TODAY!

I met Bonnie D. Stroir! Omigod!

More to come later. When I process it all.

Ok, so after several hours of obsessing over derby including:
1. Assessing my next gear purchase.
2. Getting excited about any wheel Atom has ever produced.
3. Shopping for skates I don't need.
4. Reading the blog of one of my new idols, Elektra-Q-Tion
and 5. Being upset that none of the blogs I follow have updated lately.

So, I've decided to stop being a jackass and post for all of you.

I will try to condense the amazingness that Bonnie shared with us. She has a lot of great metaphors, firstly. I love her sharks and seals theory. Basically the inside and outside lines are deep water where sharks (blockers) thrive. Seals (jammers) do best in shallow water, or the middle lane of the track.

She gave us a lot of good advice about energy too. There are a lot of personalities in derby and instead of trying to fit into the mold of what traditional strategy says we need to do, we should complement each other. If you're the anchor in a wall, it's your job to be the calm one.

She gave us lots of little strategies and then let us go on the track and play with them. In short bursts, we got to try them out. I felt like I had a lot of success implementing her ideas. I can't wait to put them into practice at scrimmage or in scrills.

Bonnie has a lot of ideas that are in direct contradiction with what we've all been taught. She maintains that being low has its time, but derby position is not always appropriate. She gave us a lot of help with juking which is totally awesome, because it's something I desire strongly to work on.

She also spent some time talking about the derby mental game. She talked us through the game From the Bench, On the Track, and From the Box. She had some great tips for calming down if it starts to get overwhelming. Her tips are to regulate your breathing and give yourself simple mental command.


After all this, I came home and read derby blogs and am now looking at gear. I found some used Antik MG-2s in my size. I am seriously considering Revenge plates. I would like to try the Atom Snap wheels.

Anyway, this is all a whole lot of derby and I've got practice in the morning, so I'm going to bed.

Good night, hope dreams of skates come to you!

Thursday Funday

Tonight's practice was fun. I always love Cal Q's practices because she likes to make up drills or alter existing drills. There's always interesting things. Like tonight she had the newbies hold onto yarn that she'd tied knots in to show them how far apart they should be in pacelines.

She also pulled a few of us to work on hitting with the newbies who are preparing for Day 2. I hadn't done any measured hitting in a while and it was good. I realized I'm a lot better at Johnny Crashes (Can-openers) than I thought I was, and should maybe employ them more often in scrimmages and whatnot. We also were doing this hitting on the track with newbies weaving nearby, so I'm impressed with our awareness of the paceline and our not crashing into them.

We did a lot of the Day 1 skills as well, since Day 1 is Sunday. I really like this approach. I felt like I didn't have much prep for Day 1 the first time I did it. In the practices leading up to, we did the usual sorts of drills rather than more of the assessment skills.

It's also good to get to know the newest newbies.

This was rather a shorter post than I anticipated, so here's out bout poster:

Please come see us kick ass on St. Patty's Day, both in the parade, and in our doubleheader season opener.

Invitational

The Invitational is today. I'm strangely not nervous. But I wasn't nervous before the bout last weekend either. I thought I'd try to have team spirit with my boutfit. BUT I don't own any red leggings or shorts. How crazy is that? Oh well.

More to come later.

Ok, so I was a Drunk (right, yeah, put the 20-year old on the Drunks, haha!). Oh wait, did I mention this was a CoEd bout? It was. I had three boys on my team. Celtic Crusher, Sweet Meat, and the Professor were Drunks. And they were all extremely valuable. Sweet Meat as a jammer, wow. You hit him, he turns around and skates backwards, hit him again, and he turns back around. The man is a beast. Crusher was an excellent blocker, holding down the back of the pack. And the Professor did a wonderful job skating anywhere needed. And little Patty Valentine needed very little help as a jammer once he got moving.

We first played the Crunks. I played against teammate Nita Beer (pitting husband against wife). I blocked in a variety of positions. We played pretty well together, though naturally we had trouble playing as a team. We came together well and managed to hold back one of the Crunks' strongest players, MistHer, who was jamming. I am most proud of that bit of recycling and blocking and team work.

During halftime, I noticed my coaches working on some lineup changes. I told them I would happily jam if need be, since I was relatively fresh. I brought it up again later and they put me in to great success. I had a great crew of blockers, including Boot Scootin' Bully of Blue Ridge Roller Girls, lead jammer status, and a soon-to-be powerjam. I got 4 grandslams, scoring a total of 20 points before calling it off as the other jammer came back onto the track.

I did have some trouble after that whilst jamming when I was struck about the face. HARD. And somehow none of the refs managed to see it. Boy did it suck. I cried a little. And we had to call a timeout to page the medic just so he could tell me he didn't have any ice. Luckily my teammate Sour Bash Kid had ice and a plastic bag to spare. Thanks Bash!

That helped Team Drunks get back on top of the score. I had lots of people tell me I skated well. I was pretty proud of that. And also happy to get my second (and third) bouts under my belt. Congrats to ref/my ride up there OhCeeDee on kicking so much ass. And thanks to Derby City Skates for being present for me to drool over and purchase some items.

Also my shoulder(s) feel great, thanks for asking, considerate reader. Now I'm gonna fall into a derby/baconator coma.