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Apr. 29th, 2007 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Nickel City Knockouts vs. Devil Dollies
The bout was titled "Spring Break". Two members of the non-skating team, the Suicidal Saucies, wore naughty teacher costumes to host the bout. Mala Rubia, a teacher in real life, minded the penalty box, which was decorated to look like a blackboard and classroom, with color-coded dunce caps for penalized skaters to wear. Sheer Tara, a librarian, co-announced with the usual announcer, Mason Stone. To demonstrate what sorts of offenses are considered fouls, they called upon two of their teammates, Stormie Weather and Alley Oops, to pretend to savagely elbow, trip, back-block, and fight one another in an entertaining and crowd-pleasing illustration of how modern flat-track roller derby differs from the staged ultraviolence of old-school banked-track roller derby.
The Knockouts were introduced first, each skater coming in from a random spot off the track to join the line of the team. There were three Knockouts off skates: #RU486 Lizzie McFighter is off skates for the season with a torn meniscus sustained in the March 31st bout with the Saucies; #9 Blackie DeckHer also tore her meniscus in practice and it is unknown when she will be back on skates, so she acted as bench manager; and #8WD, Fleshette, broke her leg in three places in a bad fall at practice and is still not well enough to travel. The league is collecting donations to help Fleshette, who has had to undergo surgery to repair the shattered bone and is likely to be out of work for some time.
The Dollies were introduced next. Their lineup featured several girls for whom this was a first bout-- including #911 Kiki KonKussion, who acted as the Doll of Discipline in the two previous bouts, and three new draft picks, #88 Dollywood, #1214 Cha Cha Wheels and #2x2 Jocelyn Balls. The Dollies also had an impressive collection of their small children, dressed in devil costumes and tearing around at full speed shrieking cheers and encouragement. [The Knockouts are feeling rather outpaced in the reproduction department: Co-Captain Sweet Pea is the only mother among us, and her little Edgar is only 2.]
The first jam took off running and the Knockouts pulled ahead by a couple of points. The action was fast but clean and disciplined, with tighter packs and fewer fouls than the last bout. There were a few spectacular takedowns and pileups, a few jammers went cartwheeling into the crowd, but there were very few major penalties and nothing openly malicious.
One interesting detail is that the rink had decided to set up fewer chairs, so there was a wider space along the track where people were sitting on the floor. This meant that skaters flying out of bounds landed in people's laps, rather than getting hung up in chair legs-- more bruises for spectators, fewer dramatic knee injuries for the skaters.
That's not to say nobody got hurt. The Knockouts' captain, #8 Mia Mauler, fell hard onto her right knee, but her kneepad had slipped so that her kneecap was unprotected. She got up and continued to skate, and iced it between jams, but in the second period she fell on it again and could not regain her feet. Preliminary diagnoses suggest that there is damage to the patella tendon.
Early in the second period, this left the Knockouts down by five skaters from their original lineup. They had only ten skaters to work with, and to make matters worse, most of the injured skaters had been jammers, the point-scoring player. Only two Knockout jammers remained. Hard work and conditioning drills meant that they were up to the task of skating back-to-back jams, with the jammers switching out every other, but the problem was penalties. Minor penalties accrue on a single skater, and after four, she is given a major penalty and must sit out in the penalty box for one full minute. Jammers are exceptionally liable to penalties, as they travel at such a high speed and cannot always avoid making illegal contact with an opposing teammate. A good coach will see this and will put a girl with too many fouls in as a blocker so that when she has to sit out her minute, the team can still score, but the Knockouts' coach did not have this option, as she barely had enough skaters for a full lineup. The result was that there were several jams wherein the Knockouts had no jammer and could not score points.
So the Dollies pulled ahead as the Knockouts scrambled to compensate for their short lineups, and as the Knockouts began to rally, the period ended, and with it the game. I don't recall the final score, but the Dollies won by at least ten points, perhaps fifteen.
As time was called, the Dollies and Knockouts skated together to embrace and congratulate one another. Afterward everyone went to Dwyer's and partied. We all agreed that this one had been a fun one.
For my part, I have the same problem as last time: I've awoken without a single bruise or sore muscle, and am again worried that I didn't do all I could. But I know I skated hard: we were so short that I wound up skating as outside, inside, or back blocker in the majority of the jams. I was in for up to three in a row, then I'd have one off and skate two in a row, then one off and another three in a row-- I was in a huge number of jams. The original lineup had only put me in four, and I'd worried that it meant the coach had no confidence in me (almost everyone was in five; many were in six), but as I immediately found out, it was because she was keeping me in reserve as a substitute for injured or exhausted girls. I still don't know why I have escaped with so few bruises, except perhaps that I have excellent kneepads. And I'm kicking myself for not giving them to Mia when it became apparent that hers were inadequate! I don't tend to fall that hard, but when I do I never feel the floor.
I can't wait to see the highlight reel. I want to see whether I was being as effective as I felt I was. I really felt like I was on top of things in every jam I skated, even though I wasn't always successful at what I attempted.
There's also an indication that towards the end there was an error in the scorekeeping; several audience members, including complete strangers, came up and said that with about six minutes to go, the score suddenly jumped a number of points for the Dollies while remaining the same for the Knockouts even though our jammer had lapped the pack more times than theirs.
But I don't much care what the final scoreboard said; I really don't care what the numbers were, and several of the Dollies agreed with me afterward, that they honestly didn't care what the score was. We all had a great time, skated our hearts out, beat the crap out of one another, and remembered exactly why we'd thought this roller derby thing was such a good idea.
And we raised some money for Fleshette. She was on speakerphone during the team intro, so she could hear it and could participate in the team cheer.
I almost wish there had been a third period, though. I could have skated all night, even back-to-back-to-back-- I really got into the rhythm of it and wasn't at all tired. I felt like I was just warmed up by the second period. If only we'd had just one more jammer, we could've gone all night and just outlasted the Dollies-- our team has done so much more conditioning that they were starting to get tired before we were.
I thought maybe I was just having an endorphin rush or something, but I'm not sore today at all. I've been more tired after practices than I was after the bout. I want to see the replays to be sure, but I really don't feel like I took it easy or anything.
Now that I don't have a job that requires me to be on my feet running around all the time, I'm going to have to make more of an effort to stay fit so that I can do that again next time we bout. I am happy with my level of fitness-- no matter what that stupid doctor says, I am obviously in fine condition. So I'm going to play outside a lot this spring. :)
As I said, we all have decided that we don't care what the scoreboard said: in our hearts, it was a victory, and we know for ourselves that we did enough. I know that sounds like something cheesy and insincere out of some self-help book, but we really do feel that way: we are so happy with our own performance, and so excited to see all our hard work pay off in what was, by all accounts, a really truly exciting show. We all skated beautifully and we had a blast.
It also really helps that the Dollies are all such sweet girls. Never for a second was there a sour moment. None of them gloated or were smug. They're just sweet sincere girls, and were so genuinely excited to have skated well. There were no dirty fouls, nothing malicious and nothing overwrought. I caught a couple elbows in the back but even in the heat of the moment I could see that they weren't aimed maliciously; it was just inexperienced and excited skaters, not meaning to hurt anybody.
I had so much fun, I really did. I just hope Mia's knee heals quickly and cleanly. At least she has some time off this coming week-- Artvoice's Best of Buffalo party is tomorrow night so she got the yoga class she teaches covered by a sub so she could make it. She's high up in the running for Buffalo's Best Amateur Athlete.
Just pushed up my sleeve and Ow! I found a bruise on my arm. I should probably go shower and find out if there were any more...
The bout was titled "Spring Break". Two members of the non-skating team, the Suicidal Saucies, wore naughty teacher costumes to host the bout. Mala Rubia, a teacher in real life, minded the penalty box, which was decorated to look like a blackboard and classroom, with color-coded dunce caps for penalized skaters to wear. Sheer Tara, a librarian, co-announced with the usual announcer, Mason Stone. To demonstrate what sorts of offenses are considered fouls, they called upon two of their teammates, Stormie Weather and Alley Oops, to pretend to savagely elbow, trip, back-block, and fight one another in an entertaining and crowd-pleasing illustration of how modern flat-track roller derby differs from the staged ultraviolence of old-school banked-track roller derby.
The Knockouts were introduced first, each skater coming in from a random spot off the track to join the line of the team. There were three Knockouts off skates: #RU486 Lizzie McFighter is off skates for the season with a torn meniscus sustained in the March 31st bout with the Saucies; #9 Blackie DeckHer also tore her meniscus in practice and it is unknown when she will be back on skates, so she acted as bench manager; and #8WD, Fleshette, broke her leg in three places in a bad fall at practice and is still not well enough to travel. The league is collecting donations to help Fleshette, who has had to undergo surgery to repair the shattered bone and is likely to be out of work for some time.
The Dollies were introduced next. Their lineup featured several girls for whom this was a first bout-- including #911 Kiki KonKussion, who acted as the Doll of Discipline in the two previous bouts, and three new draft picks, #88 Dollywood, #1214 Cha Cha Wheels and #2x2 Jocelyn Balls. The Dollies also had an impressive collection of their small children, dressed in devil costumes and tearing around at full speed shrieking cheers and encouragement. [The Knockouts are feeling rather outpaced in the reproduction department: Co-Captain Sweet Pea is the only mother among us, and her little Edgar is only 2.]
The first jam took off running and the Knockouts pulled ahead by a couple of points. The action was fast but clean and disciplined, with tighter packs and fewer fouls than the last bout. There were a few spectacular takedowns and pileups, a few jammers went cartwheeling into the crowd, but there were very few major penalties and nothing openly malicious.
One interesting detail is that the rink had decided to set up fewer chairs, so there was a wider space along the track where people were sitting on the floor. This meant that skaters flying out of bounds landed in people's laps, rather than getting hung up in chair legs-- more bruises for spectators, fewer dramatic knee injuries for the skaters.
That's not to say nobody got hurt. The Knockouts' captain, #8 Mia Mauler, fell hard onto her right knee, but her kneepad had slipped so that her kneecap was unprotected. She got up and continued to skate, and iced it between jams, but in the second period she fell on it again and could not regain her feet. Preliminary diagnoses suggest that there is damage to the patella tendon.
Early in the second period, this left the Knockouts down by five skaters from their original lineup. They had only ten skaters to work with, and to make matters worse, most of the injured skaters had been jammers, the point-scoring player. Only two Knockout jammers remained. Hard work and conditioning drills meant that they were up to the task of skating back-to-back jams, with the jammers switching out every other, but the problem was penalties. Minor penalties accrue on a single skater, and after four, she is given a major penalty and must sit out in the penalty box for one full minute. Jammers are exceptionally liable to penalties, as they travel at such a high speed and cannot always avoid making illegal contact with an opposing teammate. A good coach will see this and will put a girl with too many fouls in as a blocker so that when she has to sit out her minute, the team can still score, but the Knockouts' coach did not have this option, as she barely had enough skaters for a full lineup. The result was that there were several jams wherein the Knockouts had no jammer and could not score points.
So the Dollies pulled ahead as the Knockouts scrambled to compensate for their short lineups, and as the Knockouts began to rally, the period ended, and with it the game. I don't recall the final score, but the Dollies won by at least ten points, perhaps fifteen.
As time was called, the Dollies and Knockouts skated together to embrace and congratulate one another. Afterward everyone went to Dwyer's and partied. We all agreed that this one had been a fun one.
For my part, I have the same problem as last time: I've awoken without a single bruise or sore muscle, and am again worried that I didn't do all I could. But I know I skated hard: we were so short that I wound up skating as outside, inside, or back blocker in the majority of the jams. I was in for up to three in a row, then I'd have one off and skate two in a row, then one off and another three in a row-- I was in a huge number of jams. The original lineup had only put me in four, and I'd worried that it meant the coach had no confidence in me (almost everyone was in five; many were in six), but as I immediately found out, it was because she was keeping me in reserve as a substitute for injured or exhausted girls. I still don't know why I have escaped with so few bruises, except perhaps that I have excellent kneepads. And I'm kicking myself for not giving them to Mia when it became apparent that hers were inadequate! I don't tend to fall that hard, but when I do I never feel the floor.
I can't wait to see the highlight reel. I want to see whether I was being as effective as I felt I was. I really felt like I was on top of things in every jam I skated, even though I wasn't always successful at what I attempted.
There's also an indication that towards the end there was an error in the scorekeeping; several audience members, including complete strangers, came up and said that with about six minutes to go, the score suddenly jumped a number of points for the Dollies while remaining the same for the Knockouts even though our jammer had lapped the pack more times than theirs.
But I don't much care what the final scoreboard said; I really don't care what the numbers were, and several of the Dollies agreed with me afterward, that they honestly didn't care what the score was. We all had a great time, skated our hearts out, beat the crap out of one another, and remembered exactly why we'd thought this roller derby thing was such a good idea.
And we raised some money for Fleshette. She was on speakerphone during the team intro, so she could hear it and could participate in the team cheer.
I almost wish there had been a third period, though. I could have skated all night, even back-to-back-to-back-- I really got into the rhythm of it and wasn't at all tired. I felt like I was just warmed up by the second period. If only we'd had just one more jammer, we could've gone all night and just outlasted the Dollies-- our team has done so much more conditioning that they were starting to get tired before we were.
I thought maybe I was just having an endorphin rush or something, but I'm not sore today at all. I've been more tired after practices than I was after the bout. I want to see the replays to be sure, but I really don't feel like I took it easy or anything.
Now that I don't have a job that requires me to be on my feet running around all the time, I'm going to have to make more of an effort to stay fit so that I can do that again next time we bout. I am happy with my level of fitness-- no matter what that stupid doctor says, I am obviously in fine condition. So I'm going to play outside a lot this spring. :)
As I said, we all have decided that we don't care what the scoreboard said: in our hearts, it was a victory, and we know for ourselves that we did enough. I know that sounds like something cheesy and insincere out of some self-help book, but we really do feel that way: we are so happy with our own performance, and so excited to see all our hard work pay off in what was, by all accounts, a really truly exciting show. We all skated beautifully and we had a blast.
It also really helps that the Dollies are all such sweet girls. Never for a second was there a sour moment. None of them gloated or were smug. They're just sweet sincere girls, and were so genuinely excited to have skated well. There were no dirty fouls, nothing malicious and nothing overwrought. I caught a couple elbows in the back but even in the heat of the moment I could see that they weren't aimed maliciously; it was just inexperienced and excited skaters, not meaning to hurt anybody.
I had so much fun, I really did. I just hope Mia's knee heals quickly and cleanly. At least she has some time off this coming week-- Artvoice's Best of Buffalo party is tomorrow night so she got the yoga class she teaches covered by a sub so she could make it. She's high up in the running for Buffalo's Best Amateur Athlete.
Just pushed up my sleeve and Ow! I found a bruise on my arm. I should probably go shower and find out if there were any more...
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 02:32 pm (UTC)As we were doing the leg-lifts (where you lie on your back and hold your legs six inches off the ground for, like, a year) we kept saying, "We... are... going... to... be... SO... HOT... for... bikini... season.... AUUUUUGH THE PAIN..."
no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 02:36 pm (UTC)Bridget can sure write and B-17 can surely fly...
Date: 2007-04-29 07:44 pm (UTC)On an old topic: that silly doc and BMI and fat, not fit...
Surprise!
That physician who wields BMI like a broadsword may well be wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6040156.stm
"The [BMI] calculation is based on comparing a person's weight with their height and does not take into account sex or the proportion of body fat to muscle."
...according to BMI George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon are all overweight...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6483403.stm
"Scientists say they have developed a 3D scanner that can accurately determine if a person is truly obese...Instead of relying on weight and height measurements, as BMI does, the scan takes into account body shape and how much fat a person carries."
You may just be a Big Beautiful (Muscular) Woman.
May the bruises be few but well earned
Allen
no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 08:08 pm (UTC)Glad it went well. Very, very glad.
Now that you're done with the airport bar, what are you planning to do? Are you looking for bartending jobs?