    videos  |
She finally did it, she finally got her arse to a proper white star training session. Now I don’t feel quite as guilty claiming to be a derby girl. Still I have a lot of attendance to make up if I want to qualify to sit my next test. In my defence a bad bout of tonsillitis and birthdays did seem like pretty good excuses at the time.
Anyhoos… FIRST TRAINING SESSION Before we were even allowed to get on the rink, we new white stars had to first pass the basic written rules test. I was fairly nervous about this during the week as I had still not sat down and read all the rules. I was just hoping to get by with what i’ve learnt along the way in the last 12 months. Luckily for me it turns out I knew more than I thought. Not sure on what my mark was but i was just happy to get out on the track. It was fairly intimidating at first, not that I was made to feel that way by anyone of coarse, I just was a little overcome by the feeling of being a little noob in a big pond of total awesomeness. The skating was amazing fun. It was so cool to not be doing to same old drills over and over and over again. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be but I think that’s mainly down to everyone was super friendly and helpful. So here’s the 411 on what we did. 1.PACE LINES
By the end of this I was pretty buggered. the line was so long it took ages to get to the front. 2.MAKING WALLS
3. WATERFALLS 4. BLOCKING AND JAMMING
We did this a few times making sure everyone got a crack at each position. I’ve decided i don’t mind inside blocking and the jamming was heaps fun but I’ll probably change my mind about that when theres more than a pack of 2 to deal with. 5. MAKING AND BREAKING WALLS That was the last drill for the whiteys for the night. I love the fact that when I played RTCW online, new players had white names, anyone with a white name was considered a noob or a “whitey” because they were so new they couldn’t work out how to change the colour of their name, or play with any skill. It does however feel much cooler calling myself a whitey now even if we are not allowed to scrimmage until we hit yellow star. So the whiteys did we did a quick warm-down skate, a stretch and got to sit around and watch the higher level skaters do their scrimmage, a worthy compromise. I am seriously equal parts excited and terrified at the prospect of being able to scrim eventually. I got to try my hand at penalty tracking which I’ve never done before. This was pretty cool. I’ve always wanted to do some NSO activities. Big thanks to Andrew for being so patient every time a purple penalty was called. Pretty sure he would have been sick of me asking “what did he say?” “is this right?” “what was that?”. NOTE FOR NEXT WEEK: obtain hearing aid so I can hear the coaches and refs and remember to buy my purple and red singlets for team drills. Much love to Bonnie for the sexy loaner for the night <3. Despite from my truancy on the weekend training front I have still made it to the previous 2 Tuesday sessions. The first was the info night but last weeks was much more fun, It was the SSRD first public bout !! Well semi public, it was for friends and family only but it was still awesome to watch. I was running the merch stand with Megsy for the first half with an army of junior derby queens in the making. It was good volly job here because we could still see all the action. It really got me pretty excited to think that maybe sometime in the next 12 months I’ll be out there as well. Check out the video on the left of the girls in action and nurse pain grand-slamming it up :D The first real public bout will be on AUGUST 28TH, more details to come but save the date ! NEXT : Friday night training. woo. |
IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SKATE
July 22nd, 2010LIVIN’ THE WHITESTAR LIFE
July 7th, 2010   |
Phew I think it’s pretty much sunk in that I actually made it to my white star. Having said that I still haven’t skated at any training sessions yet.
We are allowed to skate on Fridays and Saturdays right away but not Tuesday scrimmage for a few weeks due to SSRD preparing for and holding their first mini bout. Unfortunately work held be back last Friday and I couldn’t make the first session and i was away for the Sunday sesh. It’s pretty funny that I’ve been skating so hard to get in and once I’m in I can’t make training… cross my skates that this is not going to be a running trend. Ideally I’ll make all 3 sessions a week. I really need to work on building those delicious derby muscles. nom nom. We were still allowed to go Tuesday session this week. It was our induction night where we went through the rules, of which there will be a basic test on in 2 week *yikes* Time to put my “work funded” rules set to work. Although from what they asked on the night I seemed to know more then I thought. While we were not able to skate this Tuesday it was cool to watch some of the SSRD girls hard at work practicing for the family and friends bout next week. We finished up the evening with a league meeting where the ladies went through the new policies while I munched on the Doritos dutifully supplied by my wifey and delicious baked goods supplied by Erika <3 The highlight of the night I have to admit was Alex officially handing my white star sticker for my helmet *cue explosions*. No more artists interpretations for me ! Hopefully next blog post I’ll have something skate related to talk about, praying that it’s not injury related. Oh SSRD are running a fundraiser on the 30th of July to help raise much needed fundage. It’s an 80’s roller disco being held at skateworld in Carrum. for more information clicky clicky ! |
WHITE STAR : THE FINAL SKATIER
June 28th, 2010  |
These are the voyages…*cough* sorry, got a little carried away…
So white star test, the bane of my existence for 7 or so months, was finally upon us. I was fine up until the morning at which point I became a bundle of nerves reminiscent of the exact situation I was in last year. So much nervous energy.. I couldn’t sleep in or sit still around the house. I just wanted to get it all over with. We started out basically stretching and practicing everything that was going to be on the test to warm us all up. I have to admit I didn’t really push myself too hard at this point because a) I didn’t want to wear myself out and b) I didn’t want to hurt myself before the test had even started. And then came the test *gasp* Now from what I remember (which is probably not 100% accurate) my results went something like this : ENDURANCE Laps: 25 laps in 5 minutes = 3/5 – Increased fitness will help with number of laps. Last time I got 19.5 so at least I can actually see some progress there. Stance and cross-overs suffered due to me being so tired. Increased fitness should in theory help me improve everything to do with endurance. STOPS T-stops = 4/5 – Possibly need to get a little lower. FALLS 1-point = 3/5 Needs a quicker recovery, be in better stance. JUMPS Basic jump: 4/5 – Need to increase balance so I don’t seem as shaky when landing. GRAND TOTAL 3.44(3.4) out of 5 WHITE STAR PASS! WOOTLES :D While we were waiting for the results we played some tag games and practiced some whipping, lots of fun. There was a pretty good vibe going around. Everyone seemed so relieved the test was over. Wifey had organized a dinner booking down the road for everyone after the test which was a great idea. It was really good to sit around with everyone from the coaches to other white star takers and completely stuff our faces, relax a bit and totally stink out all the other punters. Awesome. So this means that just under a year of me buying my first pair of derby skates I am officially in a roller derby league. I’m not sure it will fully sink in until the first training session but I’m just going to relax for a little bit now… maybe… anyone for rollerama?? :D The good news (besides the obvious) is that I don’t have to write a boot camp experience for the third time. From this point on everything is going to be pretty new to me. This means more challenges, probably more tears but hopefully a lot more progression towards perhaps, one day, being able to play roller derby in an official capacity. I really hope that everyone that didn’t make it the first time goes back for the resit in a couple of weeks. I know how crappy it feels to not make it the first time. It sucks hard. Just quietly, I was pretty upset the first time, a lot more then I probably communicated to people. I felt completely defeated. Honestly though, I have no idea where I would be now if I had just given up the first time. Derby is not easy, it’s not ever going to be easy and if it was easy I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be all that interested. Stay with it girls. It won’t be the same without you. See you soon <3 |
BOOT CAMP 5 : THE EMPIRE SKATES BACK
June 20th, 2010   videos   |
BOOTY CAMP
This week was a full recap of everything we can expect in the test.
We also did some weaving again and some practise starts for jammers.
I think i’m ready for the test this time. In hindsight last time I really don’t think I was, mentally or physically. I could do most things but I wasn’t confident enough and it was more of a hit and miss on skills like plow stops and jumps. But as much fun as bootcamp was this week it kinda didn’t match up to the experience of… THE GREAT SOUTHERN SLAM IT WAS AMAZING !! It was also my first time in Adelaide and for a major city it sure is small and sleepy. Everything was in walking distances and the locals couldn’t wait to say hello to you so badly they feel the need to scream out of car windows every 5 minutes, day or night. The event was held at the show grounds taking up 2 pavilions with 4 tracks all on the go at the same time. It was pretty hard to decide which bouts to watch and which ones we would have to miss but obviously the Victorian teams took priority along with securing delicious merch. I spent way more money then I intended to but my derby tee collection just got an awesome boost. It was great seeing skaters of various skill levels all jumping in and having a go. So many girls were having their first ever bout here which I think was awesome. If it had been me, I don’t think I would have made it out of the bathroom. It was alot of fun watching some of the girls I did boot camp with last time in their first challenge bouts. Seriously impressive stuff. The amount of derby love was overwhelming, so many really cool people all together and enthusiastically talking about derby related topics, everyone was so positive and friendly, it was just the greatest atmosphere to be in. It was so hard to watch the final against Sun State Roller Girls and the VRDL. The skill level of the players was amazing, so many strategies I have never actually seen in front of my face before. the best word I can use to sum the game up is INTENSE. It was so good to see the Victorian girls take it though, It was the perfect ending to and awesome trip…well besides the after party, but that’s another story.. If they run another great southern slam next year i’ll be there in a heartbeat whether I can skate or not. I took some photos and videos that are linked to over on the left. but please be warned that the quality is not great due to an iphone being my medium. You may also want to turn the volume down on the videos as the screaming may just blow your mind..literally. SO NEXT WEEK… white star test !!! *nerves*. fingers crossed it won’t end in tears or injury and there won’t be another emo blog post incoming…wish me luck :) |
BOOTCAMP 4 : LIVE FREE OR SKATE HARD
June 7th, 2010   |
Will I grow out of using blog titles based on movie sequels? nope and I’m not even sure that I want to.
So this week started well. I managed to scam some printing and binding resources from my place of employment to finally get a copy of the rules organized. I am yet to read them even though they have been officially sitting on my desk at home for a week. I even coloured in the front with pink biro rather then actually do any productive reading. At least I have the guys at work walking around the office making random ref singles… office favourite seems to be “grandslam” so maybe i’ll actually start learning from them. Rollerama sessions were great as usual apart from me trying my best to do jump 180’s and stacking hard. You know the kind of stack i’m talking about. Your feet fly out forwards from under you and it feels like you’re floating in mid air for hours before you crash to earth butt first. It was pretty embarrassing on a night where there are derby veterans present. However I still went from person to person asking if they saw my uber fail and proudly announcing that I landed on my sidebum. As an added bonus one of our “crew” won the nightly roll the dice game and I got to share in the spoils…in skittles form…I tasted the rainbow and it was delicious. Then came boot camp week 4. Poor wifey hurt her bot bot and deemed herself too sore to participate. This meant spending almost 2 hours sitting around watching us noobs with only a bag of peas for company :( A lot got crammed into this weeks sessions:
Apart from those new things there was heaps of activities recapping everything we have learned so far which was good. We also did some more transitions and sprinting endurance practice. I’m still critically unfit I think so the more of this stuff the better. OMG HELMET WOOT! The highlight of my week was totally getting my new helmet back from J-F Tranquille. It’s been painted absolutely perfectly. I knew when I asked him initially if he could do a custom helmet for me I would be in good hands. He SOOO delivered! He took my love of Wolfinstein,skulls and Blitzkrieg and made something better then I would have ever imagined. Ok i’ll stop gushing now..but srsly… OMG OMG OMG lols. <3 J-F So now the wait begins to actually wear it. I figure I will wait till after the white star. I still can't register the name for a while yet but passing the white star (laces crossed) will be enough validation for me! Quick disclaimer: I’d like to clarify that even though my name and helmet is world war 2 inspired I am totally not a fascist nazi racist jerkface. kthanx. So there’s no bootcamp this sunday the 13th, which is a bummer, but we’re off to Radalaide instead for the Great Southern Slam. A totally worthy compromise. Reports and badly taken pictures to follow.. |
