Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Hard knocks and the bout at the end of the rainbow.....

So I am finally skills tested and it feels awesome.
But quicker than you can say 'bask in the glory of your achievement' I am back to square one with another goal to reach and so much to learn.
You see now I'm not just skating around, occasionally practising hits.  In drills you almost always know when a hit is coming- you expect it and brace yourself for it.
Not in scrimmage - in scrimmage you get hit all the time when you're already busy.
Busy trying to see where your jammer is (so you don't get in their way), where their jammer is (so you don't let them skate right past you on the inside line making you look like a complete moron), what the refs are doing (so you know to go off when they call you for back-blocking and cutting the track...again....) and other important things like remembering which team you are on (so you don't try and knock over your own pivot).
It's while you are trying to do all that that you get hit in scrimmage, and you get hit hard, and you fall hard in a pack with a bunch of other skaters.  Kinda like this...............


..........but with 4 times the wheels.

And the teams were announced for our next bout 'Rainbow Spite' on the 25th Feb.
Team Gaga vs Team Glee.
I have been put on Team Glee with the condition that I am good enough to bout by then.
So I am excited but I'm also a little freaked out.
I have work to do - lots of it.  I need to build up my strength so that I don't fall down everytime another skater even looks like they are going to hit me - it's not safe for me or them!
I also don't want to skate my first bout until I am good enough to be useful - to pull my weight in the team, I don't want to fill a spot just because it's there.
I'd say it's 50/50 whether I can get to the level I need to be in time but it's good to have another goal to aim for.
It would be awesome to skate on Team Glee, we have some guest skaters coming to skate for us, one who just skated with Team New Zealand in the Roller Derby World Cup.
So that would mean that I could skate with someone who had skated with Suzy Hotrod....one degree of derby seperation to this.....

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