Twenty nine in five.

Twenty freakin nine.

That is all.

lightbulb

This past weekend I was in my second rookie invitational, making it my fourth official bout ever.  In addition to these, I've played seven scrimmages, three in Oil City, three with RDRDA and one with Rez City.  I mention all of this because I had to count them all up when I registered for this last invitational and after all that finger ticking, I had to tell somebody.

While I am no superstar, there was a huge difference in my play since my first invitational in November 2010 and this past one.  The first, I was pylon.  I hadn't even heard the term track awareness.  Right now, I'm feel almost sure I didn't know what a track was.  Who knew you were supposed to stop the other team's jammer?

What's a jammer anyway?

This past invitational, well, let's say I figured out what a track and jammer is.  I smart now.  Okay, I couldn't always hit the damn jammer, though, I did hit that track good and hard. 

Small victories.

Still, I had a blast, was sufficiently challenged (particularly by Cherry-oto-Fire, a naturally great skater and unnaturally all around awesome person), and didn't do so bad that I had to come home to my league on my shield.

Not saying there wasn't room for improvement because, whoa, there were moments there when I thought the opposing jammer was actually greased because she slipped through our blockers like rancid butter in a digestive track of an irritable bowl.  Thanks to Bunnie Low-Browski I now consider the other jammer my very own personal responsibility and I sorta let myself down a few times.

But all this self recrimination was totally unnecessary since I had a teammate sitting track side, the lovely long and pirate-y Elbowz Smackeroni, counting my every biff, miss, and failure to be sufficiently aggressive, which she numerically noted with punches to my arm.  As adorable as it is to have a derby mate behave like a junior high boy with a fist that feels like the fluttering of a unicorn's eyelashes, the whole experience actually taught me more about what's more important in derby than actual skill.

Namely, my teammates.

Until this last invitational, I had little appreciation of how much I rely on my team doing their job.  This counts for my own teammates, the very dark and not at all cheerful Nightshades, who would rather peck out your liver than look at you, as well as my league-mates.  Playing with somebody you don't know is like playing with yourself.  But in a bad way.

Let me say, I am pretty bowled over by the amount of skill and sheer moxie demonstrated by freshest of rookies who I played with this past weekend.  They certainly displayed more skills than I did for my first game.  And as for the others who have a few games under their belts, I love them.  Without them I would of been merely blocker fodder.  I think we played together well, considering, and I saw a lot of talent and great derby.

Yet, something was missing.  There was no nail to my hammer, no swarm to my bee, no shepards to my goat.  There was, in short, no communication.  I screamed my fool head off and no one heeded my call.  I learned quickly that I couldn't expect someone to be where I thought they should be.  I also learned that every league operates under different strategies and assumptions and that when each player has their own agenda and individual priorities, the damn opposing jammer seems as if she was greased.     

A blocker isn't a blocker isn't a blocker.

There is no substitute for your own teammate.

Really, you can't really know a girl until you've pushed her by her hips fifty times around the track.  You can't know her until she's hit you to the floor a couple dozen times or managed to jump over your not-so-small fall or you've narrowly yet triumphantly avoided impregnating her with your own skate.  You really can't know her until you've watched parts of her body swell up to cartoon like proportions and turn the colour of a mid summer sky.  You really can't know her until you have a serious discussion about wheel hardness and practice floor versus bout floor and the relative merits of having a mouth guard with full concussion protection opposed to one you can actually talk with. 

(Quick quiz: which brand of knee pads feel most like landing on a basket of kittens?  Answer: 187 Killers - I <3 them.)

I can see now how derby is a team sport.  Okay, you don't have to make a bunch of duh obnoxious noises at me.  I have been focused on skill building for a long time and while hitting, obstructing, and stopping very important, it's just filtering in now that working with your team and cooperation is another important skill that I should push to the forefront of my training. 

I'm going to get all Sesame Street. 

Right now, post rookie invitational, I feel quite privileged to have such a fabulous and dark team to work with and develop some serious communication skills.  And, it almost goes without saying, lucky to get to watch various body parts swell and bruise whenever skate or track meets bone.  

Dear teammates: I may not know your favorite bands, your natural hair colour, or even your given name, but I trust that you'd throw your body down in front of a speeding jammer to protect my point and that's good enough for me.

Cheers.

I'm back. And I'm hot.

Let's play a little catch up since we haven't spoke in, oh, forever.

What's been happening with you?

Oh, really?  Great!  Now onto me.

I've been practicing some derby, playin' a bit.  Having recently filled out a registration for a rookie invitational, the actual number of bouts and scrimmages became important.  I wasn't to sure how to answer, since my scrimmage count is... not sure?  More than three, less than eight?  I didn't know I should count them.  I play derby so I'm not - whatdayacallit - smart?

As for bouts, do rookie invitationals count as actual bouts or scrimmages?  And as for really real bouts (autograph signing and all), I did play a couple with my seriously ass-kicking team Nightshades, but really, since I played more than three, less than eight jams per a game, should I really count them? 

Experience by the numbers is an odd thing.

But who's counting?

I'm not.  All I know is that my skills are s-l-o-w-l-y improving.  I feel I'm somewhere between completely sucks and mediocre, and I'm okay with that.  Well, I have to be okay with it, since that's just where I am.  I have to occasionally remind myself how far I've come since my first wobbly days on the track (when I felt I wasn't qualified to actually skate my laps in bounds) and now, hells, I wouldn't dream of thinking I belong anywhere on but on that track.

My track, muthers!

One thing, though, I've prided myself on throughout the last year and a bit is doing whatever has been thrown at me in practice.  Not doing it well, mind you, but at least trying.  There have been days, with a coach either in a particularly sadistic mood or in her third trimester of pregnancy, when the side of the track has looked like a triage unit, with fallen and exhausted skaters in a semi-comatose state, but I have soldiered on, lightheaded and nauseous, and did what needed done.

My bench marks, for example, took place on a plus thirty degree day, with only two of us testing and not having any breaks.  I felt like my head was going to float off from heat exhaustion, but I made my twenty five in five, even after biffing it on a corner, and then jumped my little heart out over the three inch pylon (oh, how far I've come since then!), half hoping I would fall so I could lay on the floor for just a minute please, but I kept going and passed, damnit.  

Not a quitter. 

But, tonight, I fucked up that little personal best of belligerent tenacity.  Tonight I got hot.  Really hot.  And dizzy.  And cotton mouthed.  And nauseated.  And I was pretty sure I was going to hurl right there on the track.

Oh, the romance of roller derby.

At first I thought I was coming down with the flu.  But I kept skating.  And then I started to worry I had Toxic Shock Syndrome.  But I kept skating. 

(Perhaps, besides diligence, I should add hypochondria to my list of tendancies?)

But then, as the track started to tilt at an alarming angle, I decided to go take a bit of a breather in the change room.  For the first time on skates (excluding all games of freeze tag) I felt like I might be a in a bit of danger.  I also thought that it would probably ruin my derby cred if I spewed teriyaki stir fry (which was delicious, but really only the first time) on the track.  Plus, I'd probably have to clean it up too.  For the  skaters, by the skaters and all that.

No thanks.

So, I gave and took myself off the the change room to splash a bit of cold water on my face.  Then it dawns on my that I'm probably not dying from dangerously rapidly multiplying bacteria in my vagina (just read the pamphlet that comes in the tampon box ladies) but merely hot.

Hey, I'm hot!

And it's not cool.

Some more cooling water, on my face and from my water bottle, the removal of one whole shirt and I almost felt like I wasn't riding a tilt a whirl.

And then I skated again.

Lesson learnt: summer time is a bitch for skating.  Granted, so is winter, especially with a concrete floor that likes to contract into ice-like slipperiness during sub zero temperatures, but getting right now being overheated is my greatest enemy. 

For next practice I plan to drink more water during the day prior and wear much less clothing.  I hope my teammates can handle it.

And, as for having to take a shameful break during practice, well, I'm going to have get over it as an anomaly and a learning experience.  My ego and I shall get over it.  It was just for ten minutes in hundreds of hours of practice. 

But who's counting?      

Gone Derbying

Can't post... too busy skatin'

derby growing pains

This time last year I had just torn the ligaments in my ankle while trying to get vertical again from a knee drop. I was only off skates for a month but given how that was exactly how long I had been skating previously, it felt like forever.

The sprain was caused by my skate slipping backwards as I put my weight on it to lift myself up, causing my foot to flip back as I fell on it. It was a stupid injury, an ungraceful injury, a slow healing injury (those of us over thirty typically have these). It was also an educational injury.

I have a hard time, only a year later, understanding physically how I could of possibility rolled in such a way as to tear a ligament in that location. I think now that I would have to be seriously potted to replicate the scene, given how uncoordinated and counter intuitive of a move it was.

Shows me how far I've come in just twelve short months.

A year ago I was like a floppy derby infant, unable to hold my own weight, my muscles weak and underdeveloped. Now that I have skated a couple of games I feel much more like a scrappy tween. I'm more confident with my body, I am stronger, faster, more agile, but I still am learning how to control myself and what I am capable of. I still have so much to learn.

I anticipate moving into my derby teens next year. I will be brash and opinionated and hit bitches just because they are there. I will skate with a chip on my shoulder and everyone just better get the fuck out of my way or I will pout vigorously around the curves and use gravity to push out my enemies to a black hole of, like, despair and stuff.

When I grow up I want to be a jammer killer.

My first few derby practices, the whole four I had until I twisted my ankle, I was, with just a couple of notable and brave exceptions, the most unskilled skater I have ever known. I would like to thank the Harbour City Rollers for their patience with me and instilling a work ethic that has served me well since.

My first set of laps was 11 in five minutes. Awesome, right? Perhaps it was because they were a new-ish league, or maybe because I was so bad they were trying to discourage me into quitting, despite my incredible speed of snail and inability to, say, stop, I still skated every practice.  All drills. Pack skating, jumping (hahahahhaha), snakes, relays, positional blocking, a couple of proto-hitting drills.  No exceptions made for total lack of ability.

It was harrowing.  Why did I keep doing these things that I had no business doing?
My first practice ever someone said to the group in general, 'You can't say "no" to the coach.' I took this as gospel. If I ever felt like I couldn't do a drill, or really really didn't want to, then I had no business being there. So I never said no. I never stayed down.  I never stopped despite pain or fear.  Because I really, really wanted to play roller derby.

Me skating pack drills was a really bad idea.  Other skaters used to grab my forearms to hold me in place around the curves (this is long before I could cross over) while pushing me much faster than I could propel myself.  I was a menace to other skaters.  I should of been skating back and forth at the end of the arena, getting used to the skates on my feet, and learning to stop. And then go. And then stop again.

Which, actually, was exactly what I was doing when I sprained my ankle. But anyway.

This is derby for me. Two steps forward, one cut track, fall down, get up and end up just a tiny bit further than when I started out. The rest of the pack is going, and I am in and then out, and trying to catch up again but wait, they've slowed down and I'm here all alone again.  Feeling out of play most of the time.

But I've never said no. Doing situational jams during my first practice, despite the fact that I couldn't actually skate, gave me a taste of derby in a way that doing a hundred knee drops could not. It motivated me. 

By not saying no, by being way over my head, I've learnt that limits are contingent to the moment.  Limits aren't a forever thing.  We all have barriers, an end to the road, but most of us stop way before the actual end. We see that 'dead end ahead' sign and pull back because we are scared and don't want to look foolish.

I highly recommend going all the way to the very end.  Hit the barrier hard enough to make a hole for the next time.  My reason is simple: derby girls are superheros.  Why do you think they wear push up bras, skimpy tights and spandex underwear?  Superheros do things that ordinary human beings can not.  Turning from an ordinary human being into a superhero means going beyond your regular limits. Ipso facto. Superheros can't back down, they can't whine, they can't say no.  They always try.   

That said, this derby child has to go do some planks, sit ups and tuck jumps.  Though I've passed my benchmarks and made a team, there is no graduated.  There is always another barrier to reach and surpass.   The only way out is to retire, and I have so much derby living in between now and then.