Tuesday, September 25, 2012

why hello there!

Let's see....

1. Maverick and I went to North Central Regionals a weekend or two ago.  SO COOL.  It was neat seeing teams I'd never seen before.  And the FOOTWORK!  Holy crap they can juke. While I was there I bought new fancy bearings, and they do feel much quicker and spinnier.

2. Practices have been going well.  Last night we were doing a drill where we needed to hit the jammer out of bounds before we got too far away from the pack (as represented by a pacer).  I fell, but immediately tried to get up and yell "Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidge!" to let my partner know to keep going.  That received a lot of laughs, and a "you are, like, the most 'I won't quit' person" comment (which I appreciated).

3. On the suggestion of my captain, I've been lowering my toestops.  Since we do a *lot* of toestop work, this has made me feel less of a ballerina.

4. We're instigating some new rules for the remainder of the home season - no minors, everybody starts on the same whistle, whatnot.  We had our first scrimmage with it on Thursday and holy cow was it a clusterfuck.  There were points where one team had NOBODY on the track (two blockers in the box, and the other two blockers were both on their way to the box because they got majors from two different refs at the same time).  Because there was no pack, we (the team with a full contingent) had to let their jammer go by (and get all our points), which was a pretty crappy perfect storm.  We determined our only way to combat that was to just start booking until one of the other team's blockers got back on the track.

5. Maverick wants to work our merch booth next bout.  Sweet!


Tuesday, September 11, 2012

excuse my outburst here


So, once again, even with a smaller roster (11 skaters), even with the other teams stacking their rosters against us, we won both our half-hour bouts (151-59, and then 162-124).  YAY US!

However, a bunch of fans were bitching on our Facebook page about how they dislike slow derby and how the bouts my team played in were soooooooooo boring and if they were all going to be like that they weren't going to buy tickets anymore because it was sooooooooo boring and how they didn't understand what was going on because they were in the bathroom when the announcers were explaining slow derby strategy WHICH IS OBVIOUSLY OUR FAULT and the third bout of the night was soooooooo much more exciting because they didn't play slow derby and THANK YOU SO MUCH TEAMS WHO PLAYED IN THE THIRD BOUT FOR NOT BEING SOOOOOOOOO BORING.

I'm only exaggerating a little.

Our fans are used to the big windy-up hits that send skaters into the front row of seats.  They're used to mad scrambles and chasing and racing and whatnot.  Slow derby is the evolution of the sport as our league has chosen to see it.  My team was successful in implementing it in the first two bouts, so that is what the fans saw.  I didn't witness the third bout (I was helping close up the box office) but from what I understand it wasn't so much "fast pack" as it was "trying to do slow pack and failing + sloppy play".

So this is my message to the Facebook fans:

1. Football fans thought the forward pass made the game soooooooooooo boring at first
2. WE STILL WON BOTH OUR BOUTS WE'RE STILL UNDEFEATED NEENER NEENER NEENER.

Friday, September 7, 2012

my sparkling moment of awesomeness

So last night was scrimmage night.  The referees were trying out new people in different spots; as a result a LOT of penalties got called.

At one point I was the ONLY person from my team on the track*.  The other team had a full contingent.  Their jammer was fast approaching the pack.  The other team was lined up in front of me, I was in back....

...AND I KNOCKED THEIR JAMMER OUT OF BOUNDS AND THEN SHE CUT THE TRACK.

(insert cheers and fireworks here)

Oh, and tomorrow's bout day.  Yay!

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*Jammer and two blockers in the box, one blocker on her way to the box (to eventually get waved off)

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

ow, ow, OW

So I sprained my left thumb and skinned my knee at practice last night.  Dammit, they both hurt.