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!

Roller Derby World Cup

One day this will be available on tv but this weekend's first ever Roller Derby world cup will have to be watched online. This is where it's streamed and the second day of bouts is about to start. I'll soon be hopping on the bus to get to Pappa Smurf and watch Sweden - Canada and Sweden - France in the sweet company of some of our girls and some of our refs.

Hup Sweden, hup! .. no wait.
Sweden, Sweden, Sweden.. oj, oj, .. oh hang on...
Allez les bleus, allez les bleus, allez-les-bleus.. no.. not that one either..

RIGHT!

Heja Sverige! Heja Sverige! (say: heya sweariye!)

Pink Ribbon event

I'd like to post at least one picture with everything I write, so I keep telling myself to take pics at trainings and then I get so into the training (and being with the girls) that I completely forget about taking pics for the blogg. Sorry! 

However, during that period of a few months when I didn't write at all, we had another big event which I completely forgot to tell you about. THE local (but nationally high ranking) ladies Basket Ball team were playing their annual pink ribbon game and booked us as halftime entertainment! This meant that we would get to play derby in front of an audience of 1500 people, yikes! The tough part was that those people weren't there for us, and we only got to play for five minutes. About 50% of the girls that got onto the presentation team were rookies that had never played any derby in front of an audience at all so nerves were high strung to say the least. 

Waiting for our turn...

The biggest fear for most girls that are going to roll in front of an audience for the first time (and often times after that as well) is that she will fall flat on her face for no reason at all and look extremely clumsy while doing it. What they don't know is that that will most probably happen and not just once, but that the clumsiness doesn't matter because we look cool and are having fun anyways! Every single person sitting in that audience wishes they would have your courage to make a fool of themselves doing what they love doing and seemingly not giving a fuck about what others think. And that's exactly why you WONT look like a fool when you think you might. Still making sense?

Have fun, skate hard! (and make me read this post next time I get on the track in front of an audience again)

Victory is sweet!

A bit late, but it took me a while to get down from that cloud of sweet, sweet victory. But now I'm here so now I can tell you how awesome it was.

We went on a combined training camp/game weekend to Umeå. That's an often used form of meeting others within roller derby. You have a few training sessions together and then you close of the weekend with a game. These games are then usually called scrimmages which are friendly games. The more official games, or bouts, usually do not coincide with a joint training camp.

This was a very important scrimmage for our club, because it was the first time we were playing a game with a full team of our own players, no borrowed players. To me personally it was a very important game because it was the first one since I had become trainer of the team.

Jammer Lucie SlayHer jamming her way through the pack

We played three periods of 20 minutes. We started strong with the intent to shock shplat them from the start which seemed to have the desired effect. We immediately took the lead and managed to hold it through out the first two periods. During the last break in preparation of the final period we decided to change our tactics expecting the other team to have caught on to how we were playing and changed from a more mixed style to a purely defensive tactic to keep the lead we had and secure the win.

f.l.t.r. back row: Major Roadkill, Manic Medic, Miss Maniac, Wicked Rosie, Tiny Touretts, Petra Pak, Violent Vixen, Badass Babuska. f.l.t.r. front row: Cherry Lawless, Lucie SlayHer, Concrete Kitten, Gaby Granade, Scary Mary

We won a fantastic trophy made by the Umeå girls which will hopefully find a nice display spot until Umeå manages to win it back. The trophy goes together with the title "Queens of Norrland."

Queens of Norrland

That's us!!