The Other Side

I don't remember very much about what happened today. And not because I'm concussed or anything. Yes--I'm relatively injury free! Whoo!! Anyway, let's start at the beginning. We started with a team breakfast, where I thought at first I would be too nervous to eat, but then my inner fat kid got the better of me and I ate two poached eggs with fancy weird shaped toast, three hashbrowns and Tori's spinach from her eggs florentine (haha, why the hell would you get eggs florentine if you weren't going to eat the spinach?). Then we headed over to CRDL's HQ on the other side of town.

As I am clearly the goddamn Jesus of Team Munt, I had welts on my feet going into the Cannery. Last night, in a fit of mega-organization, I packed my derby bag, as well as a bag with extra clothes and a blanket (it was supposed to be mega cold today) and still had time to spare so I decided to preemptively tape up my ankles and my knee before tomorrow. I wanted to tape them a bit tightly and then have the tape loosen up overnight to accomodate for movement and stuff. Clever, huh? Well, then in the middle of the night I woke up because my feet had swollen up around the tape and I couldn't get it off and when I did I left big red welts on the sides of my feet (like on the outside of your foot where the bottom of your foot creeps around the side) and then today I had to tape over those. Ugh.

I'm glad I wore my PJ pants. They were warm and looked good.

Anyway, that aside, we got to the Cannery in the morning and filled out our paperwork and whatnot, and had a while to warm up and whatnot. It was pretty chilly in the morning (it dropped down to 0 overnight) so we were all pretty rugged up. I had brought my pyjama pants because I also don't own full-length sweatpants and the only full-length leg things I own are jeans, which I actually wore to breakfast because I thought it'd be weird to turn up at breakfast in pyjamas. But it was cold enough that I could wear my pj pants OVER my jeans, which in turn were worn over my skate pants (which were knee length but then I also wore my gaskets to make them 3/4 length, haha), and those were over my crash pads. By that stage I couldn't actually really move my legs to walk, but I was warm, so meh.

Gear check before Game 1. (photo from Slanders)

And then we started! Well, we did warmups, then a couple of pack drills, and then we were gear checking and sitting on benches and having our lineup done on a whiteboard. I wasn't in the first jam, but I was up as a blocker in Jam 2. When the first jam was going I was on the "next lineup" bench, I remember sitting on the bench next to Roller, and she was like "are you alright?" and I was just like "OH GOD WHAT AM I DOING HERE" kind of thing. Best timing to have an existential crisis or whatever. But yeah, once we were called on, then everything went. Kind of because it had to go, but meh. Either way, it was okay.

I think we had a pretty shaky start. We were nervous and it showed. I guess it didn't help that Slanders got me to jam, and I couldn't get through the fucking pack. I really wanted to jam, and I was excited that he gave me to the opportunity to try for my debut. But wow, that stuff is hard. Actually, this is arguably the most terrifying moment of the entire day:

OH GOD I AM ABOUT TO JAM AND POSSIBLY DIE

I was jamming against Pink Mist, who is on the CRDL VCRs. I think I got off the jammer line faster than her and then just got plowed into by their pack. I fell down a lot there. I don't know how many points they racked up that jam, but I think it was over 20. I really want to be able to jam, but I need to work on getting through the pack. I found prancing around on my toe stops worked, but I can't do that for the entire 2 minutes. At least I got props for being the "energizer bunny" and constantly popping back up after I took a hit. But yeah, that was a hard two minutes! I was pretty bummed I couldn't even score a single point. Gah. :(

I can't remember what was happening when I took this photo.

About halfway through, we picked up our game a little. We communicated more. People listened to their pivots and to the coach more. People worked together better, there was more touching and talking it up on the track. I also got to pivot, but I don't think I was loud enough and then I didn't pivot again after that. :P I think our final score was 130-something (to the Belters) and like 40-something to us, but I could be wrong. I wasn't really keeping track.

Then we had a bit of a break and got to watch the Red Bellied Black Hearts take on Sydney RDL, which was pretty awesome. It was a close game, and I saw some neat things to try out. One thing the teams would do is knock the jammer out of play with their power blocker, and then have another blocker drop back so that the jammer have to get past a wall of two people, one of whom could keep knocking them down while the other one pos blocked them.

After that was a potluck game, with a mix of players from various leagues. Rav and Smack also played with them, but that was right before lunch and I was hungry and got hot dogs instead.

Yay, so we had a bit of a team meeting at lunch, and talked about what worked and what didn't. Then Uzi and Slanders tried a new strategy and split us into two groups and did lineups within those groups. (Of course, if the previous lineup's jammer/blockers were in the bin and got released in your jam, then you still got to play with them.) So we did that in our second game, which was against the Black Hearts.

Unidentified butt

I found the RBBH game more fun than the Belters one. We were friends with some of the skaters, and I think the Rollers as a team were much more cohesive and worked together better. Melee pivoted a lot on my lineup and would literally throw me into the path of the jammer and I would take them out. Ha ha ha. I think my designated role in the team is the Human Cannonball: I did a lot of getting pushed into blocking people, and once I was in position I could pos block them okay until someone hit them. I also managed to do a few hits of my own and also knock a few people out of bounds, which was much more than what I had planned to do. But yeah, you hit the jammer out of bounds, and then back the fuck up, so they have to enter the pack behind you. I tried this a few times but I need to go back much faster. Rav did an awesome one when she made Bebe (on the RBBH) go through the ENTIRE pack. Hahaha. But yeah, I felt much, much better when everything was done. Our final score for this one was 71-38. This is the BEST differential we've ever had as the Rollers, and we were so psyched about it. Our plays were working, and we were actually working as a team, rather than a bunch of individuals with coordinated action. (Um, if that last sentence was just like a WTF, it's probably because I've been spending too much time working on my dissertation and talking about different kinds of collective action. Basically, the idea is, "yay, stuff was working"!)


No injuries either, hooray. But at one point in the first game Jillie hit Dirty Torque, and then she backblocked into me, and I fell and she fell on me and then Jillie went flying over both of us. Also, after the first game when you do your "high five line" thing past the other skaters, Wrecks gave me a big hug and lifted me up. But she was on skates and so was I, so she fell backwards on her skates and I crashed on top of her and we both went sprawling on the track. Ha ha ha. I'm surprised I didn't get hurt. But that's a good thing. I have bruises on my back but that's minor and wasn't on my list, right? :P

It was a great day. I felt really awesome when we were done, and there were hugs and smiles all around. Then I went home and had a shower and nearly passed out in bed even though it was only like 4:30pm.

AND I FORGOT MY SKATES. YES. I LEFT THEM AT THE CANNERY BECAUSE I AM A MORON. Melee very kindly is looking after them for me until training tomorrow night but seriously, who the fuck does that!?! And they're Antiks!! And it was my first bout!! Seriously. Haha, so now I am no longer a bout virgin and I don't have my skates.

These are my peeps.

Also, I somehow managed to eat three hot dogs at lunchtime and then skate without throwing up. Yay me.

Hardly! I got 1 minor in each game. Heh.