Great Practice Tonight!

So I've been a bit quiet, and I'm aware of that. I haven't really wanted to say anything because I might just jinx it, but awesome things have been happening! Our entire fresh meat group has gone through testing. Out of all of the people we started with, only three made it to the end for testing out. I made it (as you know) and another girl did. The other girl sort of passed, but with stipulations (her skills aren't as high as they'd like them to be). An hour ago I sent an email to my captain with my derby name! Yep, that's right! I have officially submitted my derby name to be entered into the master list!

Also, I was asked to create the flyer for our upcoming charity scrimmage (which I will be skating in!!). Being a skater is important to me, but being an active league member is also insanely important and I want to help however I can.




So anyway - tonight's practice. We started out with our normal jog and then did dynamic stretching (stretching while rolling on skates around the track). After that we did this sort of "bus driver" drill where we would get picked up at our "bus stop" (orange cone) and led (by our captain) around the rink while doing various skills. There might be a school zone (everyone slowed down) or a tunnel (squatting), a downed tree (jumping), and all sorts of other stuff. I hope we do it again because I think it was a really cool exercise.

Then we did some hitting! It seems that all I ever do is take and give hits and I am 100% fine with that! I've been getting some really great looking bruises from it, so I'm not about to complain. My hip checks are pretty crummy though. I'm better at full body or shoulder checks, but my hips just aren't as...snappy? There are several girls on the team that can hip check like woah. I just need to keep practicing, I know.

One really weird thing that a girl pointed out to me is that I have been looking away when I make a hit. I'll put it out there - I say sorry a lot and I don't want people to get hurt. I'm working around that so I'm not a piss poor derby player. So when I've been hitting people, I look away as I make impact, meaning my impacts are not as strong and on target as they need to be. She told me that if I looked away when I hit her then she would punch me; I did not look away after that. It really helped, so I'm going to make sure to focus on actually looking at the person I'm making contact with!

After that we did some scrimmaging while learning the strategy that big teams are using: starting the jam at the jammer line. If you haven't been watching a lot of high level derby playing, this is how it goes: the entire pack (or at least one team) will start on the jammer line, taking a knee. Because they are not up when the first whistle is blown, a no pack call is made and the jammers are released instantly (without having to wait for the pack to cross the pivot line). It was interesting to learn and do. I think the best part was that everyone was learning it. No one on the team had ever tried it before, so we learned together.

During one of the scrimmages my best moment so far happened. The opposing team's jammer was coming up and I went for her. Not only did I hit her off the track, but she went down to the ground. I was insanely proud of myself and everyone else was excited for me, too! Everyone cheered, our captain gave me a high five, one girl hugged me, and I think someone smacked my butt but I didn't see who it was so I'm not sure if it was on purpose. Either way, it was AWESOME. I loved everything about practice tonight!!