Hitting/timing drill with pace line

We've been working more on timing our hits, and I like this one a lot because it sounds easy but it's actually pretty hard to do well.

So you start with a pace line, going at a moderate pace in the middle of the track:

Yes, my paint skills are so good.

The last two people peel off the pace line and skate to the front. One goes on the inside of the pace line, one goes on the outside. The skater the inside is the "blocker" and the skater on the outside is the "jammer".

When they reach the front of the pace line, the blocker is to hit the jammer out.

This is much harder than it sounds; the jammer is flooring it (usually) and even though they're on the inside, the blocker has to actually skate pretty quick to catch up, but not too quickly that they overshoot the front of the pace line and leave a big hole behind them for the jammer to go through, or getting too much speed so the blocker goes out with the jammer.

Then when they're done, they form the front of the pace line and the next two go.

Variation: once you've done the basic version, you can also do a more advanced version where the blocker can hit the jammer out in between other skaters in the pace line. Timing is crucial here, since otherwise the blocker will hit other skaters, or fuck up the pace line.

 

(And that's embarassing because it screws up the drill so you don't want to do that.)

I have taught them well.

I have a lot of derby posters on my door so it's
not hard to guess that I'm into derby if you're
a student who shows up for office hours.

Right now I'm not doing a lot of big posts because I'm busy with the end of the semester in my non-derby life, which involves (among other things) a lot of grading.

I usually don't tell students upfront that I do derby because 1) I did this last semester and then one of them tweeted it to the internet from class and 2) being in a college town, it's already hard enough to have a life away from academia and students, so I try to keep those things separate.

But of course, the derby monster is a big monster, and occasionally he creeps into my academic work. I advertise our bouts on my office door. I also wear my derby helmet when I ride my bike to work. I also had a diagram of a track on my whiteboard in my office once because I was explaining what derby was to some students who came by to ask. Yep.

Anyway, this semester, I taught a graduate seminar where one of the main topics we talked about collective responsibility and whether group was anything over and above the individuals that constitution it and that sort of stuff. It was a good class; the grad kids all know I do derby, since they have offices down the hall from my office anyway and can see when new flyers go up.

So I found this today in a paper I was grading:

Consider, for analogy, a roller derby team.  When they lose or win, they do so as a team, and this means more than each of the members winning individually (the coherence of which is doubtful).  Although the individual performances strongly affect the outcome, there are properties that the team has as a group that affects the responsibility for their performance.  For instance, if a team lacks a particular position, say a really scrappy jammer, they would be far worse off than a team composed of individually equally-skilled players that includes a jammer.  Yet, there is no straightforward way in which the responsibility for not being a jammer is "shared" by the members of the team. 

To be clear, I hvae no idea what a "scrappy jammer" is, but considering this student didn't know anything about derby at the beginning of the semester, I'd say he's done pretty well. :D

Rollerbones bearing tool

So shiny.

I decided to get a proper bearing tool for changing my bearings. Until now what I'd done is use the allen key that was on my T-tool to prise out bearings and then I would use the blunt end of the T-tool to shove them back in. So yeah, that's not a smart idea because it can mess with your bearing covers and the bearings themselves.

So here's the rollerbones bearing tool. It's this little handheld thing that you can carry around in your gear bag without looking like you are lugging a bearing press. It has a little button on the top which retracts the two little buttony things along the bearing tool post.

When you want to put bearings in, you simply put a bearing on the end of the tool (with the button down) and then use the tool to push your bearing into the wheel. The button thingy is pretty strong so it's not like the bearing or wheel will just fall off.

If you want to take bearings out, you just put the tool in, push down the button and with the button down, pull the bearing out, and it should just pop out. Pretty straightforward, no? This thing is so easy to use that it doesn't even come with instructions.

I really like this bearing tool. I have more wheels than bearings and I often just switch out my bearings out, and this is much easier and less annoying to do that with my jankety old T-tool. Plus, at $15, it's also way cheaper and easier to carry around than a bearing press.