The practice started out with a league meeting and the fresh meat recruitment. The vet skaters went over to the other side of the rink for our meeting and I found out one thing that I’m kinda bummed about. Now that the team has more than enough skaters to fill a roster, there are stricter requirements to make the bout roster. Last season there was a problem filling the roster so skaters that had poor attendance and were behind on their dues were still allowed to skate in bouts. Now that the team has enough skaters, each person must be fully caught up and have good attendance but that does not guarantee that you will make it onto the roster. Now skill is being considered. So if I’m caught up on dues and have good attendance, I might not roster for any bouts because I’m not that great of a derby player (compared to everyone else on the team; I’m one of the lowest, which is to be expected). While that is obviously a good thing for the team, that really bums me out and at the same time motivates me to be a stronger player.
I’m hoping this weekend I can hang out with Heather maybe at a park in Orlando so I can work on skills with her (also, I’ve heard that Itzel gives great hits, so I want to be hit by both of them!). I really just want to be great and be confident on my skates. One encouraging thing that happened at practice took place during our scrimmage time during the last 30ish minutes of practice. I not only managed to hit someone hard during a jam, but I hit one of the most skilled and experienced (talking 6+ years of derby) skaters HARD and I believe she either went down or out of bounds (I didn’t get to see the results of my hit). After that jam was called she congratulated me on the hit I gave her! It makes me smile just thinking about it. I freaking love derby. :D
Anyway, onto the part about the new fresh meat. There were about 10 or 11 girls for recruitment. One of them is a returning skater who is going to do fresh meat for the required weeks before testing out to come back to the vet side. I don’t know how skilled the others are or if any of them have skating backgrounds (although at the end of practice I did see one of them trying out her skates along the wall, so she’s definitely a beginner), but a couple of them must not have realized that they would be starting right away because they were wearing normal clothes and didn’t have good work out shoes.
Later in the practice I looked over while they were doing lateral hops and squats and felt extremely nostalgic (is it weird to feel so nostalgic for something that happened just a few months ago?). I kind of wanted to join them. I miss being sore in the way that the beginning of fresh meat made me. I was completely unable to move for several days, but it was awesome. Now I’m sore in a different way, and that’s awesome, too.
Also, this is totally braggy, but I got the best x-mas gifts from Heather and Itzel. Heather got me custom Dark Mark toe snouts from Derby Vixen and Itzel commissioned a picture of my derby persona!
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