A report from The Skateful Dead practice of 22 December, which I thought I’d published, but it’s been sat in draft since then. Oops!
We tried a new drill for the first time. Skating at a fair speed around the track the lead two would derby stop to inside and outside and then recycle as fast as possible to the back of the line. Then we did 27 in 5 which was good; I kept low and went fast :-)
Then we moved on to hitting practice, so I stopped – yeah, sciatic still not right. It looked like fun though. We borrowed some pads from Whitcliffe so people didn’t get completely battered. After some variation of left/right hitting we all lined up and everyone had a go had hitting Tony. It was his last practice session today as he’s moving on to play for Manchester Roller Derby. Thank you Tony for all the effort that you’ve put into Skateful Dead :-)
Then it was scrim time. As I wasn’t playing I got to “bench” for team black. It was five-a-side, so no rest between jams. It’s occasionally good to watch from the bench as you get a different perspective. The focus moves on what you’re doing/meant to be doing to seeing how the teams perform as a group. There was some really good play from both teams. Our walls can be really effective when they work; there was one jam where our wall held Ash for quite some time. I noticed Matt jamming and nicely slicing through our wall on one occasion. Tony O also did a monster hit on Ash and knocked him over.
We also had Carly and Rollverine from the Banditas skating with us today. It’s great when we have Banditas join us as they are so good.