Level 0+

As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I was not one of the five freshies who passed their level one assessments. I'm not angry, or sad, or disappointed. I am determined.

I knew we were being assessed on Monday but I wasn't nervous. I don't get nervous about most things. I try to give practice my best every time. I can't do better than my best so I figured that if my best isn't good enough then I shouldn't be cleared for contact!

Perhaps it's the experience of being physically assessed in the military that helped me ignore the people standing around with clipboards looking at you and writing things down.

At about 8:15 or so, after all the drills for the evening (we did a cool Jammer drill) we went over to the freshie corral for our assessments. It really wasn't any different than any other evening in the corral. The only thing that was going through my head was wanting to get up off the ground as fast as possible. Since Day 1, getting up after after a fall or slide has been tough for me. It's getting better but I didn't think I'd be able to make it in the 3 seconds required.

We did single-knee slides, rock star slides, baseball slides, single-knee 180 slides, toe stops, plow stops, T-stops, skating on one foot, and... crossovers.

Crossovers.

Crossovers are apparently the bane of many a freshie. We spent ages skating around the mini track in the freshie corral. I think being FORCED to do crossovers helped me more than anything else has so far. I knew we were being watched specifically for crossovers so I pushed myself outside of my balance comfort zone and really tried to do them as slowly and naturally as I could.

While this is what I failed on, I can safely say that I felt the most comfortable with them that I have since I started. I'm always so afraid to really do them because I might wipe out. It's not the falling that makes me nervous, it's the getting up off the ground. There's nothing that embarrasses me more than not being able to haul my fat arse up off the ground in front of everyone.

Now that I know that the cosmos isn't going to collapse on itself if I do them while skating at a pretty good clip I'm going to try to do them more during practice - it's the only way they'll get better!

I was able to sit down with Bettie (our Freshie Mama) for a few minutes at the tail end of practice. She said that I did better than she expected, which was surprising to me. I sort of fell over on the 180 slide but I feel like I've got everything else down-ish.

I failed because of balance and crossovers; both of which can really only be remedied by spending more time on skates. If any readers have recommendations for things I can do to work on balance (besides strength exercises), please let me know!

To be perfectly honest, I don't FEEL like I'm ready to be hit yet. Personal weight/fitness battles aside, I feel like I just need to spend a bit more time getting the hang of things. If I keep progressing the way I have been, then I'm fairly confident that I'll be ready to rock and roll by the next assessment period.

In other news, my outfit for Heartbreaker's arrived today. It's going to be 10 kinds of awesome. For my non-derby friends, yes, there will be pictures :)

Back to the derby grind tomorrow... I need to do a better job of stretching before and after. I've been slacking lately and have ended up more sore and with more pain/cramping during practice itself. Naughty Helen.