March 19, 2011. It's time for a new beginning, I tell myself. This is where it all starts. It's where it all started in 2008 anyway. Maybe this is where I should have always been. Me and BCR, BCR and me.
We got to the venue pretty early, but we weren't staying the night, so we didn't have a hotel room to hang out in. The ride up was relaxed, but as long as I've known Slim now, I didn't expect it to be otherwise. My newest derby wife is the only one still actively involved with a team. She and I have seen, frankly, dumb shit go down. That we're still skating says something about tenacity and passion for this sport.
Chatty's place was huge, way bigger than the other convention centers I've skated in. The dressing room was tiny and hot. My stomach was doing trampoline acrobatics to the extent that I was tempted to bust out the huge jug of whiskey they gave us just to take the edge off.
I felt better, though, because I wasn't the only one. Seedy was one of the earlier arrivals, and admitted that she, too, had what we colloquially call "bout tummy." And I certainly wasn't the only one sweating up a ridiculous storm in my brand new turquoise jersey.
When we went out to warm up and test the floor, I could feel my leg muscles shaking. Trembling might be a better word. I remain cool as a cucumber in most situations, but bouts are an exception. Whether I show it on the outside or not.
I knew the other team was watching me. I tried out stops and falls. I analyzed every movement I made as too slow, too clumsy, somehow unimpressive. They were watching me, I knew they were, and even if they were nice, with every stride I took, I just knew they were analyzing every way they could to pick me apart. Who wouldn't do that to an opponent they don't know? What should I show them? Should I be purposefully clumsy? Should I skate my best and hope for intimidation?
I hate waiting for bouts, more than anything else. Most of the time, we get there hours in advance, we go into our dressing rooms, we strap on our gear, get everything taped into place... and we wait. We sit, and we wait. And the whole time we do that, it feels like a small beaver is gnawing at the inner walls of my stomach, trying to get out.
When the bout started, I admit, I was a little more nervous than usual because of who was wearing the stripes. Major Wood was jam reffing for the bout. From my time as a ref, I just knew - this guy is a big deal. As in, this is the guy that pretty much wrote the rules down. A Big. Freaking. Deal. There were two other WFTDA refs there, and I knew this was going to be penalty calling like I had never experienced before.
I was set to go in every other jam. One jam as pivot, one jam as power blocker. That, I was pretty sure, I could handle, although I've frankly never played a game that I would call a "good game" on my part. Then again, I've only played four real games.
When it was my turn to go in, I couldn't - the person who had played power blocker before me was in the box. I was antsy on the sidelines, wanting to put my feet on that track. Same with the next time I went in to play power. And quite a few other times.
Then, there was the mouthguard disaster. We knew Major Wood was particular about mouthguards. What we didn't know was his peculiar criteria for "particular." 9 was sent to the box when she was jamming, then given another minute because she took her mouthguard out before she sat down. We might as well have had no jammer for two jams at that point. We were scoreless.
We were scoreless for maybe the first ten or fifteen minutes, or hell, it could have been twenty. At some point, the time all starts to run together out there. Certain moments feel agonizingly long, until you look up at the clock and realize ten seconds have gone by. I mentioned that before, when talking about that scoreless Jackson bout.
Oh my God, it's happening again.
I wrestled with myself. Do NOT let this turn into Jackson. Do NOT give up on yourself.
Amyn ordered us back to the locker room for halftime, and I braced for takeoff. I knew she was going to chew us out, let each and every one of us know how terribly we were playing out there, pick out every single mistake we had made and display it for the world. That, after all, was the kind of locker room talk I was used to. It was the kind of locker room talk going on in my last bout in August.
In the locker room, 9 was in tears. Everyone was quiet. Amyn was quiet, at least until 9 said she felt like it was her fault we were losing.
"9, there's no reason to blame yourself. We win as a team, we lose as a team."
I wish I had heard those words in Jackson. They, along with Amyn's encouragement, kept me from crumbling at halftime into self-doubt. She kept me from giving up, probably without even realizing it.
"They think they got us," she said. "They're gettin' cocky."
I didn't care if they won at that point. I've still never won a game, so plainly, my love of derby has nothing to do with the outcome, and everything to do with getting better as a player and as a team. Cho said something similar: "I don't care if they win, I just want us not to give up." To play harder, to skate faster, to score more points, to hold their jammer.
We still lost by 100 points, but whether those girls thought they had us or not, they saw a different side to BCR in the second half. I saw a different side to BCR. The side where a team gets backed into a corner but comes out swinging. No fear.
People cried in the locker room, blamed our loss on bad individual performances.
Even that, though, seemed like something new to me. This was a team that understood something BnB didn't, couldn't. A team that was able to analyze its own performance and realize what could have been better - that each person could have contributed more successfully. That one player doesn't lose a game for thirteen others.
But at the same time, we were guided by people who reminded us of that. It was always us as a team. There were things that the team needed to work on, rather than placing the blame on one person, rather than destroying someone's confidence at halftime and expecting them to go skate another half hour.
Maybe this is why BnB failed.
In any case, past is past - we learn from it, and we move on. I made some bad plays at Chattanooga. I know of at least two incidents where I totally missed a jammer skating by me. I could have played harder, more aggressively. I could have played smarter as a pivot, and directed my teammates more successfully.
I overcame something that Saturday, though. It's been altogether too easy for me to give up. As I've discovered, I really didn't know what it was that 'team' meant last season. I loved my BnB teammates to the point where I never thought I could feel happy in derby without them. But all that love didn't translate into success on the track, and it didn't translate into knowing how to work as a team. Knowing how to feel proud as a team. How can you feel pride if you're constantly beaten down? All that love we supposedly had didn't even translate into the ability to keep the team together. It didn't translate into the ability to respect your former teammates enough to not stab them in the back by creating another team just to embarrass and defeat one person.
Whether they realize it or not, a lot of the BCR vets showed a lot of the newer skaters something very important that Saturday. Somewhere in between the nebulous area of vet and not vet myself, I feel like I can understand these lessons a little easier. There's a time to crawl up a team's ass, to yell at them to motivate them to play better. But there's also a time to remind everyone that the team as a whole is responsible for playing well, not just one person. Good leaders know the difference.
