  Anybody can form a club and say hey, we’re giving a skate party but what do you do to make yourselves stand out as a club?

We would skate on a regular basis, we would practice on a regular basis so when it came to competing, of course the butterflies are flapping but we got down to the nitty gritty and showed what we knew and we earned our reputation by skating in a synchronized way & that’s what we always lived by.  If it’s not done exactly the way the other person in front of you or behind you is doing it, something is wrong.  We’ve got to do it until it’s right and that’s how it has always been and always will be.

I see a lot of skate clubs coming and forming and giving a skate party, make their money and then they break up a few months after that.  As a skate group, we never gave any functions or any kind of promoting of events because we were more or less a skate club of synchronization and skating more so than a club of organization.  We were a club who focused on the aspects and professional ends of doing skate maneuvers whereas we focused less on organizing events and functions for other people to participate in.

I’ve seen groups come and go but the true groups that stay together can get together and do some moves like we just did a few weeks back.  We went out to Clinton, and keep in mind we hadn’t skated together in at least a good year but we warmed up, we all got together, I still called out the signals, we followed through with the moves and because I had broken my leg [last year] I didn’t want to be too aggressive so I took it a little light in the beginning.  As we warmed up we got better and fine tuned and by the time of the next set we got out on the floor and everything looked really, really good.  That’s when we got the props from Ms. Magic and the other folks who remembered us.

(RST)   When did RS start competing?
(DC)  We competed on a local level ever since competing came about.  Whenever someone was giving a party, it’s never been anything sanctioned , nothing that’s been officially recognized as our style of synchronized skating, it was more less someone giving a party who had judges who may or may not have been skaters.  They judged based on what they saw and whoever they felt did the most moves with the most precision.  They had certain guidelines they had to follow & one of the things that led us thru a lot of times was our uniforms(outfits.)

That’s not to say that it’s any discount on our style of skating but I guess we can get to our last competition, 1998, ....where our outfits are what pushed us thru.  We had heard that a skate competition was coming up, there were some new skaters that were out there.  We never felt that we were better than anybody we felt that we were one of the top contenders in any competition because of our strength, how organized and dedicated we were as skaters and how competitive we were.

There was a lot of talk about this new group coming in called Next Generation (NG) (I think that’s the name) and a lot of people were saying [this group] was going to kick out the RS so naturally our competitive instinct kicks in and we always felt that we had to show & prove so we all got together and committed to this being our last official competition that we were going to be recognized as RS competing against another team.

We went there with a mindset that whether we win or lose, we are going in there and represent ourselves & let people know the RS are still alive & well.  Keep in mind we hadn’t skated together as a group in a long time, we always skated together as friends but weren’t recognized as RS because we didn’t wear our club shirts....The night of the event it came down to the competition, things were done different this time - we didn’t have our choice of music and we actually had to skate on the floor at the exact same time our competition was going to skate.   Normally it’s one group at a time skating for about 2 minutes to their favorite song..so things were changed.

The music started, the other group got on the floor doing their thing and instantly they drew the crowd's attention.  I guess because we’ve always stood in the spotlight, we were concerned about someone stealing our thunder and needless to say they instantly stole our thunder.  We are watching them do their things while we’re attempting to do our thing and for some reason it got to the point where we all simultaneously felt intimidated.  For that one second we felt there’s someone out here that’s gonna be better than RSSC.

Stanley our big brother said “look, you guys need to snap out of it, wake up, come out of it right now...”  They were using a lot of our old techniques against us and it’s one thing we quickly noticed.  So I said we need to fight fire with fire only show them how it’s done properly, so everything they did we countered.  In other words, they did a reverse breakdown, we did a reverse breakdown into a split, came up from the split into a spin and kept on rolling.

While they were stealing the crowd’s attention, we immediately took it back to let them know that hey, we’re here, we’re alive and well.  We came back strong and more or less equally got the attention of the crowd.  As that particular segment of the competition was over, we were concerned about who may have won so it finally came down to the judges making their announcement of who won..  We won but I felt that it was definitely time that we retire.

Afterwards I found out that we scored one point above NG because we had on better outfits and to me that was a wake up call that we are over 30, we aren’t as athletic as we would want to be, we don’t practice as much as we should and there’s always going to be someone there to replace you.  I’m out there recruiting a younger group of guys to get RS back to where it used to be.

(RST) Have you had any success recruiting?
(DC)  It’s a slow process because I’m looking for only the best.  I have 2-3 guys right now that I’m working with trying to stick to a program where we can meet at the rink and practice and get them to the level that we were.....

Competitions in skate clubs aren’t what they used to be - we’re the last of the Mohicans.  To put a RSSC shirt on is like ‘RS, where are they from?’  The new jacks they don’t understand the concept of club skating or what it even means but we’re trying to bring it back by putting on the shirts & promoting skate club solidarity, the being part of something.  The younger crowd they don’t know much about that, it’s sad because we’re moving on to another generation of skaters coming in who don’t really understand what skating in Baltimore was like at one time or another.

(RST)  Was the Thriller picture you sent from a performance?
(DC) Yes, that was from a performance we did in the late 80's...which was scheduled for Halloween in 1989, I think.  We practiced for 3-4 months and we traveled from one rink to the next.   Every performance we did was a fundraiser for charity.  So it was totally voluntary for us to participate in.  It was an idea developed by two skaters, a boyfriend/girlfriend team and I’ve thought about trying to recreate that because I had so much fun putting it together.  But it takes total dedication and people don’t have time these days to practice and there is nothing worse than getting out there and not knowing your moves.

We did the whole [Michael Jackson] Thriller skit step by step, we had to improvise on some of the moves but 85% of the Thriller movie we did, the line dance they did we did on skates.  We have that on video but it’s called Thriller, Beginning to End.

(RST) Getting back to skate party music, what about DJs?
(DC) A lot of DJs come and go, a lot of DJs who made a difference in skating.  A lot of people say DJs don’t necessarily make a session but my argument is that they definitely do.  A good DJ people will follow, a bad DJ when people find out he is playing they won’t participate.

A good DJ is one who is flexible, willing to take a chance at deprogramming people.  You have your people who are used to hearing this one format and if you go beyond that format they will give you the blues. But you keep people by giving them something different every week, challenge yourself and challenge them.

A good DJ is not afraid to be diverse, every now and then you have to pick up the pace whereas keeping it slow the whole night you’re going to put someone to sleep.  Always be knowledgeable of what the people want, if you can get involved with the crowd and move them with your voice as well as your music then you are a good DJ.

One good DJ I can truly recognize is Little G and Aaron Brown from Shake and Bake, Stormin Norman from DC, a lot of praise for Stormin Norman.  I have a lot of his CDs and I study him more than his music, he is so involved in his music it’s to the point where some of the songs he added special effects to when I hear the song at another rink and the special effect is not added to it, in my mind it’s added to it. That’s how a DJ can capture you and you remember him.

Of course DJ SNS, that’s my boy from Baltimore, he plays at Orchard and I like to think I helped him get where he is today.  I stayed on him, I pushed him, I gave him a lot of music and he’s definitely an up and coming DJ who is going to be recognized.
 

(RST)Thank you Derrick.