Bout vs Blackwater

It's been a busy week, derbywise. We had the bout on Saturday, then practice Sunday, bout review Monday, then Tuesday and Wednesday were practice. My bruises from the weekend are coming up nicely, and we're now looking forward to the upcoming bouts.

Anyway, Blackwater. So this was the place where I popped my bouting cherry, as it were. Well, properly bouting anyway. I'll try to recount some of the things from the bout.

I remember there was a lot of stuff that had to happen before the bout actually took place. I mean, not just getting there and warmups and stuff, but then there are introductions (at which I failed very clearly), captains meetings, the singing of the national anthem, random announcements, the bout demo/slo-mo jam, and THEN the bout could start. It was weird because I was so ready to bout when I put my skates on at the beginning, then all these things had to happen before we could start and it was anticlimatic and clearly I was jittery since I did a bunch of stupid things like almost crashing into people in the high five area and getting a bloody mouth in warmups.

Once the bout was underway though, I think I stopped being that stupid. I don't even remember much about the first half. We had two lineups and we just alternated those, and rotated our jammers. I didn't think I was being super effective in the first half; a lot of it was just getting used to being on the track and working with the lineup. I did feel like I was giving up my point a bit easily at some parts because I was kind of floating and there were so many things I could do at any given moment that I couldn't decide if I should do offense or defense or what the hell.

I think this was in the second jam or something.

I think our jammers were working really well and we racked up a lot of points. We also did a fair bit of power jamming, and the strategies we had been working on (passive offence stuff) worked pretty well. I think our walls could have been stronger because Blackwater were really good at getting in between us and breaking up our walls and we weren't reforming very quickly. We also had problems with being aware of the opposing jammer; a few times she snuck through before anyone had even turned around to see. (Of course, the bench is all there screaming JAMMER!! but it doesn't necessarily mean that the pack is going to notice.)

I think it was at half time when we went back to our team area and noticed that I wasn't getting the numbers on my arms redrawn on that I figured I needed to hit people more. I felt like I was good at positional blocking, but knocking down some skaters would help the jammer score some easy points. Plus, it's fun to hit a bitch. I actually wanted to see if I could take out the biggest skater on the opposing team. Of course the likelihood of that was minimal, but it gave me something to work towards.

I think I felt much better about blocking in the second half. We did a lot of backwards bridging, so you hit the jammer out, the scoot back so she has to reenter behind you, while the rest of your team is bridging so you can still take her out:

Imagine I'm the pink blocker who hits out the yellow jammer.

 

Then the other blockers peel off and bridge so I can still engage the jammer.
In practice it works better when I skate up to the next pink blocker so it becomes a 2-on-1.

OMG I AM HITTING SOMEONE. LOL.
(Actually, this was the hit that knocked the jammer out and we did
an awesome backwards bridge and forced her to cut, hooray.)

I hit the jammer a few times and she fell down, and then I ran backwards on my toe stops a bunch to make her reenter behind me. I really like toe stop work. Anyway, yeah so the backwards bridging I think worked quite well. Making sure you bring at least one other blocker with you also helps, so you end up with the jammer having to get past two blockers (which is harder than one).

Most times for hitting other blockers, throwing myself at them wasn't so great, so other times I think leaning people out worked better, but as they got tired, hitting became more effective. So I guess I'm also a late bloomer in that sense; I found my fire halfway through the bout. (I guess that works though, since people who had their fire early on were tiring out, so the amount of fire-ness overall in the team stays consistent?)

During one of our power jams. Ape and I were both rookies
and we were the only two blockers on the track. We managed
to send of two Blackwater blockers for destroying the pack, whee.

I also think we need to do more work in terms of actually doing something when the jammer isn't around. I felt like we would be like "oh here's the opposing jammer, let's hit her. Oh now she's gone, let's stand around until she comes back", which is actually probably quite boring to watch. Plus I'm sure fucking with the other team's walls and whatnot throughout would throw them off a bit.

Oh, and about halfway through the second half I got to jam. Before the whistle blew for my first time as jammer, there was a time out. The anticipation was horrible. I felt like I needed to pee and throw up and crap my pants all at the same time. But once the jam was underway, it was okay. I somehow got lead and then on my scoring lap I managed to make it through and call it before the opposing jammer got through. I need to pick up my feet more. Also, I did fall a bunch. That's something I need to work on: not falling when someone smacks into me. It's just so much easier to fall, but I got sucked back into the pack a few times as a result. I guess the way you get better at that is just to get pummelled a whole bunch and try to stay on your feet? I'm not sure what other drills there would be for this...

The final score was 206-347 to NRV. I learned a whole bunch, and going to the after party was also awesome! Now we get to do it all again in a month, wheeeeee.