It's almost a new season. I have to confess, I don't really know what to expect (and I'm the Interleague Coordinator).
What I do know is that things have been hard in BCR land since about September-October. Most of it is not worth rehashing; it's one of those situations where the more you rehash, the more you wonder if you should have made a different choice, the more you lose sleep over trying to find that one miraculous solution that would have made every single person happy. I'm an idealist and a compromiser - I like to believe that solution exists, but the truth is, it doesn't in every instance. Sometimes, we just have to take what we can get and make the best of it.
So here we are. A lot of familiar faces from the very beginnings of BCR aren't around anymore. It's pretty surreal to look around and realize that Amyn, myself, and Bruise are the only ones who were there for the founding of the team. According to some people, that makes me an OG.
Thing is, though, I've been here forever, around roller derby, that is. I'll be involved for my fourth season this year, skating for my third. In a sense, I feel like I should be a better skater than I am - but who doesn't feel like that? In a lot of ways, I'm disappointed in myself, but in a lot of ways, I'm not.
I look back two seasons ago, to the Mary Helley that ended up becoming the captain of Belles 'n' Bombshells and eventually the President of the league. Comparatively, I am light years past that girl. I understand more about strategy and teamwork, and I am not so unsure of myself that I let opportunities pass me by on the track. Well - okay, I lie. PART of that unsure girl is still there. But I like to think that she's fading the longer I skate.
This team has really been through hell backwards in the past six months. Maybe the past year. I could let it get to me, but the truth is, nobody else can ruin derby for you. You're the only one who can choose to put out your fire.
I've taken the past week and a half off from skating to get my shit together for the new semester (and to have a nice birthday dinner). The guess, though, I really needed the time to re-evaluate derby too. Drama is exhausting, especially when you are involved in a leadership position and you're trying to work through it, reassuring the team that the league is stable and healthy, while at the same time having to pretend you yourself aren't terrified that it's not. The December break was nice. I probably shouldn't have given myself more time off the past week and a half, but I guess I just wasn't done thinking about it.
Ahead of us this season are twelve bouts. Twelve all new bouts with no prior bullshit, no prior expectations. Clean slate. Whatever I screwed up last year doesn't matter anymore.
Bout season gets closer every practice. As I've learned from my time in this sport, it helps to have goals, and that's part of the reason I wanted to write this post today: to set some. To set them down in front of everyone who reads my blog, to release them to the derby goddesses (who I imagine to be sort of Valkyries on skates), and to begin getting down to work.
I think it's the most reasonable to set short-term and long-term goals-things for me to work on now, and things for me to accomplish by the end of the season. I hope to update my blog here and there with updates on how I'm doing with them.
Short Term:
1. Lose 20 pounds by June. When summer kicks in and our season starts its more stringent timeline, I'd like to be slimmer and fitter. Keep the muscle, ditch the fat.
2. Attend every skating practice through the end of March unless I am out of town visiting family. Of course, it's necessary to attend every practice you can regardless, but I set my particular date for the end of March because a) that's when our bout season officially starts, and b) I need the off-season training to get back into shape for Hub City.
3. Improve 25 in 5 time to under 4:30. When I was with BnB, one of my greatest challenges was making the 25 in 5. My endurance was terrible, and I could barely handle it. Making the time is not my problem now. I've always wanted to be faster - at one point last season, I got down to a personal best of 4:27. Right now, I'm running about 4:40, and I'm not happy with it. Ten seconds isn't much to shave off, and it's doable within the next few weeks. A few seconds every time we do it at practice is my goal. I would love to have it down to 4:30 by the time we take our WFTDA test in early Feb, but I don't know if I'll quite make it. My goal, therefore, is to have my time between 4:30 and 4:35 for the test.
Long-Term:
1. Play aggressively. If there's anything I've figured out, it's that I'm actually a pretty hard hitter, and a pretty aggressive blocker. When I play aggressively. That's the key term. When I am nervous about whether or not I am making the wrong play I don't take any chances at all, nevermind making the wrong play. When I play more aggressively, yes, I screw up sometimes. But it's better to screw up and adjust my playstyle to be more effective than to be so scared to screw up that I try nothing at all. One of the games where we got our asses handed to us, vs. Nashville's B-team ,I felt like I played my best. I didn't know where that skater came from. But what I knew after that bout was that she was in there somewhere - aggressive, did what she needed to do without over-thinking it. Yeah, she got sent to the box sometimes, but she also made some pretty good plays. And then I spent the rest of the season chasing her, trying to bring her back. This season, I will not chase her; I will be her. I will learn to leave it all on the track, because I only get one shot at every bout - and I need to make it count.
2. Make a lifestyle change. I'll admit it, before derby, I was like a lot of other people: Lazy with a capital L. Never played team sports, never really liked exercising. But, as I learned pretty quickly, derby is about a lot more than just looking cute and smashing into people on skate. The sheer strength and agility and physical fitness needed to play this sport has been both a shock and a stumbling block at times. Whether or not I knew it would take this much, though, I know it now. And if I want to be the best Helley I can be, then I have to make a choice: I can keep treating my body like crap, and keep making excuses for why I don't want to exercise (even though I know I feel MUCH better after I do), or I can eat better, train harder, and make a commitment to tune myself up not just for my team, but also for me.
3. Jam successfully. At least once. I've known since I started that I would never really be a jammer, but I will admit: I am terrified of it. I don't want to be a star jammer; I'm not built like that, and I love pack play a LOT. But what I DO want to do this season is to learn how to jam. I want to take opportunities to take the jammer panty at practice, and make myself do it, even if I don't want to. There's absolutely no reason at all for me to be scared of jamming, and I WILL learn how to do it successfully this season, even if it's only during scrimmages, and even if it's only to make me understand jamming better so I can be a better blocker. I don't really have any goals to do it during a game - I just want to get over my fear of it, and learn how to use knowledge of what a jammer has to do to my advantage when I'm in the pack.
As I look at my list of goals, some of them seem awfully big, but I think that's okay. If we don't dream big about ourselves, we're short-cutting ourselves. Who else will do it for us? If I don't believe that I can be that effective, hard-hitting blocker that takes care of business in the pack, why will my teammates believe it? Why will my jammers think I can protect them?
I think it's important for every player to self-evaluate. We may know that we're not experts at derby, but we can always get better. There's always something. These are my somethings. What are your somethings?
P.S. - Welcome to the new season, Burn City! <3
