News from VDLHQ

So back at VDL there was a bout yesterday. This was their second bout ever, and with almost full benches! I'm so proud of my ladies there. Apparently it was also a super close game, which makes it all the more awesome.

Eventually the Cheerbleeders won 213 - 191 over the PhDemons, but at half time the Demons were in the lead. I'm not sure if they do MVPs or whatnot, but hey, from the pictures it looked like there was some ass kickery going on (and no reported muntings, hooray). It's weird because of the people that skated in the bout yesterday, less than half of them were in my cohort and there are fewer people that I know there. It's a bit sad, but hey I'm over here having a proud, so whatevs.

Some pictures from the bout are here.

Milestones.

Today is a big day for my league. It is our FIRST EVER friends and family bout, or really, bout to the public in any sense ever, between the PhDemons and the Cheerbleeders. I'm a little bit bummed to be missing it because I'm on the other side of the world, but this is a big step for a LOT of people in my league and I'm also quite excited on their behalf.

Varsity Bruise is the culmination of about a year of training and hard work, organization and preparation. A year ago none of us had any idea how to bout. Some of us didn't know how to skate. Over half of the people in the league weren't even in the league. And now here we are, kicking ass in front of our loved ones.

I'm really proud of them.<3

VDL's first block to the head

I also had a job interview in December, and because it was a US school the time difference meant that I was skyping with them at 1am. Interview prep is kind of stressful, but to relax I decided to take a break from it and go to training the night of the interview, which also happened to be my last night of training for the year. Of course, I decided to scrimmage (since it was also my first scrimmage back from injury). It felt really good to scrim again.

Sarge split teams for scrimmaging so that the PhDemons and Cheerbleeders could practice for their bout in February. I mostly pivoted and blocked since I'm not going to be at the bout and it'd be kind of unfair to take up time jamming when others could practice that. Anyway, at one point in the scrim I think Malice hit Junky (who was skating for the PhDemons) and she elbowed me IN THE EYE. She got sent off for the first ever block to the head at VDL, and I copped a black eye and a cut (maybe from the velcro on her elbow pad, or maybe from the force of the elbow splitting the skin or something?), and people brought me ice and were really nice about it but still, there it was, right in time for a job interview.

Oh yeah, and the interview was on a HD Webcam so they could see everything.

This is how it looked the day after, when I had iced it a whole bunch and tried to put concealer over it:
 

I like how it kind of looks like a smiley face.

Also, in that scrim we won and got the first-ever score over 100 points. Yay us.

Also, I didn't end up getting the job. Boo.

The prodigal daughter, part two

So, two things happened last night at training:

1) It rained a lot and the roof leaked onto the track.
2) I got back on skates after a month of injury and got my orange star.

I was injury-paranoid so I taped up BOTH of my ankles.
I would have also taped my knee as well except I ran out of tape.

Yep. Getting back on skates was so awesome. I was kind of stupidly nervous though, like my legs wouldn't know what to do or anything like that. So I was really conscious of being down in derby stance, pushing hard on crossovers, and that sort of thing. But it all came back pretty easily, and after a few laps I was back (except for when I nearly crashed into the bin that was on the track to catch the rain). I have to stretch my ankle a lot more though, because it's still pretty weak, and I was feeling it after a while. Rav took people through training, and Sarge and Legz took me through the remainder of my orange star test. Gah! WTF! So apparently what I had left was booty blocking, whips/pushes, and jumping over cones.

What? Jumps? Hahaha. I was so nervous about that. I'm usually okay with jumps, but I was worried that the force of it would be too much on my munty feet. But anyway, there were a bunch of cones set up and I NAILED IT IN ONE. Part of it was probably because I didn't want to do have to do it multiple times, but I also happened to jump over like seven or eight cones instead of the standard five, because Legz had put two cone-tracks next to each other (one was for people to do the one-leg slalom thing for yellow star). Haha. I'm dumb.

But yeah, then it was booty blocking, whips and pushes. Jillie was partnered up with me for this, and she's kind of mega awesome at skating so I was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to booty block her, or whip her (haha, last time I whipped anyone I ended up on my ass with a concussion). But she was a really good partner and gave me pointers for what to do (we had to skate around other people doing drills). So yeah, that was all good. Then Sarge and Legz tallied up the marks and I passed and got my star! Whoo!! (It was also the last session they were starring people for the year, so I totally squeaked in--no pun intended--to getting my orange.)

But when you have an orange star, you can be drafted onto a team. We got our first two teams announced as well: since we have a varisty themed league, our teams were the Ph.Demons, and the Cheerbleeders! And I'm a Cheerbleeder. Whoo! Sarge picked the names of all the oranges out of a hat and split them randomly, making adjustments for evening up the size, skill, experience etc. of the players. Boudica got drafted onto the Ph.Demons; Sarge split up me and my derby wife! Noes!!! But on the upside, this means I get to beat up my wife in the future, heh.

Oh, fine, so maybe three things happened last night:
3) I got drafted onto the inaugural VDL intraleague team.

I didn't scrimmage last night, but while I was NSO-ing (as the WORST NSO ever since I was wasn't even non-skating :P) I practiced doing some tomohawks and shooting the duck. Ha. Tomorrow is my last training session with VDL until March, and that sucks a bit. Sad face. I really want to scrimmage and 1) live up to my "Most likely to be ejected" shirt and 2) get more use out of my scrimmage tank and 3) try NOT to hipcheck everyone in the knee.

Yep. It was a good night to be back on skates.

That's right, I'm a goddamn champion!