Return to SCRD

I skated with SCRD as a visiting skater last year, and they are an amazing bunch of ladies. I wrote a lot about them in earlier entries here.

Right now, I'm back on the West Coast visiting Ze Boyfriend. Last week, I went back there since (relatively speaking) I'm in the area. I like what they've done with the place. They took out the middle wall so now there's more room for the track, as well as a few little ramps on the side. Also, as a side note, they DID end up doing the OCD floor tile thing with the sport court that I got shit for last time. HA!

Junior derby in action. They are so tiny!

 They also have a whole new batch of recruits, which is great. I met this super cute couple whose derby names are (get this) Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust. Now that's like a whole new metalevel of derby naming when you coordinate your name with someone else. I also was reunited with a lot of the old guard, which was also lovely. There were a lot of hugs. Yay.

Anyway, we started with some crossover technique practice. Now there's some sense in which I can do crossovers, but there's another sense in which I don't, because I don't push with my inside leg. Psycho calls it a "squirrelly thing I do with my legs" when I cross. So we did a bit of just grapevining across the room, focusing first on getting a big step over with your front leg, and then on the "flick" thing you do with your back foot, and then getting as low as possible while doing it, and the putting it all together.

We did some other drills, which I'll write up separately. And there was scrimmage! The teams are basically the A and B teams split evenly (so they sort all the A team players first, and then the B teams). I normally just get put with the B team, and that's fine by me. And D said that EVERYONE had to jam, so that was good. I managed to avoid a few hard hits but when I got knocked off the track, I tried tomahawking on their floor at speed to turn back and I fell on my ass because the floor was so much slicker than what I'm used to. It was like I put my toe stops down and my feet just went from under me.

But one thing I really like about SCRD (which I've not seen done at other leagues) is that everyone warms up together, and then everyone sits in a circle to stretch at the beginning of the session. This is a good time for introductions or to go through announcements (from committee chais) and whatever. I really like how they do that. Plus they also spend a few minutes doing that at the end of each session, as a cooldown and also to remind people of upcoming events (e.g. they have a bout coming up, so everyone please sell your bout tickets, or be here on a particular day to pack up the floor to take to the venue, or whatever).

So we did that, and then D made everyone go around and introduce themselves again (since some people came late to the session) and then also promise something they were going to do, and people said things like they would wash their pads or drink more water or whatever. I didn't know what to say so then I said while I was visiting, I would bring cake at some point. Ha.

So that was last week.

And then yesterday, CAKE! Yes, I am a lady of my word.

Lemon raspberry mini cupcakes. NOM!

Actually Tila also brought cupcakes because (unbeknownst to me) it was Karen's birthday. But that meant there was multiple cake, so hooray!