White Star plus

Last week there was a CRDL bout and that was super awesome. I’ll write more about the bout later. What was less awesome was that after the bout Sarge pulled me and Boudie over and said that we (and Pitts, who wasn’t at the bout) were going to get reassessed for our white stars to see if we can qualify to test for yellows. Yellows are important, because that’s when you get to scrimmage and everything.

I need like 357328562378 of these.

Holy shitballs. I am really bad with assessments. In fact, I was REALLY bad with this one. I went home early so I could get a good night’s sleep beforehand and then Boudica and I were going to skate early before we got assessed. Haha. Yeah, and then I woke up at FRIGGIN THREE THIRTY IN THE MORNING and couldn’t get back to sleep. What the fuck. Anyway, we had a skate up in Baldie (our favourite multistorey parking lot) and worked on some things, like crossing and (hilariously for me) being sufficiently relaxed to drag my knuckles on the ground pretty much.

I fucked up T-stops like 6 times. I just kept spinning in a circle and that was fucking frustrating. Gah. But then the lovely Marie showed me how to do it! The reason I was spinning out was because on my back foot I was putting too much weight on my inside wheel. So all I had to do was put more weight on my outside wheels on the back of the T and OMG! Now I know how to T-stop!!!! :D:D:D I need to practice them more but I totally got the idea after she explained it to me. And that’s one thing that’s awesome about derby: people will explain how to do things in like 1000 different ways, and you’ll eventually find one that clicks with you. Yeah. :D

Still need to work more on crossovers, but I passed! WEWT! And Boudie did too!!

Our yellow star test is next Sunday. EEEEP!

White Star!!

Since we’d been skating for a bit now, last night Sarge surprised us all with roller disco for everyone, and white star testing for most people. WTF. I really do shit under assessment pressure. Prior to this, we had our own system of sorting “freshmen” and “sophomores” (we’re using a college theme for our league. Other leagues sometimes use pirates or military or whatever). Basically, there it was Sarge watching us skate and seeing how we were with stability, having proper derby stance, fitness, etc. I realy sucked at derby stance when I started. I was so frigging upright I probably should have been a figure skater (or, at least off-skates someone without joints in their legs). Haha. So when we got sorted into Freshies and Sophies I didn’t make the cut. And that was kind of gutting. But it turned out that my non-lesbian-equivalent-of-a-derby-wife (or rather, more like derby BFF) Boudica didn’t make the cut either, and we had the same kinds of things to work on, so yeah. We have a pretty long-runinng joke now where we are “Team Nanna” because when we started we used to skate around and hip check like geriatrics.

So, instead of doing the Freshie/Sophies thing, we switched over to the star rating, which is what people use normally in Australia. So CRDL uses it, I think the Sydney leagues do, Victoria RDL does, etc. For the uninitiated, the star ranking gives you a different color star depending on how derby-ready you are. Without stars you’re fresh meat, a white star means you’re getting basic derby skills, a yellow one means you can do some kind of scrimmaging or something, orange means you can be drafted onto a league and scrimmage with big girls, and green is like you’re some kind of skating superstar and you can get onto the all-star team or something like that. I’m not sure what the actual designations are, but it’s something like that. Another CRDL friend (Lee Wrecks) recently got her orange, and the main thing for her there was that she could get drafted, and I think you actually do full-contact scrimmage there.

Interestingly, these are the things I suck most at on my assessment.

And I had a pretty rough idea of what goes into white star testing. CRDL’s November tryouts had a list of minimum skills you needed, like stops and falls and how many pushups and situps you could do and stuff, and I think that was based on the star test. So I wasn’t super worried, although I DO like to do well on tests. :P

Anyway, Rubi was my tester, and I had to do T-stops on both feet (FUCK I HATE T-STOPS), a plow stop, 20 situps (it’s supposed to be 10 situps and 10 pushups but I have a crap shoulder so I got to do 20 situps, only I ended up doing 23 because I can’t count), a lap of sticky skating, weaving through cones, crossovers, a thing where you had to do walk forwards, backwards and sideways on skates without falling over, 1 and 2-knee falls (others had to do 4-point, but again, shoulder), and glides. Like, when you skate on one foot in the straight bit of the track.

I think I did okay, except I fucked up one of my t-stops (I started going in a circle instead of stopping, but then I eventually stopped) and apparently I need to swing my arms more(?) when I skate. And crossovers need to be more “fluid”. But I passed!! Woooooot! And what’s more was I was in the first group of 3 to get tested, so that was pretty much a big relief. Then the rest of the time was just social skating until everyone else was done testing.