Playing with the Big Girls!

I really should have written about this a month or two ago, but life has been... interesting and there's not been much time for blogging.  But the news I should have written is good news.  I have moved from the newbie group up to the advanced group!

I am Fresh Meat no longer!

I didn't even realise how close I was to passing until it actually happened.  Weirdly, my laps weren't the last thing I got.  Those came surprisingly easy in the end; it was jumping those bliddy cones that tripped me up.  Literally.  I'd been skating 26-in-5 for several consecutive weeks, did nothing different in particular, and skated 28-in-5.  I couldn't believe it!  A few weeks later we were doing some other mins skills and my coach asked me what I had left to pass, I didn't know, he went and looked it up, and ten minutes later announced to everyone that I'd done them all!

I'd passed my first level of minimum skills and, while I'm not quite ready to scrim yet - I need to pass the second level min skills for that - I get to train with the A-team.  I take part in their drills, form up in their walls, skate with them in their laps, and can skate at their extra practise session.  Whooooooa!

So after a month of advanced training...What's it like, playing with the big girls?


It's challenging, which is in turns disheartening and exhilarating.  Suddenly we're not just learning skills, we're applying them, we're talking strategy, we're working on endurance, you're being asked to do things you've never done before.  You will be the slowest.  You will be the last.  You're at the bottom of the pile again in terms of knowledge and ability and everything else, and you have to come to terms with that and resolve to do all the things you can do, and not feel bad about the things you can't yet.  They'll come, with time and experience, and if you have a half decent team (mine are great!) they'll encourage and support you as you work (support you, but not carry you).  As long as they can see you're trying, they won't have a bad word to say about you.

For the rest, it's exciting to be pushed.  To attempt something you never thought you'd even try, and not die while doing it, which is a success in itself, and sometimes to be surprisingly okay at it.  To fall down over and over, and yet get back up every time.  Take some pride in that.

Oh look, the jammer is coming

It's scary.  Large people (and small people!) will run at you and you'll be expected to stand there and stop them.  You'll have to jump things, while moving, at speed, backwards.  You'll jam for the first time, and feel like everyone is staring at you.  My advice: volunteer yourself way before you think you are ready, so neither you nor anyone else expects too much, and do it as casually as you can.  You won't get through the wall on your first try, or your second or even your third, so don't pin all your self esteem on points. A better goal is to decide that after your first, second, and third tries, you will go for that wall again.  And then again.

I was quite pleased of my first go as jammer in the end.  I didn't even make my initial pass (didn't expect to!), but every time I was recycled I came right back in again and kept going.  I knew my pack rules and used them to foil one attempted recycling, and managed a legal star pass to my pivot when we landed next to each other.  I think that's pretty good!

It's confusing, but that's to be expected too.  Moves and formations have particular nicknames that you've never heard.  People know what other people will do because they've been playing together for months or years before you got there.  You'll have to learn that, but they'll learn about you too.  They'll give you tips on things to try, which you should take graciously.  They'll also notice things about you that maybe you didn't notice about yourself.  They'll give you compliments you didn't expect or ask for, and find things to admire about you, and cheer when you make a breakthrough, or get something right for the first time.  Last week we had to tell each other something encouraging as we skated past our team mates.  Half a dozen different people, without overhearing each other, all told me that I was strong.  One of them told me I was clever.  Several of them told me that I never stopped trying.

On a more practical note, it's going to hurt.  It is going to hurt. A. Lot.  I have never been
so beaten up in my life, nor so out of breath.  Jamming, you guys.  Seriously.  As the newest member of the group I am the obvious Weakest Link in the wall, and not much allowance is made for that.  Nor should there be - if they don't hit me now someone else will later!

Apparently I bruise like anything, although I never seem to get really injured no matter how hard I fall.  I just sort of roll and get up again, or else someone stops to check if I'm okay, and I yell "Go, go!" and wave them off.  Everyone knows we abandon fallen teammates in roller derby :P  I'm never on the floor for long though.  As a Bambi-esque newbie I decided that 'Not Falling Over' was a stupid goal for a contact sport, so instead I made my aim 'Get Up The Fastest'.  I stuck to that, so now I'm mostly up again before I even realise I'm down, and I don't count the marks until afterwards.

After the last two weeks of practise I'm having the night off with a tummy bug so I've spent the evening taking stock of myself.  I therefore attach the diagramme below, on which I have mapped every single bruise currently on my body, by size and colour.  My shins have been kicked to bits.  I have a bruise on the ring knuckle of my drawing hand, and a massive purple one on my left boob.  My.  Left.  Boob.

Half of them you don't notice until the next day, and then wonder where you got them.  I have a few on my lower back which suggests some backblocks as I definitely didn't fall that way.  Sometimes I'm a little worried by them, and how many there are, but mostly I'm just stubbornly proud of them.  I put some serious effort into this, and I can prove it!

I had a meeting at work last week that I didn't want to go to, and I deliberately wore a short sleeved top to show some of them off.  Because screw you, work meeting.  I just got hit in the chest by ten stone of solid derbygirl and lived to tell the tale!

And I guess that's the point of this, and probably some handy life lesson too.  You come up against something hard and scary and confusing, and sometimes you genuinely feel like you suck, but quitting simply isn't on the table.  So you plug on, somethings succeeding and sometimes not.  But at the end of the day, as long as you choose to stay in the game, whether you win or lose, it's the fact that you keep going that makes you proud.

Not being Fresh Meat any more?  It's pretty great.