Also feel free to link to your own blog in the comments and I will add you to the list because I think it is really great to read about other people's derby experiences. Also, you will see that I follow the Hellions of Troy Blog. I suppose I should actually mention that that is the team I have joined. I am actually including a photo in this post (for the first time!)
Last Monday, The Hellions of Troy had a scrimmage with the CNY team (Central NY I think). During the scrimmage us fresh-meat gals got to observe various NSO positions. I spent the first half in the penalty box, watching the game and learning about timing penalties. I learned that both jammers can't be in the penalty box at the same time. Never knew that before.
For the second half I was an outside penalty catcher. This means I stood with a white board on the outside corner of the track, and if a ref needed to relay a penalty to the inside penalty catchers, he would tell me, I would write down the number of the player under their team initials, and write the code for the penalty and flash show it to the inside penalty catchers.
At the end of the scrimmage, I wrote down the score on the white board (The Hellions won!) My fellow Hellion, Short Temper, who blogs for the team, mentioned that my blog needs pictures (I agree). So she took a photo and sent it to me.
Without further ado, here is the first picture for this blog.
I promise that the next picture will be more derbyish. At this point I wasn't wearing any of my gear since we only skated warm-ups and the 25 in 5 before the scrimmage began.
Thursday's practice involved more actual skating. I opted not to NSO the regular scrimmage of the veteran skaters since I feel like I really need to practice as much as I can. I was able to lift my left leg for brief periods throughout practice, but I am definitely much stronger lifting my right leg. I think I need to attend an open skate session in between practices to really focus on getting my left leg up and getting my crossovers going.
I fell quite a lot on Thursday, and not just when we were practicing falls. During the 25 in 5, which is happening near the end of practice a lot more often, I fell, but I still managed to get 15.5 laps which considering the fall is pretty near my best of 16.75.
Overall, being on skates, being in derby position is getting a lot easier, and I amaze myself at how far I've come. But I still get frustrated sometimes with how far I have to go still. I really don't want to fill this blog with a bunch of "I can'ts" so I will make a list of the things I can do, that 2 months ago I had never tried.
I can skate around the track several times without falling (most days) :)
I can do swizzles
I can do a plow stop
I can do two-footed weaves between cones (slowly)
I can give and receive hip whips and arm whips (needs some improvement)
I can skate slowly shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip with a partner
I can fall on single knee, double knee, all fours and the baseball slide
I can get up from falls without using my hands
That's a longer list than I thought it would be. I plan to keep adding to it!
I think a list of things you have conquered is great. It's so much easier to sometimes get lost in the things I can't do yet!
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