HOORAY WE ARE AWESOME!
On Saturday October 3, the Thames Fatales faced off against Ottawa's undefeated Slaughter Daughters. Incredible. You can read about it HERE and HERE. Oh, and Whip It came out. Read about that HERE.
But let me tell you about my experience this weekend.
It started with going to see Whip It on Friday night with the girls. We were originally supposed to go see it at Rainbow Cinemas, but they didn't get the film last minute. So, we were stuck. Where to go? Fortunately, I go to a church that holds its services in Silvercity, so my pastor hooked me up with a contact in management. They agreed to things beyond our wildest dreams! They let us skate outside, flyer everyone who came into the theatre, rope off seats and give an announcement to the crowd. Awesome! The movie was also amazing, and you can read my review of it HERE.
I felt so much camaraderie with the girls that night. Nia Capps and I split a cab home after, talking the whole time about how she was going to play her first bout the next day. I have to admit, I'm totally jealous. Nia deserves to be on the roster -- she's a better skater than I am, and her devotion to derby is unsurpassed. But my latest knee injury has made it impossible for me to even strive to still make it into a jam this season. Them's the breaks, I guess. At least I don't have a broken collar bone like Mirambo. There are worse injuries. Besides, I just have to be patient. Another few months of training will only make my debut more exciting!
There have also been lots of new girls coming out on Tuesdays, which makes me hope that maybe we'll get a second team going again. Some of them will be training for a long time, like me, but there are others that might be ready for spring. I can't wait to see how they all grow, and it's a real confidence booster on Tuesdays to be able to help out others using my own skills.
Saturday before the game my husband was in a wedding. In the wedding. That means I had to go, no matter what. Don't get me wrong, I think the bride and groom are great. But I would miss anything except my mother's funeral for a game (love ya mom!). The groomsmen came to our house in the morning to get ready. I ironed three shirts and tied four double-Windsors. Then they were out the door. I got ready, up-do and all. I think I looked really pretty :)
Then I went to the wedding out in Melbourne. It was really beautiful. The bride looked lovely, as did the groom and the setting was gorgeous. I figured that the wedding was at 4, we'd be eating by 5:30 or so, and I could vamoose at 7 unnoticed during the reception. But when 7 o'clock came around, we were still eating the main course. I was totally humiliated, but I ducked my head down low and walked out, without even a kiss to my hubby -- he knew where I was going. I got in the car and drove fast to London to be at the bout.
I ran into the Canada Building in my dress, with my hair up and tore my way through the crowd to the bathroom where I quickly made-over myself into a derby girl, short skirt and all. I was just in time! It was 8 o'clock, time for wheels to roll.
Because I'm not skating, I'm doing scoreboard. Now, I've been doing scoreboard for two seasons. I know my way around the box. It's this little digital box from circa 1982 and there's a demon monkey living inside of it. THE BOX makes running scoreboard challenging, so I was really glad I was there on time, and that no one had to cover for me, because if they had, they would have found that the demon monkey was in over drive. We have two 30 minute periods. From the clock counter at 30:00 to 20:00, you have to press a different button to stop the clock than from 20:00 to 00:00. Oh, and at the 20:00 mark the clock just stops. It just doesn't want to go any more. So you have to keep an eye on it to start it again. This, coupled with the ever changing experiments for reffing and scorekeeping have made my job at bouts a challenge, and it's my own little personal drama. Honestly, who cares about the scoreboard keeper? I mean, they want to cheer on the girls and there's more exciting drama on the track. But I had my own little jam, me VS. THE BOX on Saturday night. And with the challenges on the points that kept happening, it was an adrenaline filled night.
Not to mention the exciting game. Exciting is an understatement. I put it to someone this way:
"This is London, Ontario. Kurt Cobain could come back from the dead, play a show at Call the Office, and the crowd would just . But for this game, they were cheering so loud! It was incredible! I was like, are we in London?"
I can't wait to see our game on November 7th against the Tri-City Champions. I hope to be in it, but that's a tall order considering I still can't put weight on my right knee. Killson calls this "maid's knee," and showed me stretches, so I'm on the right track, but it still might be next spring before I skate my first bout.
After two years of training, I WILL BE SKATING IN THE SPRING.
When the game was over we found ourselves at Scot's Corner witnessing Commiekaze's transformation into "Anastasia," where she sang Pink at the karaoke. We toasted Nia's first win, and laughed our asses off. This was a great weekend. Roller derby is amazing, and I wouldn't give it up for anything.
Vansterdamn XXX
0 comments:
Post a Comment