Coaching in Gothenburg, again!

There is no one I love to coach with as much as Mad Maloony, we are both good induvidual coaches, but our coaching styles really complete each other and going on trips and coaching with her is something we both enjoy. Even that we no longer are a couple, we are still very good friends, and share lots of laughts and goals.
So this weekend she got invited to coach Gothenburg, and asked me to come with, and of course I could not say no to tha, because I love coaching Gothenburg. They are such fighters, and work really hard and push themselves, and it is great to see.
We were staying with Obi, and that was superduper awesome, she took the best care of us ever, picked us up at the train, fed us, gave us coffee, and made sure we got to a party with a drink in our hands and then home again in the rain.. .what else is there to a good host...? Oh, she also gave me a cane when my leg was hurting... so I could walk like the old lady I am!

Thanks so much to Gothenburg Rollerderby for inviting us to come coach! It was a nice weekend, even if it involved a 7 o'clock morning train on Saturday...

Getting ready to skate, skate, skate... 

A little sun and a walk before getting on the train - Loony and Obi

On the train going to Gothenburg

The rain while waiting for the tram

Beer at the suprise party

Tour de Force - full platta in Malmö

First we benched for Gothenburg

...they did amazing for their first bout

And then we watched CCR's A-team win against Paris

So we all piled into my car and went to Malmö to participate in the usual derby awesomeness - me and Loony helped Gothenburg on the bench for their first bout ever. It was awesome, and they did so great for their first bout ever. I was very impressed by Gothenburg and was happy that I could help making their first bout a little easier. They have a few girls that really stood out, MadFish got MVP, even if she almost got seven trips to the box... but I thing the nerves got the best out of her. Villa will become great with some more experianc, patience and practice, and I was really suprised in a good way by Sandy, she really has developed since December when me and Loony coached in Gothenburg. In general - everyone looked great and amazing, and I was superexcited to share thier first bout with them! And i got to dress up - I litterly was wearing a dress - I did feel like a tranny, and Evil Eye apperently really like me with lipstick and looing like a tranny...

It was awesome to see that CCR were looking amazing, it was a little sad not skating with them, and I think we miss it more than we will ever admit, sometimes it's hard to turn to new pages in life. But for once I got to watch a bout and drink some beer and just hang out with friends... It was great to see all of the Crime City players, but also Titty was up from Stuttgart and I had the great company of my lovley car-companions Kix, Only, Loony and Amy....

I must say that Crime City really looked very together, Ninja and Firebird wall looked nice and strong, Ankefar jammed like the awesome jammer she is and so did Curly, and as always I loved to see all of the really nice packwork out there by Crime City...
Paris did not look to bad, but at times they seemed a little disorganized on the track, and I missed seeing Amelia in the pack -and I saw much more of her jamming. I was very impressed by Paris Machete, she had some really great blocks and waterfalling action out there.

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!

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...