"I just keep thinking about the skaters that get cut from a team's roster to fit the ringers.
"They
work their asses off for the whole season, blood and sweat and tears,
work hard with their teammates. They train, they learn, they become a
unit with their team. They work and work and work and get that spot in
Regionals.
"Then
they're told 'Hey, guess what? Y'know this thing you and your teammate
just spent months and months working towards? Well, we really want to
win it, and we don't think you're good enough to get us there. So we're
replacing you with someone else.'
"As for Atomatrix, she said it herself: 'I'm taking a spot that someone else deserves.'"
----
So yeah. That probably says more about me than anything else.
(also - I read a comment one of the skaters who was cut wrote, which was basically like "This will just inspire me to WORK HARDER DON'T FEEL PITY FOR ME", which I understand, but I would totally not be that way at all. I'd probably want to set fire to the practice space or something.)
As derby gets bigger, so will the controversies. All the kerfuffle over Dutchland's forfeit last year, now this... because it's come out of a grassroots movement, everyone gets it in their heads that we all see the game the same way, but the bigger it gets, the more viewpoints there are, and some of them differ pretty radically. Either there will be rules made to discourage actions like that, or we'll have to get used to it being accepted behavior. Personally, I'm annoyed by it, too, but for fan-centric rather than player-centric reasons. If I want to see the most amazing skaters trample everybody else, I go to the World Cup. When it's Regionals, I want to see what each team (with its regular roster) can do from year to year. Bringing in ringers defeats that purpose.
ReplyDelete