This weekend has been packed full of roller derby goodness!
Friday
Carly and Buckingham invited Skateful Dead round to theirs for a bit of a social. It wasn’t a big turnout but it was good fun. We watched the video of the open co-ed scrimmage that we’d hosted mid February. This was accompanied by chilli, nachos, pancakes and cake. Then we watched Whip It! and then a mix of clips on YouTube. Lots of reverend banter and quite a late night.
Saturday
I headed over to The Edge sports centre in Leeds to photograph the Hot Wheel double header.
The first was their B team playing Spa Town. The teams were evenly matched, the lead changing throughout the bout. At half time Hot Wheel B lead 104 to Spa Town 100. The second period was neck and neck right through to the end. The bout finished 210 Spa Town against 190 Hot Wheel B.
The second bout was Hot Wheel A team versus Rainy City Roller Girls. I feel that the warm up drills that a team performs give a good indication of the bout to follow. Rainy City split the team with vests and practised some very sharp walls. Hot Wheel too did some great blocking. This was going to be close. Talking to others there was a feeling that perhaps Rainy City were going to win comfortably. I’d never seen them play, so I had Hot Wheel for the win.
In the first period Hot Wheel took an early lead. Mia, skating for Hot Wheel was proving to be a really effective jammer. Towards the end of the period Ducky took a blow to the face. A nose bleed caused the jam to be called off, though after attention from the medical team she was back on track. At half time Hot Wheel led 102 to 56. I had opportunity to chat with Mia briefly. She said that she had been nervous about jamming before the bout. In the second period she did more of the same, despite also taking a blow to the face.
Rainy City pulled back and the bout ended in their favour, 191 to 152. Oddly there were only best [player type] certificates given out for one of the teams in the first bout. Hot Wheel though did have goodie bags for all of the players.
Sunday
It was with some trepidation that I went to practice. I’ve been staying off skates for fear of worsening my injury. Readers may recall that in December I declared that I would retire from bouting. Since then many seemingly insignificant conversations have happened. I’ve seen a musculo-skeletal specialist and now better understand the injury (herniated disc) and it’s likely recovery time (18 months). I’ve spoken to other skaters who have suffered the same injury and are now back on track. I found out that a skater that I consider to be pretty damn awesome only recently changed up from the same (very ordinary) skates that I use. More than any of these I’ve continued to be involved in the sport/community and find that I love it.
So I need to find a balance between injury and enjoyment. I plan to take it really easy at practice, so that my skate skills can improve. I also want to investigate refereeing, thus improving my knowledge of the game. Finally I’ll be working on physical fitness – strengthening my back and upper body to hopefully help prevent such an injury in future. Then, in perhaps twelve months time, I’ll be in a place where I can bout again. But the important thing for me is that there is no pressure to bout until I’m comfortable with it.
I found practice so much fun. My existing skate skills hadn’t upped and left me, we had a new bod skating and the team looked after me and didn’t hit me (too hard)!
Still buzzing from an excellent weekend :-)