So yesterday’s practice was interesting. Earlier in the day I had gone home because I was sick and ended up sleeping the entire day away. I wanted to go because I thought that once I got there I would want to say, “Screw this cold!” and skate anyway. Instead I decided to watch the brand new fresh meat do the land drills (because it is hilarious to see people in pain) and then I helped them put on the gear from our donated gear bag. I eventually got sick of not being on skates so I put mine on (I had loaned out all of my gear, so I was gearless) and went to go help a girl on the wall (she eventually came off of the wall by the end of practice!).
The vets saw me on skates so called me over to watch what they were doing so I skated in the center of the track with our ref and tried to see what it was like to be a ref. Clearly you have to be super observant, and my brain is just not trained as a ref. I was just seeing where there were holes in the walls and what the girls needed to do. I have skater brain rather than ref brain, I think. When they were taking a break Looney, who was coaching fresh meat, asked me if I would come over and work on the basic stuff with the super new fresh meat while she went over more advanced stuff with our soon-to-be- testing fresh meat.
I have learned that I am not a good teacher by any stretch of the imagination. We skated in a circle for a while working on scooter pushes and attempting crossovers, and then moved to a bit of sticky skating. The biggest problem I had was that my fresh meat just kept going off to the edge of the wall because they hurt. What? You can’t just quit in the middle of the drill! But yeah, they just took a minute at the wall and got back to it, so I figured I would let them since it was their first practice and they were all hurting even though they’d only been on skates for an hour. Plus, they’ll never have another coach as forgiving as I am. Everyone else can be the slave driver.
I got bored with just going in circles, so Looney suggested I set up some cones so they could try one foot glides. Out of our five brand new freshies, three of them could already do it (and do it well!) on both feet. For those three, I had them move on to t-stops while one worked on one foot glides and the other worked on just skating and staying up. The girl that was on the wall in the beginning eventually fell (forward) and then couldn’t get up by herself. She’s going to have to learn pretty quick once it comes time for their falls and everything like that. Last week at practice we did laps where we started on our stomachs and backs and then had to spring up and sprint. She’s got a long way to go if I had to use both of my hands and a lot of force to get her up off the floor. I really hope that she sticks with it because out of our 5 freshies she was the only one ready with all of her gear.
At the end we had a mandatory league meeting (which was the only reason I went to practice in the first place), so practice was cut a bit short. I imagine the freshies are going to appreciate the shortened practices today and Thursday (the rink isn’t available for our full practice time so we can only be in there for an hour), but next week? They’re in for some pain and I don’t have to be the one to give it to them! I’m actually pretty excited about a few of them because two of the better skaters are guys that want to be refs, and we could seriously use some more refs! Right now we have two, so if we had two more that would be awesome!
Showing posts with label league stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label league stuff. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Skater of the Month!
I wrote a very lovely post about it, but I wrote it while at work and forgot to email it to myself, so it is lost forever (or at least until Monday). Anyway, I am the Skater of the Month for January! When they announced it at practice on the 12th, I was in shock! I though back to the previous year and, no, they hadn't run out of people, they had actually picked me!
Obviously it's not because of my skills (although many people said I improved a ton and I am starting to feel very confident with several aspects of derby), but because they wanted to recognize and thank me for sticking around and being helpful wherever possible. One of the main things I've been doing for the league is designing the flyers, which I've put below.
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Also, I had a photoshoot for my skater picture near the beginning of the month and I completely forgot to post about it (I don't know how, because this picture is amazing in so many ways). I cannot thank Not-A-Lie Photography enough (and of course, her girlfriend Oxy, an amazeballs skater and occasional coach, for directing me during the shoot).
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Aaaand, we're back!
Last night was the first time back to practices since the scrimmage on the 11th and I nearly died. Okay not really, but I realized about an hour into practice that I should have worked out and skated more while we were on break. But let’s start at the beginning, and I’ll get to the “holy crap I am unfit” part in a bit.
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
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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.
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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!
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!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
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!!
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!!
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