Best. Derbyweekend. Ever!

As most of you know, Luleå Roller Derby went to Gothenburg last weekend for a bootcamp with Swede Hurt and Mad Maloony and a scrimmage. Now I have to tell you that just before the weekend I had a total mental meltdown (all kinds of stress, unusually dark winter and monster PMS will do that). So much so that I almost didn't go to Gothenburg thinking I wouldn't be able to cope with not sleeping at home and taking criticism from Swede. In the end the lovely Badass talked me into going but I promised her a fight if the big bad (unknown to me then) Swede would ever start to "tjafsa" at me personally...

Lo and behold! I'm the first one of the weekend that physically gets pulled off the track into the infield to be (what felt like) yelled at by the lovely amazon for something that I swear I normally never do, haha! I looked over the amazon's shoulder at Badass, started smiling, nodding and counting to ten and in the end I even managed to say "thank you" and mean it. :)

After the first training of two hours, we had a short break so that the officials could get everything in order and we could get organized as a team. Loony was going to be our bench coach which felt awesome. This was going to be my third game and at the first one you hardly register what happens at all, the second one I had to coach and play at the same time and now for the first time I got to focus on playing derby. This was going to be good. We decided to treat the game as it was, a training/friendship game and everybody who ever wanted to try jamming was encouraged to do so. It turned out that that was almost everybody and at the same time our players that normally play as jammers also really wanted a go at blocking, so this was going to be fun. Everybody got to rotate and play as much as they wanted!

Loony did an awesome job at deciding who would be best at which role in which jam and in the second half we really started to gain some points. We almost beat Gbg but it ended at a 108-90. Next time we play them we'll play with serious preparation and line ups and see what happens. ;)

Why jamming works when you're 1.87 m tall and weigh 99 kg.

The next day we had another four hours of training coming at us. The tactics and skills we trained were very fitting for where we are in our derby right now, so it was incredibly valuable! The amount of times Swede told me to bend my knees, I don't know, I lost count. But it was good that she did. I've had six months of getting trained in the beginning, but from then on I became the trainer which means that I tell others but nobody ever tells me to bend my knees more.

Skating my lungs out.

The weekend had a reffing workshop going as well, which meant that for the very first time we got to play with a full set of refs. That was a nice feeling. We know we (Viking women from the North) play a rough game with hard hits and even though we try to minimize the back blocking and elbows, I know those are a problem for us. So having a full team of refs meant that we got to test out how far over the line of "too many fouls" we really were. I have to say I was positively surprised at the result. Of course these weren't the most experienced refs, but as they get better, so will we.

Our refs on their workshop with Fluke Skywalker.

Both Loony and Swede have given me a lot this past weekend and on the train ride home I heard similar sounds from teammates. Thank you ladies and thank you Gothenburg for organizing this!