A Tolstoy Novel

First, since there is certainly no excuse for not writing for 8 days, allow me to at least offer an explanation. Anyone who has participated in a roller derby bout as either a skater or a volunteer can attest to the amount of work that goes into preparations and the running of the actual day.

After the bout last Saturday I was pretty darn derby'ed out. No bones about it. The week following said bout was a derby filled week of practices, meetings, and post-bout cleanup. Already being derby'ed out, after more derby I didn't particularly feel like coming home and writing about derby. Anyhoo... I get the feeling that I am about to test the character limits of Blogger posts. I'll try to break this down a bit.

The Bout.
We all showed up at Manchester's JFK Coliseum around 12:30 on Saturday for team and league photos. We discovered that it takes a pretty wide shot to get 70+ skaters in it. Huge thanks to sports photographer Rick Lopez for covering the bout!

Before I joined NHRD I never had the chance to see one of their bouts. By the time KrushHer's poster for the last bout of 2009 registered in my brain, the date had already passed. I had no idea what to expect beyond a scrimmage on crack. I was coordinating stats for the evening - I usually arrange all the stats for scrimmages during practice so it made sense to do it for the bout as well.

For those who don't personally know me, I am an organizational nut. You'd never know from looking at my messy desk but when I work on a project I need to know exactly what is happening when, who is responsible for it, and ensure that I've got all my paperwork ready. I woke myself up out of a dead sleep the night before the bout because I realized that I had forgotten to make extra copies of the rosters. It is good to remember, for future reference, that printing 12+ sheets of paper at 2am does NOT wake Mr. Carnate up.

As soon as we finished the league and team photos I set about getting everything arranged for the "Stats Sexies" as they have been dubbed in our league. Clipboards, pencils, stats sheets, rosters, instructions where to bring everything at half time. I think it all went pretty well. I did position tracking so I didn't really get to flat out watch the game - this will come into play again later this post.

The Cherry Bombs played first in a 30 minute bout against CMRD's Petticoat Punishers. The final score was 17-40 CMRD. While we lost, we did much better than was had versus the same team in a scrimmage a few weeks earlier. Victory comes in all shapes and sizes.

Skate Free or Die! played in the headline bout against The Ironbound Maidens of the Garden State Rollergirls. We play and beat their B-Team, the Brick City Bruisers, twice last year so the league decided to take their game up another notch and play GSR's A-Team this year. They were definitely the A-Team bringing a lot of heavy hitters to the track. Doing position tracking I could hear the coaches saying, "their putting all their strength in the back!" and I could definitely see that. I am in absolute awe of the jamming skills of the SFOD jammers - May, Bandit, Chicana, Rosie, and Bam Bam, but they were pretty much shut down by the walls GSR was putting up.

A lot of people think that jammers make the game which isn't 100% true. I've heard it said by people in derby that whoever controls the pack controls the jam. I think this is closer to the truth. We have amazing jammers but because GSR had such tight control of the pack they had a hard time getting through to score. I know that I am definitely not jammer material so I only hope that someday I can learn to block as well as our top blockers and learn to work together with my future team as well as GSR did to form those impenetrable walls.

We kicked it up a notch in the second period - Chicana was on fire and earned MVP for it - but it wasn't enough and the final score was 117-33 GSR. Again, everyone skated their butts off, and victory comes in many forms. We are going to be fully sanctioned in WFTDA soon and frequently playing teams that are much better than us. From a PR/Marketing perspective, we have to figure out how to spin the fact that we had an undefeated home season last year yet we'll likely be losing a higher percentage of bouts this year into a good thing (because it is).

All in all, the bout was an amazing experience. We had over 950 fans in attendance which is a league record. While the JFK holds 1,600 and we didn't fill to capacity, we sold out of physical tickets early on and had to start marking peoples' hands with marker to prove their entry. My Dad and his girlfriend came, along with Mr. Carnate and my BFF but they're not in a rush to come back until I'm skating in bouts myself (no pressure... more on this later). I'm looking forward to helping to promote the 5/22 bout and breaking the 1,000 fan mark!

The Day After.

After spending about 12 hours in derby land and as much as I love derby, by Sunday morning when I woke up I was ready to take a bit of a derby vacation. It turns out that you can still burn out on something that you adore. Unfortunately, there was work to be done and a good chunk of it HAD to be done on the Sunday.

I woke up and went out for breakfast with Mr. Carnate. He had a hard time figuring out what was going on during the bout so I tried to explain it to him a bit better at breakfast. He wasn't particularly interested. When we got home I started the process of scanning all of the stats sheets from the night before to send out to the captains. 

I was asked to write up a bout recap for out 2/20 bout against GMDD and was asked to write one again this time. DNN is very particular about the content and style of writing that they want for submitted recaps. They are a self-professed sports journalism size, though they recognize that nine times out of ten the content the receive is written by someone closely connected to a league. They want their recaps concise, fluff-free, and filled with stats.

While I had all the stats sheets in front of me it so much easier to look at them in summary after they've been entered into the WFTDA stats book, which is really a giant, multi-tab excel spreadsheet. I spent about five hours loading almost all the stats information into the sheets. It wasn't difficult, just time consuming. The people filling out the rest of the stats sheets did an awesome job which made everything straightforward to enter.

After I loaded as much data as I could tolerate I took a break for a bit. I had until midnight to get it to DNN to make their weekend wrap up and I still wanted that derby break. I ended up taking a three hour nap and by the time I woke up it was time for open skate. With assessments coming up I didn't want to miss any skating opportunities so I went. I shouldn't have.

Open skate wasn't bad, but by the time I got home  it was pushing 9:30 and I still had 400 words of recap to write. Allow me to tell you that it's difficult to write a recap of a losing bout for a league which you are a part of. DNN is very strict in what they will and won't print and even if you write stuff like, "Team A gave it their all" they usually cut it. They don't want spin, they want facts. I spun things in our favor as much as I felt I responsibly could from a sports journalism perspective and finished both recaps at 10:45.

I put a shout out for the league looking for someone to proof it before it went in but I didn't get a response until Sin D. emailed me at 12:15. I had submitted it about 20 minutes earlier to meet the DNN deadline without anyone else in roller derby (I had Mr. Carnate look it over) reading it. I wish I hadn't (more on this later).

Monday Practice.

This week was scheduled to be an agility week. We ended up doing a "25 in 5" practice in the opposite direction, which kills me no matter what skates I'm wearing. The other thing about that drill is that I ALWAYS lose count. I think I did 11 laps which means that, even in the correct direction, I have a long way to go. 

My problem is that my leg muscles get so fatigued so quickly. Even going in the correct direction, the top of my left quad near my hip, gets fatigued from frequent crossovers within just a few laps. I guess if it's getting tired that means I'm using it at least. I'm try to reach my right leg across more when I crossover but I feel like I get tangled up in the flab on my inner legs sometimes. I've seriously considered wrapping them in plastic wrap to see if it makes any difference at all. We did some relays which are always fun. I continue to adore my new skates.

Tuesday. Ugh.

I think Tuesday ended up being the low point in my week. My recap went up on DNN that afternoon and got some negative feedback (and, to be fair, some positive as well). I was contacted personally with some pointed feedback about how the recap made our league look to potential leagues who could play us. It was never my intention to make our league look bad - I wasn't upset, I was outright embarrassed because, as I wrote two posts ago, I love NHRD.

In a misguided effort to do the right thing - I'm big on personal responsibility, if I make a mess, I should clean it up - I wrote to DNN and asked them to remove the recap, and to head off any other people who were potentially upset by the choice of words, posted a quick note to the league apologizing and letting them know that I requested that it be removed. I didn't want our league, or the leagues we played, to think I was dissing them.

It turns out that that was an even worse thing to do. My day, from about 1pm on, ended up being a continual downward spiral as the fallout from my unreviewed caption snowballed. We had a PR meeting that night and I knew that the issue would be brought up again. I headed right over to Jillian's after work so I could pre-game it for a little bit. I needed some adult refreshment after the day I'd had. The PR meeting continued the fun and it was productive, yet contentious at the end. 

My day ended with a drive home from Manchester in tears, wondering how much more positively I could have written a sports journalism piece on an ~80 point loss and still had DNN accept it. As it was, they edited out the key piece of information about this being the first time we played GSR's A-Team. PMS + work + recap brouhaha = no good very bad day. I contemplated writing to Trina and telling her that I wouldn't be at practice Thursday. I didn't know how I would react if people came up to me and brought up the recap again and I didn't want to embarrass the league any further.

Wednesday.

Continuing to feel like poop the next morning, I had a note in my inbox from Justice Feelgood Marshall, the managing editor of DNN. He said he'd written articles before that were poorly received by his league so he understood the situation and said that he would remove the recap, although he didn't like to from a journalistic perspective. He reiterated what it was that they were looking for in pieces and said that they were looking forward to my next submission. This made me feel a little bit better.

Later that night, I saw I had a missed call from our PR Director. I was kind of dreading calling her back because I figured that the recap wound would be reopened. Instead I had a really nice 90 minute conversation with her which helped me to better understand the history of PR in the league, and what the proper protocol, if you will, should have been in this situation. I still felt embarrassed about the whole thing but I was no longer afraid to go to practice on Thursday.

Thursday... assessments nearing.

Practice on Thursday was back at the JFK. Fortunately, none of my fears about being accosted over the recap came true although it ended up being a rough night for other reasons. We did the 25 in 5 drill again, this time in the correct direction. As always, I lost count sometime after 12. I was really trying to do crossovers on every single turn. I was doing them but this made my left leg crap out on me pretty quickly.

Bettie skated up next to me as I was rounding a corner doubled over. I swore at myself and said to her, "I'm not going to pass again, am I?" She shook her head - which, clearly, I knew - and said, "They're still not natural. We need to make sure that you don't need to think about them when you're getting hit" or something to that effect. While I know that not passing assessments isn't a mark against me personally, it still stung that I'm going to be spending another three months as "fresh meat".

After everything else this week it was the icing on the cake. I did a few more misty-eyed laps before the drill came to a close and managed to pull it together, at least on the outside, for the rest of practice. I wanted to ask Bettie for a meat sticker to put on my helmet. I didn't feel like I deserved the name if I was such a loser that I couldn't do something that basic. We spend the last portion of drill doing transitions (which I am crap at) and then having open freshie time to work on whatever we needed to for assessments. I couldn't do crossovers in the area, and even if I could my legs were pretty dead at that point. I went through everything else on the assessment and then sat down for some water.

I have nothing against any of the other freshies but it knotted me up inside looking at some of them that I knew would be passing on their first trip through. I envied them because they were able to make measurable progress in the eyes of the league. My family and friends, including my husband don't really want to attend any bouts until I'm skating in them which, at this point, feels like decades away. If it's going to take me six plus months to pass my level ones, how many years will it take for my level twos? I want to share my newfound passion with them but they don't seem particularly interested until it's something they can come and watch and that hurts (yet I sort of understand at the same time). So now the pressure is on. My goal is to be scrimmage eligible at the beginning of next season so there might be a shot of me being teamed sometime in 2011 but I don't know how realistic that goal is.

Sunday - Recruitment Night.

I wasn't going to loosen my trucks this week because I didn't want to still be adjusting to them for assessments. Now that I know I'm not going to pass I'm going to do them another half turn tonight. I can feel the advantage of having looser trucks, I just don't want to do them so fast that I am unstable all the time.

We have at least six or seven freshies already lined up for July. I honestly don't know where we're going to put everyone! Pixie put up the league photo from 2008 and we've grown probably 200% since then. it's pretty amazing to see!

Our next home bout is May 22nd at 6pm at JFK. If you're a local we'd love to see you there to help break the 1,000 fan mark!

Recruitment Night!

NHRD had an AMAZING recruitment night tonight at Roller Kingdom.We had seventeen potential freshies show up and I personally know of two who were not present. That makes 19 if everyone joins. That's almost a full 20-person roster team! :-D

Not only did we have 17 newbies, we have more than 67% of the league skaters showed up! It was so awesome to see so many derby people together in public representing the league.

I got warm fuzzies thinking about how excited all the new people must be - I know I was when I started! I can't wait for April 5th... it's going to be such a great, energetic, shiny, happy-vibe practice! I have no idea where we're going to PUT everyone!

I also had the opportunity to try on a couple of different people's skates. I tried May's Hellcats and Bettie's 122's. I definitely like the all-leather boot. It feels so much less bulky than my Vixens! I'm going to try to get down to the Bruised Boutique shop this week and try on some skates. I'll shell out the extra money to get boots in different sizes if I have to.

Skate considerations from one freshie to another...

So... I am in no way an expert in skates but there are a few things I wish I had considered when I was buying my skates. I was so excited to be buying my derby gear that I tried on one skate and bought it. I wish I'd taken a little bit more time and tried some additional boots on.

Leather vs. Synthetic. My current skates (Riedell Vixens) were manufactured in China using synthetic material. They were on the cheaper end (under $200) and have a considerable amount of padding. After trying on thinner, all-leather skates I am in love. It felt so nice to not have the extra bulk around my feet.

Foot shape. I have skinny feet - I always have. In my rush to buy skates I didn't stop to think how my foot feels when it's sloshing around inside the boot. Skates come in men's sizes only at this point and men's feet are shaped differently than women's feet. I should have gotten a boot with a narrower heel to account for my skinny feet. Think about the shape of your foot and get a boot that works for your foot shape.

Plate material. This was sort of a no-brainer for me, given the size girl that I am. Plates are commonly made out of nylon and aluminum. If you're little, you should have no issues with a much lighter nylon plate. If you're big, or tall you will need to get an aluminum plate as soon as you start hopping/jumping (it happens sooner than you'd think!).

The moral of the story is, don't rush into buying your first skates unless you're not 100% sure you want to go all the way with derby. If you're just testing the waters then go ahead and get a cheap skate with the understanding that you'll probably end up buying a nicer pair once you're hooked and have gotten used to the derby style of skating.

A pint down...

I gave blood for the very first time today and it didn't involve a skate to the face or a toothpick-sized splinter. Today NHRD sponsored a blood drive with the American Red Cross of Manchester, NH.

I had tried to give blood once before while I was in the Army but was turned away because they couldn't find a suitable vein. They may have been onto something because it took my 19 minutes to fill my little bag of blood (the ARC worker said that it normally takes 7-12 minutes).

I had done my homework in advance. I popped multi-vitamins, ate lots of spinach and red meat (I know, twist my arm, right?) and tried to drink lots of water. I passed all the screening questions, though I was nervous that they would chuck me out because Mr. Carnate is from the other side of the pond.

They sat me down in a lovely lawn chair where I proceeded to relax while two technicians poked around both of my arms. In the end, it took a very patient tech to hold the needle at a precise angle to get things to flow at a reasonable speed.

It was so great to see how all the women of NHRD came out for this. Although our goal had been 50 units, we racked up a total of 37 units and a couple of platelet donors. 12 of the 37 units came from NHRD skaters; many of whom, like me, were giving for the first time. I blame the absolutely GORGEOUS weather on the lack of donors.

After I had donated and recovered, Hearty and I took our bout date banner (which is ten kinds of awesome) down to the corner of Bridge and Mammoth in Manchester to wave at cars and try to attract some attention. Heart had brought her gear so she suited up. I think her hot pink helmet helped us get noticed.

We had lots of people waving back, honking, and smiling at us. After an hour or so I could tell when people were mouthing the words, "roller derby". I can only hope that some of those smiles, honks, and waves translate into warm backsides in the stands at JFK in April!

Tomorrow night is recruitment night. In contrast to how terrified I was for my first recruitment night, I am SO EXCITED about this one! It sounds like we'll have a ton of league members there to greet the 16 - yes that's S-I-X-T-E-E-N - potential freshies. My class had 10 and everyone thought THAT was huge!

I think the injection of fresh blood into the league will have a huge effect. I remember how energized everyone seemed when my class started, granted it was also the beginning of our first season affiliated with WFTDA as an Apprentice League!

It sounds like the Charities committee has some more blood drives lined up. I'm looking forward to donating again unless the techs run screaming from me! :-P

How I got here

As I walked into Roller Kingdom on Monday night I found myself reflecting on how I got to this place. I was excited - I had been practicing to get ready for this day for three months. I was also terrified - what if they all think the fat chick on skates is a complete loser? I've never been one to shy away from new things but this was a whole different category of new...

At one point in my life I was in pretty decent shape. I was in the NH Army National Guard for six years and - I'll say it - when I got our of basic training I was smokin'. Ten years, a marriage, a divorce, two college degrees, a job I hated, a slight video game addiction, a new marriage and a (stressful) job I like later I'm not so smokin'. In fact, I have been desperately searching for the thing that would help me break out of my substantially heavier funk.

I'd tried a couple of different "hobbies" to change things up but none of them really worked for me... until I saw the poster: NH Roller Derby - Last Home Bout of the Season! hanging up at work. Roller Derby? Like WWF on wheels, THAT roller derby? People actually do that? Cool! It wasn't until I came across an article on CNN about a 53-year old librarian who started doing roller derby. It was an awesome article about the action, the derby personas, the fitness aspect, and the camaraderie of roller derby.

I was hooked. I spent about an hour or two reading through all of the skater profiles on the NH Roller Derby website. I spent another hour or two watching derby videos on You Tube. The NHRD website said that they held information nights the first Friday of every month at Roller Kingdom - that rink that I'd driven past a million times and never gone in. It so happens that the first Friday of September was only a few days away.

Before I could start this potentially new and exciting journey I wanted to get my family on board. The first person I told was my husband (henceforth known in this Blog as "Ian" until I have a derby name, at which point he will become "Mr. Xxxxxxxxx"). "But won't you get hurt?" he said. "Yes, I probably will. You wear protective gear and stuff but you're bound to get whacked in the face eventually (on accident, of course)." "You seem really excited about this" "I am, I think. It could be completely and totally awesome!". He's happy when I'm happy so he was on board.

I sent my mum an email from work with a link to the NHRD site and the text "I think I would probably really enjoy this. Might go to recruitment night Friday". I was expecting resistance but amazingly enough, I didn't get any. Of course, like any mom, she's worried about me getting hurt but she also said after reading through the site, "That sounds like something right up your alley." Competition: check. Theatricality: check. A smidge of violence: check. Socializing with awesome people in person: check. Getting in shape and having fun while I do it: check.

I told my dad when we were out to dinner for my little brother's 25th birthday. "Roller Derby? Really?" "Yeah, dad... but it's different now than it was in the 70's. It's actually a legit sport!" "Aren't you afraid of getting hurt?" "Not really... I survived basic training and I got hurt there." Now - I might not be saying that once I'm cleared for contact, but I'm at least going in KNOWING that I'll be intimately acquainted with the floor in short order. No further resistance from the paternal side. Cleared for takeoff.

Ian and I were coming back north from checking out New England's very first Sonic in Peabody on the first Friday of September. We pulled into a very full Roller Kingdom parking lot and went inside to be greeted by swarms of screeching teeangers - apparently Fridays are "Teen Nights" (note to parents: do you have any idea what your 15-year-olds are WEARING???). Loud pop music I'd never heard before was blasting through the giant speakers. We were pretty convinced that we were the oldest people in the rink.

I was terrified. I don't get nervous often about things and when I do I hide it pretty well. I was doing a pretty crappy job that night. I put my rental skates on and attempted a lap on the rink. It was a disaster. It felt like I was trying to skate through sand. I assumed I was the problem since I hadn't been on quad skates since the days of Girl Scout outings to Happy Wheels in Merrimack. I couldn't skate - how ridiculously embarrassing! I swapped the quads for rollerblades to see if that was any better - marginally so, but derby isn't played on inline skates!

We sat down at the end of the rink by the snack bar where I could take the cursed rental skates off and watched people skate. I spotted someone in an NHRD tank top who was wearing knee pads - She must be a derby person! I searched the rink for an NHRD banner or sign or anything to let me know where the "official derby people" were. Nothing. So I continued to watch with a nervous look on my face - try to pay attention to where the "derby lady" was sitting. AHA! About halfway up the right hand side.

Having gone completely weak-kneed I managed to move to a table a few down from where the derby person was sitting. I couldn't skate (or so I thought)... they were going to laugh at me and think I was a big, fat loser for even wanting to try. Yeah, the website said that your level of fitness and skating skills don't matter, they'll train you; but I figured they were just saying that to be nice. Ian said, "Well... are you going to go talk to them or are we going to sit here all night?"

Good point. I stood up and inched my way toward the table where the derby people (more had shown up that looked like they knew each other) were sitting. One of them looked over at me and smiled and I took that as my opening, "Is this the NH Roller Derby recruitment group?" She smiled again and said it was but that I needed to talk to "Petunia" - the person sitting down at the table next to me.

Yikes! Here we go! Still freaking out nervous. SHe asked how I heard about the league and I told her that I worked with someone on the league - only she didn't know who they were at first because I used her real name! Meep! After explaining all the basics to me she said, "Our next join date is actually tomorrow. Did you want to start?" MEEP!!! All that was running through my head was my experience on the rental skates a little while earlier. "Erm... I don't know if I'm ready to start tomorrow. I don't have any gear and I'm really out of practice." I needed more time to think. "Well, our next join date is January. We do it every few months so you have a group of new people to start with." Ok, January is good. I can do that. "Are you going to stay and skate with us?" MEEP!!! I made some excuse about having to be somewhere to hide my terror at having to non-skate in front of these derby rock stars.

In early October I was given the gift of a derby gear package for an early birthday present. Riedell Vixens with Flat Outs, Protec Pads, and a Triple 8 helmet. I had three months to make myself at least presentable on skates. One my very first loop around the rink at an open skate I fell flat on my ass in from of this dad and his little girl. Ow tailbone. I got back up and kept trying to skate. I realized that some of my September fail had been the crappy rental skates. I definitely needed to work on my balance though.

For the next few months I made sure I was at 2-3 open skates a week. By the time I left for a vacation in England in December I could skate reasonably well, stop, and was starting to get comfortable with cross-overs. W00t. Now it was just a matter of waiting until the 4th. That Monday also happened to be Ian's first day at his new job. The timing was going to be interesting. He picked me up at work and we got home by 5:30. "Do you want to watch an episode of Lost before you go?" I should have said "no" but I didn't.

We watched an episode and I ask what time it was. "6:30". Shit. I was still in "civilian clothes". Double shit. I was supposed to be in North Tyngsboro in 15 minutes. Triple shit. I've moved faster that I have since probably basic training. Got dressed, grabbed my gear bag (inconveniently leaving my drying wrist guards in the living room), and drove like the wind. I did NOT want to be late to my very first practice. I screeched in to the parking lot, grabbed by gear, and walked into Roller Kingdom, thinking about how I got to this place...