Dec 19, 2011

Bootcamp in Gothenburg

Me and Loony went to Gothenburg this weekend to coach a bootcamp.... and it was superduper fun... even if it felt a little exhausting going to an airport for the 3000ish time this year.

MadFish from Gothenburg let us stay in her apartment and picked us up from the airport. Her apartment is like a little old ladies apartment - but no complains - except from her bed might be a little on the very firm side. Only my bed in my Chineese student dorm bed has been firmer (and with firm I mean rockhard in the case of China)... but who cares, MadFish is AWESOME - and she has all seasons of the Little House on the Prairie on DVD!

Gothenburgs practice space is an inlinehall with sportscourt, it juuust fits a regulation track, but it's awfully tight on the straightways. The inside temperature reflects the outside temparature a little too much... brrrrr... we could for sure tell it is December...



Saturday
 Saturday was first four hours of training for girls that hadn't passed their minimum skills yet, we had a whole bunch of girls from Stockholm and Gothenburg, but also from Norway and other Swedish cities Becky Lawless from Stockholm also came to help us out with the coaching, and six eyes are always better than fou. Our first thought were to have som off-skate the first 30 min, but since the venue was so cold we decided to do the Black Widdow instead - one of my favorite drills that I have gotten from PiaMess. 14 laps in regular direction, 1 min exercise, 12 laps opposite direction, 1 min exercise, 10 laps regular direction and so on until there are 0 laps and everyone can have a drink of water. We decided that 14 laps was a good number for warm-up...
And then we tried to cover lot's of skills that are required to pass the WFTDA minimum skills, starts, stops, hits, balance, agility and CROSSOVERS - we also spent quite some time on skating in a big pack, being able to skate really close is superimportant to play derby. Everyone seemed really happy, maybe a little exahusted when the four hours were over...
Then we had an hour break before we had to coach the girls that had passed minimum skills, most of the girls came from Gothenburg and Luleå, and after the two hours practice Gothenburg Roller Derby scrimmaged Luleå with friends. I had the honor to benchcoach Gothenburg while Loony took care of Luleå. It was a really tight scrimmage, and it was refreshing to see people starting on the pivotline....
After scrimmage was settled and MVP was awarded (Villa got it for Gothenburg and Manic Medic for Luleå) we headed off to the Bootcamp afterparty at Sticky Fingers. I must say that I totally love the Stockholm Freshmeat, they are completly hillerious, so excited an motivated.

Sunday
We were seriously longing for a day to sleep in on, but the Sunday was not it, so up we went to coach the girls that scrimmaged the previous day. So we did not be unfair and only make the girls that hadn't passed their minimum skills do the Black Widdow, so we got the blood pumping with some good ol' Black Widdow.  We had been asked to teach hockey-stops, so we did that using the simple and amazing way Urkin' teaches it. It is so simple and genious!  Then we did some situational scrimmage, talking about taking a taking a knee at the jammerline but also how to handle a powerjam... it was awesome because the reffs got to practice too and I think they got really happy and did not have to sit in their small cold room just chatting about calls - but got soem nice hands on practice too...
And all of a sudden the four hours were over and we could head out for pizza... (tuna, corn, curry and pineapple).

What really sucked was that our flight back to Stockholm was two hours late - but I guess that's life!

Bottomline is that everyone were working so hard and the bootcamp was really well-planned, I really enjoy coaching camps, especially when I get fed! MmmmMmmmmm I love food!
It is great to see how rollerderby grows and progress in Sweden...

1 comment:

  1. How does Urkin' teach a hockey stop? Our coaching team was just grappling with different ways to explain the skill to our recruits!

    Yours Truly,
    Cleo

    ReplyDelete