Stockholm rollerderby vs. Crime City Rollers: PART 3

Our Fresh Meat came and cheered us on!

Third time is a charm, whatever that is supposed to mean, this is called part three, since it's the third time Stockholm and Crime City play each other.....
So the first full WFTDA sanctioned bout in Sweden happened yesterday. Stockholm and Crime City have done lots of firsts, and it's about two years since we played the first bout in Sweden... In Malmö - and at that time me, Loony and Firebird all played with Crime City, and now we play with Stockholm, both amazing teams, and I'm so happy to be a part of Swedish rollerderby!

I been sort of not into derby lately, I've acctually honestly thought about retirement, I've just felt like I don't have it in me. But after this weekend I do feel much more positive and I remembered why I love rollerderby... I still have decided to re-prioritise some things... Life will rule rollerderby and not the other way around! Yesterdays game was fun, I wasn't prepared for it to be as much fin as it was and our off-skate is freaking HILLERIOUS, we all do the off-skate and then randomly starting to sing "My Girl" and half of the team don't really know the lysrics, but we fake it really well...

This is how much fun it is to talk about line-ups before the game...

We won yesterday, and the game was a nailbiter, it was our first game with the new rules, and we had one player foul out, in the last 10 min, I guess it could have been worse. We are still playing rollerderby, and as long as we keep it legal, the changes aren't that crazy different... Oh, and I got MVP and it really meant a lot to me, thank you CCR, and thank you STRD for helping me pushing myself and being a part of something that is amazing, and sorry I've been pissy and difficult lately...

I also wanna give out Fresh Meat an extra shoot-out for coming down and cheering us on, we needed that extra love!

I love rollerderby Sweden, you guys are awesome, I love the hard work we put in together! Amazing!!

My really cute MVP award!

And I do admit I love my A-team a tad extra, what is there not to love after seeing them sing karoke or dance at the stage in sports bras? Seriously! I must say I miss Husse, with her in the crew we knew we would win the afterparty, she's an animal... (and she was good to have on the track too)

Lets continue work hard and have those stupid laughs together..: and the drive to play great and amazing derby (and it feels good when we win too)

Karoke afterparty... and seriously... me and Becky do NOT sing... Amy is the star!

STRD Allstars team meeting

Our Allstars are all moooodels..... 

So another day with no practice, so we had a team meeting instead. I love my team, everyone are so sweet and silly, we also have a few new additions to the Allstars, that I hope will work out really well. It feels like the season hasn't really started yet and people are just done decompressing from last season...

We are playing Crime City on Saturday. That will be fun and also my last weekend trip in quite a few weeks.

Don get me wrong, I love to travel, but it's really tiering, and I wanan be home and cuddle!

Look HOW excited we are... probably need less cupcakes and more beer?

Maybe moving inside is a good idea...

What I wore at practice today:

Winter running tights,
sweatpants made into shorts
socks
legwarmers
sports bra
Helly Hansen longsleave
t-shirt
sleaveless hoodie
down-vest
scarf
scrimmage shirt
....and I was still feeling a little chilli...

Today was our last practice at Ekvallen, it's sad since its free and we have a taped track there, and to be honest we have no clue were we are gonna practice for the rest of the year... Yikes! Well, until we can be at Ekvallen again... the reason we have to leave Ekvallen is not because it's getting to cold, but because they are turning it into a real ice-hockey rink... with actual ice on it... yikes...

On the bright side I found a detergent with my name... Yeah my real name - not my derby name...
AND it's BEST IN TEST! They might just mean me!

BEST IN TEST!

Last practice for STRD of 2012 at Ekvallen

Sometimes everything just makes you laugh!

Practice today was stellar - I was sooo tired going there after staying up late all weekend watching Northern Regionals (congrats to Windy for the win).
I totally was having a blast bouncing around on my skates and just being silly... Ahhh... I love moving my body, it makes me the happiest girl in the world! And I love the Stockholm skaters, all do hardworking and positive - forward, forward never straight... And pushing each other -we will get better - all of us! So after practice lots of us piled on the bus, and realized that we could use it to stretch on. We are still practicing outdoors and probably will until end of October... So it's becoming too chilly to stay and stretch there.
Firebird just moved here from CCR and was feeding me raisins - that is sugar - sugar makes me hyper... When I'm hyper I'm all over the place... I was all over the place! I love rollerderby and the people in it!!

WOW - the STRD version of a boyband... may I present Mary, RudeAss, Amy, Misfith and Firebird...

Monkeys streching on the bus

Okey everyone hurry to the bus...

Mary was screaming LESBIAN RODEO... People were impressed

My carpet is a derby track...

Fun with the team on a Friday night... snacking and playing with hearts and bearings on the carpet is the best fun you can have. 

Stockholm Rollerderby Bootcamp

Kix and MadFish getting ready to skate

So as I mentioned in the last entry, we had a bootcamp here in Stockholm, it was during the Stockholm Winter Games, that is a big sports exhibition in Älvsjö, we were given a whole lot of space, so we were able to have two tracks, one regulation and one 90% and a little information/merch table. We had girls from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and from about 17 different leauges. So it was super-exciting! It was the first larger boot-camp that I worked that I also got to lay down the timetable for. So with all the things in mind from the bootcamps I have worked the past year, I did my best to give everyone a variety of on-skate classes, but also some off-skate classes that are valuable for everyone.
We parted the girls into three different groups, Blue, Yellow and Red, and everyone got a ''wristband'' in the color of their group, to make it easy for us to indentify and for them to remember...
As most of you that reads my blog on a regular basis, you know that I think off-skate exercises are SUPER IMPORTANT for becoming a successful derby skater, so all levels got to have an off-skate session. For the girls that hadn't passed minimum-skills (rookie girls) we also let them do sock-derby (but with shoes on) as a part of their off-skate session. Sock-derby is, for you that doesn't know, a scrimmage in full-gear, but without skates... so instead of skating everyone is running. It is superfun! All regular derby rules apply, but we shortened the jams down to a minute.... me and Loony had a blast refereeing this!
The intermediate and advanced girls both got to scrimmage, an hour each day, and we made sure it was not the last thing of the camp, since it usually ends up in exhausted girls getting injured. And during the scrimmage all the referees that had their little referee camp got to practice calls and all what they do, so that worked out really well. We had invited Riff Reff up from Stuttgart to lead the referee camp - and we had referees of different experiance from allover attend, and from what I saw, they were having a great time!
We also had Fluke run an off-skate Rules class for the intermediate and rookie girls, since there are always lot's of questions about rules, and who is a better person to answer them than a referee? HyperNova was kind enough to come and go over the basics of gear, she is a little of a gearhead and always a good person to ask about different wheels, plates and boots.
Becky Lawless, Twisted T, Mad Maloony and me ran the onskate classes, and we did everything from crossovers to hitting and jammerline starts. Our last class the girls really look exhausted, but I guess that is a good sign, that they got lots and lots out of the classes and a work-out. Loony ended every day with a partner-strech that was amazing, since we all are very likely to forget to strech if noone makes us do it.
In the end we had three prizes (sponsored by SwedeVix) for three girls that just stood out a little extra, I do think that everyone worked so hard and did such a fantastic job, but sometime there just are girls that stand out, just a tiny bit more:
Best Attitude: Mrs Knuckles - Umeå
Hardest Worker: Obnoxious Li - Gothenburg
Most Improved: Cursed Nurse - Norway
Overall I must say that I loved the vibe of the weekend, everyone had such a great attitude and skated so hard and really listened, and I appreciate that.
 I had a really great time putting on this bootcamp, and everyone else did too, so I hope we have the opportunity to do it again. And it felt really good to be able to send some of the girls from remote or really new leauges off with a whole set of new tools! I also wanna do a speacial shootout to Sleaze and Hell for being our event coordinators, making sure we had what we needed and a little extra... and of course to all the STRD skaters that volonteered. Oh, and then we had a GREAT afterparty... with dancing and all that jazz...
Amazingly fun everyone!