I was just eating my breakfast thinking about some new prototype wheels I’ve been testing for the lovely people at Radar  and realised something. Precision is just as much about expectation as it is about reaction.

So I was trying out some new wheels that are pretty different from what I usually skate on. I’d been getting on really well with them during blocking drills, starting to feel comfortable. Then we went into scrimmage. Now scrimmage is the time to switch off some of your mental processes and revert to muscle memory. I sprinted into the turn, then threw in a sharp hockey stop to change direction and WHOOF, fell over backwards. This same move that I have felt so comfortable with for years, was dumping me on my ass. It wasn’t a slide out either, it was a very strange motion coming from my feet upwards. I didn’t really think any more of it, other than how weird it was that I couldn’t execute a simple move I was so used to- no matter what the grippiness or slippiness of my wheels was in the past.

Then last night I was watching this video, of slow motion footage of skateboarding tricks, before bed. I was in awe of the precision footwork and body movements and commitment needed to execute the tricks and it reminded me of the little slide outs I’ve been having with the prototype wheels. Now I LOVE mentally recalling what my body is doing during a different moment in skating and running it over in slow motion in my head. It’s how I problem solve stuff and push my boundaries. I like doing it for my teammates too (whether they ask for it or not). So what I’m getting at is, my body EXPECTED me to stop abruptly in that situation and so it threw my weight further back and started twisting my torso, but due to the completely different wheels, my feet didn’t stop as fast, or in the same way, as I was expecting them to, and so the weight that would have been so perfectly set up for the sharp direction change actually tipped my centre of gravity too far past my left hip and dropped me on my ass. All this is happening so fast that in order to react to it and not fall on my ass I would have to rebuild my muscle memory through repetition OR slow the movement down so that it wasn’t quite as sharp and precise.

We often think that the best skaters are the ones that can react to anything when really, if you want to be one step ahead, your body has to know what to expect so it can set up your centre of gravity and momentum appropriately.

If your feet stop and you then take it as a cue for the rest of your body to stop, the delay in stopping is going to cause the top half of your body to be further forward than the bottom half of your body and you’ll tip over forwards. Like when you’re skating on the street and don’t see that little twig – your feet stop and your body flies forwards and you look like a dufus.

Imagine a wall of blockers with an approaching jammer. If your wall closes their eyes so they have no way to predict where the jammer is going to impact- the force from the jammer is going to knock them off balance. As soon as you allow the wall to ‘see’ the jammer, you build in expectation and everyone in the wall will make adjustments to brace for impact whether they are aware of it or not. (The best jammers will exploit this fact and subvert the expectations of the wall, eg. by juking.)

Think of it as a line drawn in the sand. Before you have mastered a trick/skill successfully you are on one side of the line, and you don’t know how the sequence of movements and balances will feel . After mastering the trick/skill you know what it feels like when your body is performing those movements, and so you can prepare your body with the expectation that you are going to succeed at it.

Crossing that line takes faith and guts. Remember when you couldn’t do Hockey Stops? Going from not being able to do hockey stops to being able to do them requires the faith that you are going to go from moving forwards to being stopped and will need to adjust your body weight appropriately. But if you try and do one and don’t believe that it’s going to work you’re never going to commit to it in the right way. You’re better off falling over 50 times whilst you adjust your weight than never falling over because you never commit to achieving your goal.

Photo by Steve Newton

Technical jamming skills can often be split into two main categories: Aggressive Skills and Evasive Skills.

Understanding the difference between these two skill categories can really help when trying to make improvements in your jamming. The game has changed a lot over the last couple of years, and a lot of skaters that had previously fallen into the ‘jammer’ role within their leagues due to their fleetness of foot and good evasive action, suddenly stopped being so successful wearing the star. The evolution of the 4 wall defence and scrum starts leave those fleet of foot jammers with no speed advantage and no lateral space to take. Compounding this issue is the 2013 rule regarding track cuts and the reduction from two opposition blockers to a single opposition blocker being passed out of bounds becoming a minute in the penalty box.

Therefore we’ve seen favour move towards jammers with a bit more of a blocker mentality and an ability to hold their position on the track and to power forwards with targeted aggression.

Obviously the best jammers of all are those that can combine the two skills and pick and choose when to be heavy footed and when to be light footed.

Light footed jammers are amazing to watch, but there is always a moment in the transitioning of weight from one foot to the other that makes them vulnerable to powerful hits. They don’t have the traction with the surface to fight against a hit and the only evasive course of action is to deflect the power into a turn spin or jump.

Conversely, heavy footed jammers can do such a good job at holding their lane on the track that they never actually exit the pack because they are busy digging into the ground with their skates in order to prevent being pushed out of bounds.

Below I’m going to break down some of the hallmarks of the different styles of jamming. If you err more towards one style than the other, perhaps observe someone that has the skills that you are lacking as a jammer and give them a whirl.

Evasive Jammers:

Rarely have both feet on the ground at the same time.

Like to deflect the power from hits rather than absorb it.

Use every ounce of energy every time they go on the track.

Have a tendency to dance around near the boundaries of the track and like to cover the full width of it.

When they do receive a hit often end up out of bounds and recycled backwards as they are often 100% committed to their trajectory.

Are very happy about the change in the rules regarding Apex Jumps.

Prefer the pack to be staggered and rolling.

Photo by Steve Newton

Aggressive Jammers:

Usually have both feet on the ground- especially when opposition players are engaging them.

Like to absorb power from hits and not let it move them an inch.

Try to conserve energy.

Have a tendency to stick to the centre of the track and are wary of the boundaries.

Hits rarely move them off the track, but they may struggle with flat walls of positional blockers that are rolling rather than stopped on the track.

Are happy about the change in the rules regarding 1 whistle starts and that jammers cannot cut track around the other jammer.

Prefer the pack to be stopped and full of small opposition blockers.

Photo by Derek Bremner.

A couple of simple drills to get a taste for the other side could look like this:

Evasive Jammer Drill-

One of my favourites ever is having 2 packs of skaters on opposite sides of the track. One is a pack of human trees (blockers who aren’t actively blocking the jammers that come through) and the other is a pack of jammers. 2 jammers leave the jammer pack and sprint through the blocker pack. Blockers are INNACTIVE (i.e. they aren’t hitting the jammers) however they are preventing there being an easy route through the pack. The jammer that exits the blocker pack first wins. To make this a little harder, you can designate a player or two within the blocker pack with the ability to ‘tag’ the jammers coming through. They touch them with their hand in a legal blocking zone and are marked out with a Pivot cover. The jammers therefore have to navigate the blocker pack whilst also evading the touchy Pivot. If they get touched by the pivot…well, nothing happens, BUT it’s a great exercise in racing, agility and evading all thrown into one.

If you just want to improve your skills in those few minutes before the drills start at training then a good one on one drill is to partner up with someone of a similar skill to you and whilst skating around the track, don’t let them tag your legal target zones. To stop it being a sprinting race, give yourself some limitations like ‘I only have 10foot ahead of them before I have to drop to 10 foot behind them’.

Aggressive Jammer Drill-

A lot of the ‘holding position’ stuff is more low key and good to practice one on one during warm up and cool down at training. Find someone that’s about your size and start side by side near the track boundary. Practice staying on the track as they increase the force they are trying to push you off with. Digging in with your skate – usually the one next to the boundary rather than next to the blocker, will give you the greatest control over your position. Resist the urge to just spin off them if that’s what you normally would do because then you aren’t learning how much power you can fight against. What happens when you point the foot furthest from the blocker towards them? How about if you bend your knees more? Learn to identify what part of your body they are applying all the driving force to. Gradually work your way up to skaters that have more body mass than you, are taller than you, shorter than you and skaters that have different blocking techniques.

The information gained by doing this kind of one on one research will then feed into your decisions on the track for when to use energy being evasive and when you can just brace a hit out and roll on through.

So if you’re finding that you’re getting stuck at training when you are jamming- whether it be stuck in the pack or stuck in the penalty box, perhaps it’s time to work out whether all of your skills sit in one jammer style and it’s time to try putting some new tricks up your sleeve.

The Intraleague model of playing competitive Roller Derby has always struck me as rather odd.

We train together as a single unit about 85% of the time, yet Roller Derby has this model whereby we then split into teams and play each other in front of an audience. I understand why it came about back when there were hardly any teams, and vast distances between teams of equal strength. The second part of this statement hasn’t really changed, so we keep on with the Intraleague season.

On a graph of Achievement Goal V Performance Goal I’m well over on the Achievement Goal side of things. It’s the little achievements and learning process at training week in and week out that keep me coming back. If anything, the pressure of ‘performing’ during bouts really stresses me out. I’d happily train all year long, 4 days a week, and just play that one game for the Hydra than bout every 6 weeks. (for anyone verse with the Enneagram system of personality typing I’m a 6).

Throughout my years playing roller derby I’d find the anxiety before home team games far greater than before the 3rd/4^th place playoffs at a WFTDA tournament. I think that a lot of it stems from the idea of ‘exclusion’ from my peer groups. Back in primary school, how often did you feel out of favour with your friends- on the outside looking in? Lonely and envious that they were off having fun without you.

We’ve got a name for it in Brawling. FOMO. Or the Fear Of Missing Out. It doesn’t matter that you are on a team with 13 other awesome people because three quarters of the whole league are off in their little maroon, navy or green clubs without you. And even worse than that, they are THE ENEMY. They’re off in their little groups plotting and scheming how to publicly dominate you on the track. They’re discussing how to exploit your weaknesses and convincing each other that ‘you’re actually not that fast/agile/hard hitting/awesome’. You look at your own team and start to feel like your little group might not be as strong as the 50 skaters that aren’t on your team.

Feeling like your team is the underdog is one of the most dangerous barriers to keeping your league harmonious and happy. It’s poisonous to the growth of your travel team. It begins with home team skaters grouping together into little teal units at training. It advances to coaches keeping drills and strategies for themselves and their selected friends because they need something to give their team an advantage on game day. And it gets really toxic when your fellow league mate sprains an ankle the week before you play them and you feel happy instead of sympathetic.

For these reasons I believe that being a home team Captain and a travel team Captain is an almost impossible tightrope to walk. You’re ultimately selling short one of your teams. It’s not something that I would ever do again.

Next there is my pet hate- the Great Skater Arms Race. How ridiculous can this get? You’ve got up to 14 skaters on your bench, but if the team you are playing against puts their top 5 on the track 80% of the time, if you have an ounce of competitive spirit in you, you want to match them toe to toe. It becomes like an arms race, where your best couple of players don’t even leave the track for the full hour in persuit of victory. Even if you think the other team might do this you might pre-empt them with your lineups.

Finally, there’s the Home Team Blowout. Home team blowouts are annoying and boring. On the one hand- no-one wants to manipulate rollerderby and the outcome of games. We’ve spent long enough telling people that it’s not staged or set up for that. Yet, in my experience, teams have to be really really closely matched in skill to NOT result in a blowout. And you just can’t predict this when deciding on home teams. You never have 4 equal jammers, or 4 equal positional-blockers-of-death. If you account for keeping partners together on the same team it makes the job even harder.

So, with all of that said and done, why am I feeling excited about this year’s home team season, instead of the dread of every previous year?

Well I changed up my priorities and we changed our teams.

I stopped thinking about my performance in home team games and started thinking about how I could help the members in my team that I don’t skate with on a travel team to make progress. I also set myself very different goals for my home team skating than for my travel team skating.

I get to block more- which is fun fun fun- ask any primary jammer! A change is as good as a rest.

And speaking of change, we mixed up our home teams in a BIG way. We pretty much built them up from scratch again- this being the first year where 90% of the league agreed to moving teams if it were required. Perhaps it’s this loss of allegiance to their individual home teams that has helped the atmosphere across the board, or perhaps it’s the novelty of developing friendships and bonds after so long wearing the same uniform. Whatever the cause, the result is one of a more integrated and relaxed league.

I also had a brilliant pep talk from my home team Captain Shaolynne Scarlett. She said that for the home season, if I go to the penalty box for some ridiculous show-pony move, I get a thumbs up from the team. I’m such a careful jammer that I often miss out on opportunities because I balance out the risk of going to the penalty box with the chance of pulling something awesome off. Breaking that natural instinct in my home season this year is already turning out to be a whole heap of low-pressure fun.

Our league is pretty broke this year.  Several trips to the States to compete against US teams combined with a ruinously expensive home venue over the last couple of years has really put us in financial jeopardy. What better fundraising than moving to a much smaller sell-out venue and raising money through our home season again? Beats a hundred ‘fundraisers in a bar’.

Who knows when it will all end. It’s only really this year that I’ve really realised that I can’t keep playing a full contact competitive sport at the highest level forever. One of these days, a game is going to be my last. Going into each one and really trying to absorb all the wonderful things about it – the atmosphere, the crowd, the comraderie- has been on my priorities list for this season.

Finally- turning those Performance Goals on their heads and making them into Achievement Goals. The bouts aren’t the end in themselves but just another opportunity to learn stuff.

“We compete, not so much against an opponent, but against ourselves.” Bud Wilkinson

This first post is actually about Pre-Eastern’s and my preparation for what would be the most (and almost only) epic experience with London Brawling this season.

I say almost only, because just 4 short weeks preceding our flight to New York, we had the honour of hosting Team USA in London. I’d been training pretty hard all year, right up to Team USA’s visit and knew it was going to take a lot to get through two back to back games in the jamming rotation. The first game as a primary jammer for London Brawling and the second game as a primary jammer for Team England. I almost did it too, and then 6 minutes from the end of the second game sustained a glorious hit that partially tore my left quad.

Photo by Agata Exumbra.

Hold on a second! Recovery wasn’t on my pre-regional tournament to-do list! I kind of flipped out a bit, not knowing what to do with all my nerves and upcoming game anxiety. I had planned to spend the following couple of weeks after the US game building my cardio up. I had also planned to refine some of my footwork techniques. Now I was faced with possibly not being able to skate at all.

The thing is, at the same time I was having a massive crisis of confidence over my skating. This is usually what happens to me in the days following a bout, but I normally have the option of working really really hard at training to kick those feelings in the head. Barely able to walk for days, and with no idea how long it would be before I could put weight on my leg again, never mind take a hit to it, I got swallowed up by a blackness.

It was only with the combined effort of multiple people did I start to see the sunshine again. Stefanie Mainey ‘encouraged’ me to see the league Physio (she kind of strongarmed me into going because she’s awesome). The physio taught me the difference between the pain of the injury and the pain of the tightness of the inflexible scar tissue so I’d know when I was healed. DSA coaches taught me when to go home and have a sit down and a cup of tea instead of lifting weights. Once the initial tear had healed, M.A.T helped me to get all the muscles that had taken on new roles during the recovery process working properly again. Flamin’ Aggro pointed out what an idiot I was for thinking that I wasn’t any good to the team anyway. Ballistic Whistle supported me going a little AWOL as I took time to heal up. My husband persuaded me NOT to take my skates to training if I was just meant to be resting, sitting on the sidelines and watching.

You see, I am usually the one that pushes through pain. I skated in a bout 2 weeks after separating my shoulder (and that took about 6 months to heal). But when faced with the prospect of doing more damage if I went back to training too soon I had to just suck up the Cold Turkey. I kept reminding myself that I’d been training all year for this tournament and so the final three weeks were pretty insignificant.

It also graced me with a sense of perspective. After almost not being able to play at all, when we got to Vermont I was honestly just pleased to have skates on my feet at all and to have the chance to experience it with my amazing teammates, through the wins and the losses.

Saying to yourself “I really want ‘X’” is such a good motivator! Defining your dream and your goals. I talk to a lot of people that say that they really want to be the best. They really want their team to be the best. They really want to win.

For some people, ‘really wanting it’ is where they stop. They think that they can wish their dreams into being.

My next question is always the same. Are you prepared to do what it takes to get there? The ‘wanting it’ is the easy part. Working out how much you want it, what you are prepared to sacrifice in order to get it, and DOING those things is the hard bit. Sports film montages have a lot to answer for if you ask me. They make it look like it takes just two minutes of action following the decision of ‘I really want it’ and TaaDaaaa it is so. They also don’t cover all of those days when you’re making the sacrifices and not totally sure if it IS worth it and whether you are ever going to achieve your goals.

I think that there’s a point that everyone reaches where the doubts flutter in. When you reach a point of wondering if what you want is worth all of the sacrifices. That’s to be expected. It’s a fine line working out exactly how much you can put into something without:

A) Burning Out Your Mind

B) Burning Out Your Body or

C) Burning Out Your Relationships With Other People.

I don’t think anyone gets it 100% right, and I know I spend most of my time see-sawing either side of that line.

The point is, if you say “I really want it” and leave it at that, your chances of achieving those things are going to be left up to however you are feeling each day. You end up putting in as much work as you fancy.

When you say instead “I really want it & I am prepared to do what it takes to get it” you  open yourself up to really finding out what you are made of. You stop waiting for it to happen and you start making it happen.

There’s one proviso. Decide what is important to you, what bits of yourself you want to keep, no matter what your goals, and keep them somewhere. They’re the things that will make sure you come out the other side a bigger, better version of yourself. Someone you can be proud of. For me, I want to be a good person. If ever I find myself drifting away from being a good person along the road to my goals, I give myself a kick up the bum and realign things.

So maybe, ultimately, the phrase should be “I really want this & I am prepared to do what I CAN to make it happen”. That way you’re working within the scope of your own life choices and external priorities.

This post is brought to you by Oryx the Wise Cat.

Photo by Ben Grubb

Considering my husband is a very talented photographer, I was surprisingly grumpy about doing a photoshoot with him on Saturday. Boy do I feel like an idiot now! When I’m 90 years old I’m going to have these printed out  (on futuristic hologram paper I’m sure) and I’m going to show them to anyone that will look.

Behind the scenes photos Courtesy of Ben Grubb

Thanks Steve. Sorry I wanted to bake instead of jump around on skates, it’ll never happen again.

Action shots by Steve Brown

This is the face I pull when I’m making stuff up.

It’s based on the game of freeze tag. Did you ever play that? We used to play it loads at practice, until I got a black eye and Slice Andice got a broken nose. Then for some reason we stopped playing it. So I’ve modified it a little to try and reduce the potential for death.

3 skaters are designated ‘IT’. We’ll call them the Barbarellas and make them wear helmet covers or ugly bibs.

Everyone else is skating around the track. We’ll call them the Turnips (name courtesy of Freddie Fraggles).

Now if the Turnips get tagged in their LEGAL TARGET ZONES by any one of the Barbarellas they have to immediately stop on the track in a scarecrow stance (arms out, legs wide). To be freed, one of the other Turnips has to duck under BOTH of their arms, essentially doing a little spin around them, or crawl under their legs.

Turnips that are freeing other turnips cannot be tagged, in fact their is a forcefield of 5 foot around any tagged Turnip.

Direction of Gameplay Rules:

Turnips can ONLY skate in derby direction unless they are in the process of releasing a frozen turnip.

Barbarellas can skate in any direction but they can only tag when skating in derby direction. (This prevents all the turnips just running away from them).

The Barbarellas have 2 minutes to freeze as many Turnips as possible.

*Kamikaze Kitten holds no responsibility should broken noses, black eyes, death or crying ensue should you play this game.

This is the face I pull when I’m making stuff up.

I’m a) not falling on my ass quite so much and b) finding it easier to use the rear inside wheel for agility and to launch off laterally. Before, I was launching off the inside edge because the placement of the rear wheel was a bit far forwards to isolate it.

The lacing is split in two. Half at the bottom I don’t tighten very much and it takes into account of my high arches. Pink lace at the top I loop around the underneath of my skate for added heal lock and security- especially as I use my toestops a lot and like to feel like my foot is well and truly secure in the boot. Speaking of toestops, I really like the Moonwalker toestops. I was a bit nervous of moving from the massive Roll-Lines to something a bit smaller, but they’ve been really easy to get used to, and the smaller size makes it easier to use the toestops to move laterally rather than just forwards.

I’m so relieved that I love my new skates. I knew that they looked cool, but as someone that relies so heavily on how my feet are performing I was a little bit nervous about making changes to my set up. Phew!

I was working out A LOT. 6-7 days a week including on skates training. Week after week at the Dynamic Sports Academy I was getting small improvements in my weight lifting, but not really seeing any in my Vision and Cognitive Tests or my fast footwork. After a few months of this I passed my workout schedule on to the coaches there who suggested I may be doing too much and not allowing my body to make the improvements, and instead was just tiring out my central nervous system. Coupled with not enough sleep and not enough food, some of those workouts were just a plain old waste of time.

So I made some changes and after a few weeks of completely going the other way and hardly working out at all (you do what you think about right?- that’s a whole other topic for another day), I think I’ve found a balance. And you know what? The improvements week on week have been so much bigger, thanks to adding rest days into my schedule.  My muscles have time to repair themselves and get bigger before the next weights session showing greater improvements than before. Even better is the improvement in my agility and cognitive tests where I barely showed any improvements over 3 months when I was exhausted.  During my workouts that I do now I put 100% of myself in, and leave nothing left.I am also so much fresher at training that I have the energy to really push my skating skills and get my heart pumping. For a long time it didn’t feel like training was a workout, and now it feels like it is again. Hopefully that’s because I have the mental focus to push myself rather than that I’m getting out of shape….

Finally, I have more time to do something that I never scheduled in before. To relax. To paint and draw and hang out watching films. And whilst I’m doing those things I know that secretly, whilst I’m not looking, my body is doing all the hard work of rebuilding me faster, stronger, better.

*Disclaimer: 100% rest will not make you 100% stronger you lazy oaf.

Look how hard I’m working and barely breaking a sweat.

So I decided to interview her so you can get to know her a bit better too.

When I first started playing roller derby your blog was a massive inspiration to me, and was one of very few roller derby blogs around. What inspired you to start blogging, and to give away your knowledge to the wider community rather than keep it all for your own league?

My then boyfriend (now husband) convinced me to start blogging, as he was a blogger himself in real life. He really wanted me to write a book and thought that if I did small posts they would eventually turn into chapters of the book.

Yeah..

I have always been pretty open about skating and training with other leagues because I sincerely feel that the stronger the competition is the harder I’ll push to stay on top. I used to do a lot of training [of other leagues] but got really exhausted always being away from home and felt the things I was coaching were starting to become so routine that the boredom was obvious to the skaters I was leading.

I don’t tell everything I know to non CRGers, as my loyalty will always reside with them first and foremost, but I do like to share things that have been eye opening to me personally on the track and hope it helps someone out there in some way.

A top US player once told me that you were a massive inspiration to her when she started playing, and that you invented techniques such as utilising illegal target zones when passing opposing blockers, which subsequently became standard practice. Have you always been an innovator, and how do you come up with entirely new ways to play the game?

Hahahahaa.. She craycray! In the beginning of derby, there was only Texas.. literally. They had this DVD of their 2003 (?) season that I borrowed from our league founder, Celia Fate, and I watched it over and over and over and over again. Then along comes Tucson, Minnesota, AZRD, Mad Rollin’ Dolls, Rat City and Gotham and I tried to keep in touch with what was going on by being on the Rollergirls yahoo group started by Ivanna S Pankin. I would ask questions about scores and I would read everything folks had to say.

I went to the first Rollercon and did a lot of networking (♥ LADD ladies!!) and I was able to talk to some of the other trainers and coaches for the first time. Granted, I was this little southern girl from “Where again? South Carolina?.. Ohh, North Carolina” so I wasn’t taken very seriously but that didn’t matter cause I still put myself in conversations and got what I wanted out of them.

Fast forward to today, I watch as much footage as humanly possible, I find something that interests me, and I think on it for a long time and discuss it with CRGs amazing All Star leadership team. As far as coming up with new ways of playing the game, it is all reacting and adapting.

I think I unconsciously store some really important bullet points I observe or read in my mind and when I need to do something differently to get out of or dominate more on the track, my body goes into auto pilot mode and something new comes from it. I really don’t know at the time that I did anything different, it’s only when I watch the footage that I am like, “WHAT?!?! WTF was I doing there?”

There is still this one fall that I did in 2005 that looks really fucking cool but I can’t, for the life of me, recreate it. Don’t get me wrong, I have spent many, many public skating sessions and league practices working on certain skills, so it’s not all on a whim. But as far as discovering new things, I don’t plan them, they just happen.

Roller derby has changed and evolved a lot since you first started playing. What skills were useful in the old days that are not relevant any more, and what new skills are now important which weren’t used before?

Ooohh… skating really fast and hitting really hard seems to be fading out in derby.. just kidding. I would have to say the only real thing that isn’t useful anymore/we don’t train for are shoulder checks. In Belgium I had flashbacks with all the shoulder hits those ladies were doing. I said, “Unless you want to hire movers for the rest of your life, stop using your shoulders!” The humor over there is evolving… The majority of the things our league trains for have evolved somehow but shoulders checks have been eliminated from the training program completely.

Way back when, I was very much against toe stops. I did everything without using toe stops and I think that many skaters are just starting to get more open to the idea. I think adding new ways of doing the same thing makes a skater more easily adaptable to any given situation, since they are more in control of their bodies and speed.

So with that said, I have been learning how to use my toe stops. Hahahahaaa.. I still trip myself up some times and fall when I am trying to do a non toe stop sprint. When that happens I simply go into a tourette-like swearing fit and smack the ground in frustration, and then get up and sprint to the back of the pack.

Something that has helped me lately is mental training and I think a lot of leagues/skaters are beginning to accept and realize that being a jock can only get you so far in derby. And on the other side of the coin, you can’t win games on intelligence alone.. oh wait, loopholes.. not skating.. well, maybe you can. But a lot of skaters are doing so much off skates training and that really helps them on the track. So I guess having the ability to try anything and everything is the new wave of derby!

How has your role within Carolina Rollergirls changed over the years?

Man.. let’s see.. I started in 2004 as the Events coordinator, which was a BOD [Board of Directors] position. So I was 1 of 5/6 (?) ladies that served on the very first BOD of our league. Man-o-chevitz… HOURS and HOURS and HOURS and HOURS of time spent doing nothing but derby ( I was single back then). So I helped mould our league in that perspective, behind the scenes doing the shit work that wasn’t as fun as skating but still just as, if not at times more, important to our sustainability.. not just for our league but for our sport in general.

I went on to be training director, and implemented skills assessments and policies that (ideally) made skaters feel/understand that this is a sport, not a fashion show (back then, it was a hard concept to sell!) by forcing them to practice and learn basic skating skills. We had a Ref/Coach back then, Tom, who really helped form our basic skating techniques and expectations, and a speed skating coach, Sam, who ran our speed practices and really helped fine tune our form and push us out of our comfort zone. But as far as my role at that time, I was the enforcer and I got a lot of shit for expecting more from the girls on the league. Still do at times.

After about a year and a half, I pulled myself out of that position and started working on my skating, instead of training the other skaters. I was the All Star captain for a long time and got shit for not putting certain skaters on rosters because of attitude or lack of practice. They had the skills definitely, but not the right outlook and I thought by “rewarding” skaters that didn’t do what was asked of them, it would lead to having a league that didn’t do shit and all rosters would end up being created out of entitlement rather than hard work. So yeah, that didn’t go over well with some skaters.

After that I moved to Philly for 8 long months and played with them at the first ever regionals. It was a great experience but I missed North Carolina and my family something awful. So I came back here and skated with CRG in 2008 and we made it to Nationals in Portland! That was awesome.

Then I “was great with child” (tm JMF) and just observed, help coach the B team, did NSO jobs and helped out with 2009 regional planning/execution, since we were hosting. When I came back from leave I chose to ref for awhile, which was really fun. I actually started ref’n in Philly after suffering a knee injury (bruised bone and PCL sprain) in 2007 and picked it back up in 2010. I felt I was a good ref because I knew what impacts felt like on the track. I know something may not look impactful to a ref but as a skater, it is highly impactful. I also started ref’n with Judge Knots so I may have been trained to be a little more anal than most refs.

So at the end of 2010 I decided to start skating again and I coached and captained the B team. Back then, the B team were kinda on their own as far as training went. They were told the drills but were left on their own to train. I had been to a few really awesome bootcamps (Boston and Texas) and had a some visions on training that I wanted to try out, and who better to do that to but the B team! I think it went well.. I had a great co-captain that was highly supportive, which makes life a lot easier!

In 2011 I was voted in as the training director again and I had a new vision and plan of action of where I felt our league needed the most work, the mental department. So we started doing some mental training talks and exercises that really helped our physical game. Dust Devil 2011 was, by far, the most amazing team experience of my life. We played the first ever Dust Devil in 2006 and going back to that tournament with this new found strength, it was really amazing to take 1st place, not only winning all the games but truly turning over a new leaf in our league.

Presently, I am considered the training director but most/all of the training comes from the AS [All Star] skater coaches (Jesse King and Thrashley) and I delegate the majority of my TD [training director] duties to a handful of amazing people that are reliable and trustworthy. I still skate too.

What are your greatest achievements within roller derby in the past, and what are your goals for the future?

My most treasured achievement was in 2010 when my league awarded me with the Leader of the Pack award. Basically a leadership award, which means the world to me. I enjoy being a leader and did a lot of research and reading to better understand how to be the most effective and motivating leader possible.

The key achievement in being a good leader, for me at least, was realizing that you can not force change onto people but rather change how you think and feel and deal with any given situation and lead by example. I do not expect from others what I can’t do myself. That is still one of the hardest things for me, I have to constantly remind myself of that when I begin to feel frustration and anger.

Another achievement that is pretty cool is that I went through team USA try outs with only 1 ACL! That’s pretty amazing IMO.

Another thing that is cool is in 2006 CRG played Texas and beat them.. the first team ever. Granted, it was their home team but so the fuck what. We won, haters. Another thing I like a lot is this little side fun pick up team (with whom I have never been able to skate with) the FSOPs, the Flying Sparkling Object Posse. They are just a bunch of beautiful, talented, nice women.

What are my goals for in the future? Man… I think having another baby is highly possible; I foresee some new skate boots making an appearance some time in the near future if/after winning the lottery; my goal is to make a chocolate chipotle porter by Christmas time; but my most serious goals are to play my best at regionals and be involved with derby in some form for a really long time.

What things have you done in life that you wouldn’t have done if you had never played roller derby?

Traveled. Seriously, the places that I have been while being involved in derby have been amazing! I mean, just recently Belgium, where I met you! Before that Minnesota, Vegas, Boston, Chicago, Portland (Maine and OR), Philly, New York, Madison, Austin, Baltimore, Savannah, Atlanta, New Orleans, Tuscon… etc.

I have met some of the most amazing humans known to mankind. I have met some of the most shitty fuckin’ assholes known to mankind. Derby, especially in the beginning, empowered me to be and do anything I set my mind to.

Derby has also made me more at peace with my body. I have always had big legs and a big ass from skating and so in middle school, when girls were skinny and big legs and asses were frowned upon, I had a hard time with self confidence. Derby has made me LOVE my big ass and thighs because they are not fat, they are strong and amazing!

Stefanie Mainey and I have had a friendly but intensely competitive relationship on the track, and training week in week out against another really strong player has pushed me to develop my skills and become a better player. Is there anyone that has been a catalyst for you to push to become a better player? Was it a competitive thing, or an exploring and motivating together thing?

Most definitely! I have had many skaters like that in my life.. even when I was a child speed skating against grown men. I think my very first one was Celia Fate back in 2004. Then it was Teflon for many years after that and currently it is DVS. D is such a humble and amazing skater that beating her or losing to her feels the same. If I am skating against her during speed relay races, I push harder than I would have if just sprinting 2 laps. If I am blocking against her, I always try to best her in whatever form I can, because to me, she is the smartest out there.

Granted, Mordant is pretty fuckin’ miserable to be against, but D is an accomplishment for me because she knows how I skate and I think she challenges me on my weaknesses all the time, which make me a better skater. Our relationship on the track is competitive, explorative and motivating! I don’t think she knows it though.

Injury prevented you from competing at 2011 regionals, since returning how have you overcome mental and physical barriers to returning to top form?

Blerg! Yeah, that was fuckin’ lame. Well, I never once dwelled on the fact that I got injured. I knew I would heal and return, it just took time and a lot of hard work. When I first was able to put on skates and I couldn’t physically do a crossover.. but I never allowed myself to feel defeated. I literally created a small training program for myself and I, for the most part, didn’t push myself before I was ready.

Physically returning was the easiest part. It is still a constant mental battle for me. I am a very mental person (in all aspects of the word) so I can either chose to be mental or not, it’s really that easy but some days it is really hard to climb that mental wall and relax.

­I am not at top form yet and I hopefully will never reach my full potential because then I’ll stop trying and never get better. There is always something new to learn, no matter what skill level you are at so in a sense, I treat my training like I am always coming back from an injury…. this shit is never easy.