reality comes crashing down

So last night was part 2 of the travel team tryouts - obstacle course and written test.

The obstacle course went like this:

- run on your toestops start
- plow stop between two sets of cones
- maneuver through a mishmash of tipped over cones and beanbags on your toestops
- jump a pair of mannequin legs
- weave through a set of cones on a turn in the track
- turn around and skate backwards around a turn in the track
- skate forward and do a hockey stop at the next cone
- do quick tomahawk turns on each edge of the track, stopping at a cone (four cones total; you have to turn in each direction at least once)
- skate backwards and stop on your toestops at each edge of the track twice.

And then you had to do that whole thing again,  as quickly as you could.

I went first (in the hopes of garnering some brownie points).  The first time through, I missed some of the weaving cones (I was going too fast and they were really close together) and the second time through I fell on the hockey stop (I'm not very good at them anyway - I always end up just doing a 360°).  I have no idea what my time was.  On the other hand, it seemed like a lot of people missed other things, but on the other hand, I SCREWED UP.

The written test was a combination of rules multiple choice/true or false, multiple choice strategy questions (any question that began with "you are the jammer", I added an answer "e. Cry Profusely" and a short essay question that I expanded to a full page with drawings.  I think I did well on that, as I've spent the last few days going over the rules with a fine-toothed comb (and e-mailing one of our referees for clarification on other things) and I've got the strategies down pretty well.

So we've got scrimmaging left and I'm not sure what else.

Travel Team Tryouts Part 1

Tonight was fitness and interview (next time, swimsuit and talent).

Anyway, I did soooo much better than I thought I would - here's how it broke down for me:

Wall Sit: 2 minutes
Plank: 2 minutes 46 seconds, and I only stopped because my legs were giving out from the wall sit
Air Squats: 67 in a minute
Sit Ups: 34 in a minute
30 second sprint: 3.25 laps
5 Laps with a 2 knee fall every 20 seconds: 56.5 seconds
15 Minute Endurance: 29 laps after 5 minutes, 58 laps after 10 minutes, 87 laps after 15 minutes

The interview went pretty well, too, if I do say so myself.  I said before that I got the impression that they're looking for good attitudes - one of the questions I got was "describe someone with a good attitude" and after I did, they said "okay, imagine that's a 10.  How do you see yourself?" and I said "8 or 9" and was told that was quite accurate.

So yeah, we'll see what happens now.

Yeah, that happened.

Final score: 321 to 170-something

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

wheeee

So tomorrow's the championship bout.  I really hope we win.

Last night was the final home team scrimmage night.  I had to jam a few times, and it went about as well as it normally does (read: not very well).  I did get lead jammer at one point (mostly because the other jammer was in the penalty box at the start of the jam) and as I was coming through the pack for another scoring pass, I got - just - BLAMMO in the chest by someone on the other team.  I went down on my stomach, wind knocked out of me, frantically gesturing to call off the jam ('cause the other jammer was back in at this point).  After the jam ended, I was like "I'm okay, I'm fine, I just need to lie down here for a little bit."  I think it's only the second time I haven't immediately been able to pop up after getting knocked down, and the first one where people took a knee for me.

So tomorrow night's bout is a singleheader, which means I DON'T HAVE TO DO ANY JOBS DURING THE BOUT.  I CAN JUST CONCENTRATE ON PLAYING ROLLER DERBY.  This is a huge relief for me as I do not do bout production and playing derby well together. 
 

oh dear

so a few years ago (like, four, I think), at one practice I fell and fucked up the first knuckle on my right ring finger hand.  (I think my doctor said it was something like a broken joint capsule.)  At any rate, it's been four years now and that knuckle is *still* deformed - if I have a ring that fits over the knuckle, it spins on my finger.

Anyway, that happened last night to my OTHER ring finger, and stupid me decided to try and put my wedding ring on after it happened.  So now there is NO way in hell I'm going to be able to take my wedding ring off in the near future and possibly for quite a very long time.  Oops.

ohmigod ohmigodohmigodohmigod (aka BEST WEEK EVAR)

So.  Thursday of last week I met before practice with my team's captains and coach.  They were offering to meet with skaters in a "hey, let us tell you how we think you're doing and what you need to work on and whatnot" sorta thing, which I don't think I've *ever* really had in the last four and a half years that I've been doing this.

I've discovered that I have no real ability to tell how I'm doing at something - or at least, I will always think I'm doing crappily.  Good things are immediately forgotten, or downplayed, and the mistakes are amplified and HEY, REMEMBER WHEN YOU DID (OR DIDN'T DO) THIS? YEAH.  REMEMBER IT.  So I have no idea how I appear to other people, if that makes sense. 

Anyway, things I learned from that meeting:

- my captains and coach think I am a solid, dependable team member, and if they have overlooked me, it's because I am not a problem skater
- that I have real leadership abilities
- that people were seriously gunning for me to be a member of the A team last season
- if the core members of the A team this season are able to compose the team of their ideal members, I would be the type of skater they are looking for

ZOMFG ZOMFG ZOMFG.

So this was amazing and wonderful and after that I had one of my best practices ever.

Saturday was Bout Night.  Our team was playing second and third, which meant that I had to work in the Box Office for the first part of the night. (Well, I didn't HAVE to - no one was holding a gun to my head - but I've sort of turned into the person who's in charge of the box office and I had to make sure everything ran smoothly.)  I don't handle multiple situations of stress very well (if I'm in the middle of handling one situation, and another one comes in and interrupts me, chances are I will bite the messenger of the second interruption's head off) and that happened a few times.  So finally when I got to skate in my team's warmup, I was scattershot and flustered and had to back out of the drill we were doing so I could do a few laps on my own to get Box Office Crap out of my head and get Playing Roller Derby in its place.

So, derby!  Our team is unique in the league, I think, in that we don't have specific lineups that go out.  Our bench manager just kinda goes "okay....you and you and you and you, go sit in the chairs."  We work well no matter who we're partnered with.  (I think it's a definite benefit of only having eleven skaters, as opposed to the deeper benches of the other teams.)

At any rate, we kept our heads cool and played OUR game of derby, not theirs, and we won both our half-hour bouts.  Wahoo!  (in our second one, we went for, like, 16 or 17 minutes without a single major penalty! Woot!)

Between the two bouts we played, I noticed that a bunch of fans had stacked up a beer can pyramid right at turn 1.  It was a pretty impressive stack, at least six or seven cans tall.  I decided I was going to either (a) send an opponent crashing into it or (b) crash into it myself at some point during the game.  When the bout was over and it was still intact, I went over before our victory lap and smashed through it.  (unfortunately, some of the beer cans were still half-filled).  The fans who had created it cheered wildly.

Each half-hour bout has a Heaviest Hitter and an MVP awarded.  The recipients are chosen by the opposing team.  The very last award announced, the MVP for the winning team of the last half-hour bout of the night.....

I seriously burst into tears when they gave this to me

I was talking at the afterparty to one of the members of the team who chose me as MVP, and she said "Yeah, we were talking about who should get MVP, and someone said 'Queenie', and then we were all like 'Yeah!  Definitely Queenie!'" which made my cold little shriveled black heart grow about eight sizes.

And, to make a perfect night even perfecter, when I got to the afterparty, I parallel parked on a majorly busy street and only stalled my car twice.

BEST BOUT NIGHT EVAR.

yipes

I didn't realize it'd been so long since last I posted; I know y'all are HANGING ONTO MY EVERY WORD.

Some of the issues that plagued the league since its inception are rearing their ugly heads again - basically the gulf between our A team and our B team.  The A team gets to go to the tournaments, gets to work towards a concrete "it is out there" goal - WFTDA rankings.

The B team gets a pat on the head and a "hey, good for you!"

I realize this specifically isn't the fault of my league, that WFTDA doesn't have anything in place for B teams, but it's kinda frustrating when the only goal that's really out there for B team members is....to practice real  hard and get on the A team.

Anyway.  We've got a bout on Saturday and all the spazziness that shall entail.