Some of the best derby advice that I have indirectly received is a quote from, if I'm not mistaken, Heidi Volatile: "When in doubt, hit a bitch." It is a quote that I have oft-repeated, especially when I talk to fresher meat than I who need some reassuring, and especially when I was team captaining back at BnB.
As it turns out, that's harder advice to follow than I figured. Then again, like most things worth listening to, it's much harder to commit and do it than it is to talk big about it.
Saturday is approaching with a vengeance. It's the first home bout of the season. Wednesday night, I feel like shit. My hormones have chosen this particular week to run wild on me. I am snapping people's heads off left and right, my back is killing me, and my stomach is tied up in knots, though it's difficult to tell what of that is what we might delicately call "woman troubles" and what is what we might delicately call "bout tummy."
Practice was tense tonight. It always seems to be the Wednesday before a bout. People get snippy with each other. The air gets thick. Hits get hard, and sometimes they get sloppy. Curse words are said, and sometimes, they even sound like they're said with malice.
If our bout against Dixie Derby Girls was any indication, this must be just something we need to do before a bout. We need to use the scrimmage time on Wednesday as a way to get all our nerves out, all our frustrations and fears. When things start to look like a hot mess out there, it gets a little nerve-wracking to see us playing like that, but I know we can pull it together.
In Huntsville, we played like a well-oiled machine. It was the first time I've ever been to slow my mind down enough to do what I needed to do. In fact, for the most part, I just turned it off, and let my body go on auto-pilot. You know what to do. Block now. Stall now. Slow down now. Call out to your teammates now.
I felt liberated. Finally free from my over-analysis, my fear of failure, and my dogged inner critic that simply will not shut the hell up when it's time for her to do so.
It took me two seasons to get here, and one of those seasons, I was reffing - and was just as critical, and just as insecure.
Without a doubt, Huntsville, at least for me, was a milestone to celebrate. I'm not Amyn or Saintly - I don't have that kind of pack awareness, or the ability to just sit on jammers the way they do. I'm not a monster like Ziggy who sends jammers sailing every time she lays eyes on them. Yet. So while I may not have been the best skater on the team at Huntsville, I know on my own that I improved a lot that day.
Greenville, though, is no time for resting on my laurels. I've been well informed already that, strategy wise, this will be like nothing I've ever encountered before. Yes, I've watched slow derby, but it's another thing entirely to be using it. I'm nervous. That's putting it lightly. I've been trying not to think about it as much as possible, because I don't want to turn into a nutcase.
I read something tonight on Roller Derby Inside Track that made me think a bit about Saturday, though, and about my nerves: "Hungry teams excel by moving out of the comfort zones." The same can be said of hungry skaters, and all I've wanted since I started playing roller derby was to constantly get better at it. To one day be that blocker that nobody wants to mess with, the one that other teams yell for their blockers to stay on, lest she continually tear jammers asunder. The Cthulhu of blocking, materializing to - yeah, okay, enough of metaphors.
And I can't do that by being scared and sitting on my performance at Huntsville. One improved bout performance doesn't make me a good player, but continually doing something better at every bout will. So... it's time to set goals again.
1. Chase that damn jammer. I have a terrible habit of giving up every time a jammer passes me, and then getting mad at myself. At the core, it's two contradictory motions of the brain - You can't catch up with that jammer! You could have caught up with that jammer if you'd tried!
But I'll never know if I could have caught up with her if I don't try. Yeah, maybe I'll miss her. In that case, I'll slow down. And if I hit her, good game. And if I hit her and go to the box because I'm out of play, well I still hit her. A trip to the box is worth it in some cases.
2. Be aware of where my jammer needs me to be. Above all things, our jammer situation for Saturday is weird, to say the least. Sometimes I feel like I'm not always where my jammer needs me to be in order for me to get her through the pack. I feel like I defend against the other jammer much more readily than I get my own through the pack.
Saturday, I'm going to pay attention to my jammer just as much, because playing only defensively is playing irresponsibly. If my jammer has someone sitting on her and needs me to block her out of the way, then you better bet I'm going to try my damnedest to do that. Needs a whip? I'm there. Gets stuck? Not alone. My jammers need to know they can trust me to take care of them.
3. Play aggressively, but with a clear head. A team like Greenville wants other teams to get frustrated and blow their cool - that's how a strategy like what they do works. The other team gets mad. In their frustration, they don't think straight, forget how to defend against Greenville's strategy. And they lose.
It's hard to know what to expect this weekend, but easy enough to see that, maybe more so than any other games, if we get over-emotional, this one will go out the window. Part of the strategy of slow derby IS pissing off the other team. Throwing them off their game and leaving them without a defense OR an offense.
And part of the counter-strategy is to beat them at their own game. Adapt, build walls, keep your cool, play your game. I promise myself not to be part of a problem on Saturday, no matter how mad I want to get.
Time to set course for the weekend - tomorrow, pre-bout music. A perennial favorite of mine that I've somehow managed to never write about.
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