Monday 12 December 2011

The prodigal daughter, part two

So, two things happened last night at training:

1) It rained a lot and the roof leaked onto the track.
2) I got back on skates after a month of injury and got my orange star.


I was injury-paranoid so I taped up BOTH of my ankles.
I would have also taped my knee as well except I ran out of tape.
Yep. Getting back on skates was so awesome. I was kind of stupidly nervous though, like my legs wouldn't know what to do or anything like that. So I was really conscious of being down in derby stance, pushing hard on crossovers, and that sort of thing. But it all came back pretty easily, and after a few laps I was back (except for when I nearly crashed into the bin that was on the track to catch the rain). I have to stretch my ankle a lot more though, because it's still pretty weak, and I was feeling it after a while. Rav took people through training, and Sarge and Legz took me through the remainder of my orange star test. Gah! WTF! So apparently what I had left was booty blocking, whips/pushes, and jumping over cones.

What? Jumps? Hahaha. I was so nervous about that. I'm usually okay with jumps, but I was worried that the force of it would be too much on my munty feet. But anyway, there were a bunch of cones set up and I NAILED IT IN ONE. Part of it was probably because I didn't want to do have to do it multiple times, but I also happened to jump over like seven or eight cones instead of the standard five, because Legz had put two cone-tracks next to each other (one was for people to do the one-leg slalom thing for yellow star). Haha. I'm dumb.

But yeah, then it was booty blocking, whips and pushes. Jillie was partnered up with me for this, and she's kind of mega awesome at skating so I was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to booty block her, or whip her (haha, last time I whipped anyone I ended up on my ass with a concussion). But she was a really good partner and gave me pointers for what to do (we had to skate around other people doing drills). So yeah, that was all good. Then Sarge and Legz tallied up the marks and I passed and got my star! Whoo!! (It was also the last session they were starring people for the year, so I totally squeaked in--no pun intended--to getting my orange.)

But when you have an orange star, you can be drafted onto a team. We got our first two teams announced as well: since we have a varisty themed league, our teams were the Ph.Demons, and the Cheerbleeders! And I'm a Cheerbleeder. Whoo! Sarge picked the names of all the oranges out of a hat and split them randomly, making adjustments for evening up the size, skill, experience etc. of the players. Boudica got drafted onto the Ph.Demons; Sarge split up me and my derby wife! Noes!!! But on the upside, this means I get to beat up my wife in the future, heh.

Oh, fine, so maybe three things happened last night:
3) I got drafted onto the inaugural VDL intraleague team.

I didn't scrimmage last night, but while I was NSO-ing (as the WORST NSO ever since I was wasn't even non-skating :P) I practiced doing some tomohawks and shooting the duck. Ha. Tomorrow is my last training session with VDL until March, and that sucks a bit. Sad face. I really want to scrimmage and 1) live up to my "Most likely to be ejected" shirt and 2) get more use out of my scrimmage tank and 3) try NOT to hipcheck everyone in the knee.

Yep. It was a good night to be back on skates.

That's right, I'm a goddamn champion!

Saturday 10 December 2011

The prodigal daughter, part one

So yesterday we had our end-of-year league BBQ by the skate park. It was pretty awesome. It was sunny and people got drunk and/or skated and I seriously made the worst "Bad Santa" present in the history of shit presents. (I'm really sorry, Bev!) Pictures to come.

This is how I feel my level of skating will be.
And [insert fanfare] today is my return to onskates! Yay!! I am going to be back from the wilderness. After being away in late October for 2 weeks and then basically getting on skates and then wrecking my ankle, I haven't had a proper skate since the time I had a concussion. (Yes, and THAT turned out well...) But yes. I have both my ankles and my knee taped up, and I am mega excited.

Also, no scrimmaging yet; my ankles need to get used to the weight of my skates first, before the weight of my skates AND several derby girls piling up on top of it. But yay. Being able to roll around is a welcome first step.

Oh, except I have to do the remainder of my orange star test. From memory, I have to do booty blocking, agility (jumping over cones), and obstacle avoidance. I have two more sessions before the end of the year and we break for the summer (I miss the last session because I'll be overseas, boo), so if I want to orange before then, it's tonight and Tuesday. I thought I'd do it Tuesday, and spend tonight kind of getting used to being on wheels.

But no. Sarge has other plans for me. Hilariously enough, this is how I found out:



WAT.

I REALLY want my orange, but I'm kind of scared I won't remember how to skate and I will fail the test or munt myself more. In particular, I'm worried that my muscles will have atrophied or something or that I won't have stability (not that I had much to start with) or that my derby stance will be shithouse. Ergh. For some reason this is much more nerve-wracking than when Boudica and I did our yellow star, maybe because last time we did ours together and now I am flying solo (she got hers when she smashed the test a few weeks ago).

 But I'll report back on how I went later tonight.

Wednesday 7 December 2011

How it all started

In an IM conversation with boyfriend (who knows I am nuts about derby and I bought him skates for his birthday) today:

[him]:  WTF there's a movie about derby? Have you heard of Whip It?

Hahahaha. That's so cute. :D

To be fair though, I haven't seen the movie, ever. (It apparently makes derby girls rage though, but meh.) However, it is what sucked me into derby in the first place.

Sponsored by Pro-Tec.
Also, uniform fail on the mouthguards and helmets.
I went to the Toronto International Film Festival the year it premiered and they turned downtown Dundas Square into a big flat track for an exhibition bout. That's kind of where I saw derby first and totally got sucked in. On the day, there was a big crowd there and I couldn't see what was going on, and I climbed up the back of the bleachers on the scaffolding to have a look, and they had two of the Toronto teams bouting and someone was explaining the rules and stuff as they went. It was amazeballs. And so I kind of hung there for the ENTIRE bout with my tiptoes on a piece of scaffolding, trying hard not to fall off. My arms were mega sore and my feet cramped like the dickens but it was worth it. And Drew Barrymore was there but she ignored everyone. Plus one of the people in the movie had my original derby name, which subsequently turned out to be one of the most popular derby names ever or something so... bah.

But yeah. Cutest discussion ever. Yay, memories.

Thursday 1 December 2011

Blood and Thunder!!!

I like how it is an emu and not a kangaroo as everyone would expect.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of months or so, you should know that the first ever roller derby world cup is on in Toronto! It started early this morning Australian time, and it will be going for the next three days. You can watch the bouts live from DNN here: Click here for awesomeness

I'm mega excited about this. Having an international tournament for roller derby raises the profile of the sport, and makes it clear that it is something that's not just played by a handful of 400-pound lesbians (which is actually how someone tried to describe it to me once, really), or that it's all like in "Whip It" when people go about punching each other or something like that, and it gives the sport a greater degree of legitimacy and visibility. Derby girls are actually athletes, and this is a pretty good opportunity to show the world what they can do. Plus, on a more obvious and less philosophical note, it's like all these amazing skaters all descending in one of my favorite cities in the whole world. Fuck yeah. My brain is exploding from all the awesomeness. Or maybe it's because I'm mega-hungry right now.

There are a crap load of countries actually taking part in it, so besides the obvious USA (of which there are two?), Canadian, and Australian teams, there are also teams from Finland, Argentina, Scotland, France, Brazil and Sweden, among others. I probably would have liked to have seen representation from parts of Asia, like Japan and Korea (because I KNOW they have teams there, unlike China or Honkers which don't have any derby to speak of) but hey, this is the first ever international derby tournament so if this is what it is going to be like in its early days, imagine how awesome it would be in years to come.

Here's a video of Team Australia's first bout of the tourney against Team Germany:


Shortstop is frigging awesome, around the 2min mark. I also like when the person taking the video is all like "scheisse!!" randomly. Ha. Australia also won 136-53.

Team Australia v Team Finland is on in like 35 minutes!!! USA v New Zealand in 15!! I don't think I will be doing much work this weekend. Also, now I know how my housemate felt when the Rugby World Cup was on for like a month (he's a Kiwi, go figure). :D