Well scrimmaging is going from strength to strength, we are getting more competitive and more aggressive with our blocking. Still too many 'sorrys' and stopping to check that people are not injured when you knock them on to their asses, but we are definitely getting there. We have had two practises since we I last posted and I had to sit out for one of them as I was taken out by one of our gals in an awesome block, but I twisted on my way down and landed on my tailbone. Man that stings.......I didn't break it, but I couldn't sit down for a few days!!!!!
We split up into teams and Jam mostly all the time now, it takes a lot out of you to play for the full two minutes - particularly if you are the Jammer. We are finding the girls that are natural born Jammers and we are finding who are more comfortable in blocking positions and we have a good mixture of both. Personally I'm finding that I'm leaning towards blocker position, but I'm still waiting on my skates coming through. Who knows, I may be able to dodge and weave better on bigger, grippier wheels. I know I will be a damn site faster on them, so I will just have to wait and see. I did manage to get through the pack quite easily on one Jam, but I couldn't keep in front of the other teams Jammer due to me sliding out of bounds when I picked up speed. She ended up catching me and won more points for her team.
The hands and pushing thing is getting better, everyone is managing to control their speed and stopping within the pack and our girls are very vocal in pointing out if anyone illegally blocks.
When I was sitting out during the last practise, I had time to really watch the girls and boy do we look good as a league. We are really starting to look the part now, it was so exciting to watch. I cant wait to see us all in our team colours doing it for real!
Showing posts with label scrimmage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scrimmage. Show all posts
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wake-up Call
Its a long way to fall off that pedestal you build up in your mind. That image you have of yourself speeding around the track, crossing over in all the right places, dodging and weaving through holes in the pack looking like that hot, awesome derby gal in Blood and Thunder magazine........
Until you are in that pack, trying to dodge and weave but the blocker in front of you is really good and not getting out of the way. Yes, you are speeding around the track, but you haven't yet completely mastered the art of controlling your speed and you put your hands out on impulse and slam into the back of her - if we had a Ref and we were jamming for real - that would cost me some time in the penalty box and I might have cost my team the game. Reality sucks!!! A wounded ego sucks even more.
I have to practise more, my league needs to practise more (because there is quite a lot of us in the same boat) - but how can we if we don't have the extra time in the building we have at the moment. I HATE NETBALL AND BASKETBALL and all the prissy fucking sports that have really good floors to skate on but are afraid of their floor being ripped up by skates! I hate the council for demolishing all the roller rinks and leasing out the remaining ones to useless fucking companies that keep them empty and wont share!!!! Aaarggh!
Now that I have that rant out of the way and I have projected my anger towards something else, I can get on with my blog!
Its our first time at scrimmaging properly, playing by the rules and jam times and its a bit of a let down to realise your not as good as you think you are. I'm not only bruised physically. I really need to bury my head in the rules book and get to know my jam formations. I need to remember to keep my hands to myself and I need to find holes in the pack instead of thinking I can just barge my way through. I need to remember that if I'm Pivoting, I need to control the speed of the pack and not go speeding off chasing the jammer and causing the pack to speed up also. I need to realise that as a blocker, my job is to block other blockers and make way for my Jammer and not just focus on the opposing Jammmer. Its a lot to learn, its a whole different mentality from just skating round and round and concentrating on my own ability. I have to switch to pack mentality and team mentality - not me, myself and I.
I must say also, that I'm a bit nervous of going up against some of the other teams. Fuck, they have some good blockers - I know, I was on the receiving end of them at practise! We are going to have to start forming strategies amongst our own teams and holding back some of what we have from league practise. Don't want to show our colours too early, going to have to be devious now. Its going to be hard, cause I think our girls are awesome and I want to hang out with them and skate with them all. Its not going to be long before we are splitting the practises. I don't know how its going to work with the lack of space and time, but I'm sure that will be another story. For now, im going to take my frustration out on my boyfriend..............
Until you are in that pack, trying to dodge and weave but the blocker in front of you is really good and not getting out of the way. Yes, you are speeding around the track, but you haven't yet completely mastered the art of controlling your speed and you put your hands out on impulse and slam into the back of her - if we had a Ref and we were jamming for real - that would cost me some time in the penalty box and I might have cost my team the game. Reality sucks!!! A wounded ego sucks even more.
I have to practise more, my league needs to practise more (because there is quite a lot of us in the same boat) - but how can we if we don't have the extra time in the building we have at the moment. I HATE NETBALL AND BASKETBALL and all the prissy fucking sports that have really good floors to skate on but are afraid of their floor being ripped up by skates! I hate the council for demolishing all the roller rinks and leasing out the remaining ones to useless fucking companies that keep them empty and wont share!!!! Aaarggh!
Now that I have that rant out of the way and I have projected my anger towards something else, I can get on with my blog!
Its our first time at scrimmaging properly, playing by the rules and jam times and its a bit of a let down to realise your not as good as you think you are. I'm not only bruised physically. I really need to bury my head in the rules book and get to know my jam formations. I need to remember to keep my hands to myself and I need to find holes in the pack instead of thinking I can just barge my way through. I need to remember that if I'm Pivoting, I need to control the speed of the pack and not go speeding off chasing the jammer and causing the pack to speed up also. I need to realise that as a blocker, my job is to block other blockers and make way for my Jammer and not just focus on the opposing Jammmer. Its a lot to learn, its a whole different mentality from just skating round and round and concentrating on my own ability. I have to switch to pack mentality and team mentality - not me, myself and I.
I must say also, that I'm a bit nervous of going up against some of the other teams. Fuck, they have some good blockers - I know, I was on the receiving end of them at practise! We are going to have to start forming strategies amongst our own teams and holding back some of what we have from league practise. Don't want to show our colours too early, going to have to be devious now. Its going to be hard, cause I think our girls are awesome and I want to hang out with them and skate with them all. Its not going to be long before we are splitting the practises. I don't know how its going to work with the lack of space and time, but I'm sure that will be another story. For now, im going to take my frustration out on my boyfriend..............
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Skills Test 101
Skater must have good skating posture - check
Must be able to bend at knees and hips with shoulders back - check
Must be able to swing arms fluidly - check
Have steady, confident strides and use both feet to push forward on the straightways - check.
Have a kick-ass attitude, CHECK!!!!!!
We are being skills tested at the moment. The coaches have had enough of skating round and round in circles practising T-Stops, snow ploughs etc. Not that its not important, believe me it is, but we want to scrimmage, we want to get in there and shoulder check, practise at playing Jammer, Pivot and Blocker and generally kick some derby ass!
Before we do, we need to prove that we are safe and confident on our skates and able to dodge/jump our way out of trouble or over our teammates if they fall. Safety should NEVER be under-estimated (or is that over-estimated?), look at what happened to Tequila Mockingbird.
So, skills test...... Everyone in our league is doing quite well in that area, we are pretty much all safe and able to tick the necessary boxes, just little niggly things to iron out. For example, I cant skate on one foot along the length of the straight way. I can pick up my foot if I need to avoid objects/heads etc and I can pick my foot up and skate on the other for part of the straight way, but I'm buggered if I can do it all the way! I put that down to my crappy skates and so do my coaches, so I'm not that concerned as yet. I can shoulder block, ass block and lean people out of bounds. I can fall small - a skill found out when a team mate blind sided me and knocked me clean off my skates!!! I also have a habit of catching people on the back of their arms when I'm coming in for a shoulder check from behind, but some extra work with my coach has sorted that one out. Although we are not WFTDA, we still base our skills, rules and regulations off them and its good to have a list of standards to work off. To see a list of all the rules/regulations and skills, check out http://rules.wftda.com/official-rules/
Its so good to see us all progressing so well, its giving us all hope that we will be doing this all in competition soon. Light at the end of the tunnel, as its hard setting up a new league from scratch. We don't have girls to watch bout and compete, we just have DVD's and the hope that when we do crash onto the scene, this city that we are in, wont know what hit it.............
Must be able to bend at knees and hips with shoulders back - check
Must be able to swing arms fluidly - check
Have steady, confident strides and use both feet to push forward on the straightways - check.
Have a kick-ass attitude, CHECK!!!!!!
We are being skills tested at the moment. The coaches have had enough of skating round and round in circles practising T-Stops, snow ploughs etc. Not that its not important, believe me it is, but we want to scrimmage, we want to get in there and shoulder check, practise at playing Jammer, Pivot and Blocker and generally kick some derby ass!
Before we do, we need to prove that we are safe and confident on our skates and able to dodge/jump our way out of trouble or over our teammates if they fall. Safety should NEVER be under-estimated (or is that over-estimated?), look at what happened to Tequila Mockingbird.
So, skills test...... Everyone in our league is doing quite well in that area, we are pretty much all safe and able to tick the necessary boxes, just little niggly things to iron out. For example, I cant skate on one foot along the length of the straight way. I can pick up my foot if I need to avoid objects/heads etc and I can pick my foot up and skate on the other for part of the straight way, but I'm buggered if I can do it all the way! I put that down to my crappy skates and so do my coaches, so I'm not that concerned as yet. I can shoulder block, ass block and lean people out of bounds. I can fall small - a skill found out when a team mate blind sided me and knocked me clean off my skates!!! I also have a habit of catching people on the back of their arms when I'm coming in for a shoulder check from behind, but some extra work with my coach has sorted that one out. Although we are not WFTDA, we still base our skills, rules and regulations off them and its good to have a list of standards to work off. To see a list of all the rules/regulations and skills, check out http://rules.wftda.com/official-rules/
Its so good to see us all progressing so well, its giving us all hope that we will be doing this all in competition soon. Light at the end of the tunnel, as its hard setting up a new league from scratch. We don't have girls to watch bout and compete, we just have DVD's and the hope that when we do crash onto the scene, this city that we are in, wont know what hit it.............
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Watch out - here I come!
I love knocking people on their ass! I love blocking! I have bruises on my ass and legs from wheels and stoppers, but I freakin love knocking the girls on their asses and not saying sorry!!!
So, you can surmise from the opening to this blog that we have been practising block, hits and taking hits. I cant wait to do this on the track. I am perfecting the hit made famous by Beyonslay at the ECE, I'm gonna perfect it and I'm gonna open up a can of woop-ass in scrimmage. Still need to get my aerobic fitness up as we are going to be doing our 20 laps in 5 minutes, I want to be fit enough to pull it off and not die at mid point. Still got my shitty skates, have been looking over web-sites with derby skates like its porn!! Cannot wait until I'm able to order my derby skates.
We are going to be splitting into our teams in the next few weeks, but as we are a fairly new league, we will still all be practising together. I cant wait to see the next lot of newbies when they come through. I cant wait to have a hand in teaching them their derby skills and getting to know a new bunch of girls.
I'm currently jealous as hell as Rollercon is imminent and I cant go! Have been getting emails from girls that are going and they are telling me about the challenge bouts that are being held this year! I WANT TO GO!!!! (insert stamping of feet and crying here!) Maybe next year.
So, you can surmise from the opening to this blog that we have been practising block, hits and taking hits. I cant wait to do this on the track. I am perfecting the hit made famous by Beyonslay at the ECE, I'm gonna perfect it and I'm gonna open up a can of woop-ass in scrimmage. Still need to get my aerobic fitness up as we are going to be doing our 20 laps in 5 minutes, I want to be fit enough to pull it off and not die at mid point. Still got my shitty skates, have been looking over web-sites with derby skates like its porn!! Cannot wait until I'm able to order my derby skates.
We are going to be splitting into our teams in the next few weeks, but as we are a fairly new league, we will still all be practising together. I cant wait to see the next lot of newbies when they come through. I cant wait to have a hand in teaching them their derby skills and getting to know a new bunch of girls.
I'm currently jealous as hell as Rollercon is imminent and I cant go! Have been getting emails from girls that are going and they are telling me about the challenge bouts that are being held this year! I WANT TO GO!!!! (insert stamping of feet and crying here!) Maybe next year.
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