I like to hipcheck children.

I'm on the SCRD Newbies Board! Haha. I am fucking famous.

SCRD training this week was similar to last week. We brought our friend Dan as well, who borrowed some of the SCRD gear and fell on his butt a few times. I hope he had fun though! There was also another Australian (Anne) there, which was kind of crazy because that's like 1/4 of the people at training were Australian, and Santa Rosa is not even a big city!

We did the same drills as last time, so the warmup was the 25 in 5 (which I finished in less than 5, hooray!!!) and then anti-derby 20 in 5. I need to work on my anti-derby crossovers I think, because I have a tendency to coast through the turn and maybe attempt like 2-3 steps. Blah.

Pyramids tonight were good. We went 1-5 this time, instead of 4. I think I totally qualified for team munted though. When I finish my turn, I usually plow stop, and there's a pretty big space for being able to do that. So that works well. But on one of my turns I think I was standing up too straight and didn't have enough push in my plow stops, so I ended up crashing into this bench:

The bench that I skated into, and possibly broke.

I tried to baseball slide to stop myself from smashing into it (on the assumption that if I did I could slide under the bench seat) but then I somehow managed to smash my shoulder into the bench, and then also move it like a foot until it was pressed up against that wall. The legs are iron or something, and it made a really big noise. Then I fell on the ground on my side and sprawled all over the dusty floor. The legs are now at a slightly weird angle, but later in training there was a guy sitting on it, so clearly it's still functional. Ha. I also am getting a big bruise on my shoulder from that crash. How's that for a souvenir? Pictures to come.

Oh we also did hipchecks! Offskates though, but nonetheless hipchecks. Due to height issues I was paired with one of the junior derby kids (hahahaha) and we practiced hipchecks on both sides. I got my first taste of derby fandom though when junior derby kid was like "are you a real derby player?" and I said "yes, I skate with a league in Australia" and she was all like "Oooooh" (and then she said "please don't hurt me", but anyway). So, hipchecks with a little kid. The trick is to get your foot in front of theirs (and over) and then check them, rather than check them when you're just next to them. You get more push that way. And then to defend that you lean into the check so the person who is checking you has to not just knock you so you are facing straight but then also sideways. Yeah. I managed to hipcheck said junior derby kid so hard that she fell over. Hahaha. She did hit me back pretty hard though, so yeah. I also taught her how to also dodge a hipcheck by leaning the other way. Haha. She was so cute. Then I gave her fist bumps.

UPDATE: Here are the bruises I got from crashing into the bench!

The square bruise on my arm is just the impact with the bench. It was only purple for like half a day, and then started turning yellow already, boo:

I have absolutely no idea where these ones came from, but it looks like I've been bashed in the shins. I thought at first it was a bad baseball slide where the wheels hit me in the shin but that can't be right because the bruises don't line up with my wheels: