Back from Rainy City

It's important to warm up before bout...

The team after the bout

We did so great - I am s proud of every player - each one of us! We played so well and it was a tight game, and we poured our souls and sweat into it! Becky and Twisted did a great job on the bench - and we loved to have them there. I will write more tomorrow... we might not have won the bout... but we for sure won the afterparty...

Jamskating in a basement

So some girls in Stockholm toook the initative to start a jamskating crew called the Swayes's - QUAD SKATE CREW... the object is to learn a coerography and hang out on skates and look kool and you need NO PREVIOUS EXPERIANCE.. .and since I like to hang out on skates and look kool (I mostly look like a dork), I decided that this was a GREAT way of spending a derbyfree night... (I for sure need to work on my outfit and makeup) Both Kix and Twisted showed up for this, and a few girls from Royals (the other Stockholm derby leauge...) and some otehr ppl that just seemed like they wanted to dance away on skates... yayaaaa...

I have never been a good jam skater, to be honest I've done very little of jam skating, since I have no sense of rythm and I'm musically challanged. When I lived in USA I often saw jam-skaters at the rinks, and I have always been really impressed by their smoth moves and at times I have even gotten instructed by a few, trying to teach my gigantic feet to look more smooooth... and since I really like skating I've tried, and tried and tried, mostly with me looking very hillerious...  I did dance for several years as a kid - mostly because my parents decided it was a good hobby for a little girl, my mother thought it be good for my posture (she was probably right)... When I started skating 4-5 years ago, my focus was more on speedskating and rollerderby, even if I had a coach in Jet City that would end his practices in an all-jam syncronized dance... like a musical... and me being that girl that does the spin the opposite way... I still thought it was fun and so was yesterday, even if I kept on doing the spin the wrong way...

We already know Loony is a better skater than me, she ought to be, since she has been skating since she was 4 years old, and damn that girl is a fantastic jamskater too... yes she is.. We came to the basement and all of a sudden BANG - she was showing moves and everyone following her lead. It was awesome and fun, and they are planning to have it in the basement for a few weeks and then they/we will move outdoors and find some smooth asphalt/concrete and do our thing... Oh yeah!

So if you are in Stockholm on Tuesdays 18.00 - 19.30 - this is the place to be! Come come come! We will dance it all away... and most of us look really silly...

And after the session Loony, Rikard and me went and visited Minna, ate all her food and then went out for Indian food and beers... YUMMY... this was an amazing derbyfree night! 

Another day in the ice-box...

At next practices we will do a relay kicking balls... (no pun intended)

Wednesday practices is our ''everyone practice'' day and yesterday it was mine and Twisteds turn to run this practice. We started off with a shortened down version of ''Black Widdow'' (starting at 14 laps) it seems to be our current warm-up of choice. Yesterday was only around 4 degrees Celsius in our practice space - so it's all about keeping warm and getting the muscles going. We could see our breath...  I also like that we do some core and general strenght exercises, since we don't have much dedicated off-skate practices.

Then we continued with an excercise that we picked up when we skated with TORD in Toronto - 10 exercises in 10 minutes. It is simple - we all do an exersice for 1minute and then directly change into another, for a total of 10 minutes. Good things to throw in are; skating on one foot, big slaloms, transitions, skating backwards, jumping from foot to foot... ect ...ect... just exercises where you can challange yourself on your own level.
The challange with everyone practices are to find drills that everyone will find challanging without disencourage the less skilled girls and not to make it too basic for the advanced girls.

Later on we did some matching steps, both side by side, and following each other, yesterday we only did it two and two, but one day I hope we can skate a whole row of people on step, it's fun, makes me remember when Deadly Aim used to run practice. It sounds really cool to have a whole row of girls skating on step. We also did ''shopping carts'' and ''truck'n'trailer'', also an old classical drill that seem to be a standard in every leauges practice protocol, it is a good endurance drill, and I like the competative moment to it, if you want it to have.

I really like running practice - adn I think everyone felt accomplished afterwards - of course there is always room for improvement both from the coaching and from the sakters, but I guess that is what we live for. 

Mustasches on Jamaica...

Twisted, me, Loony and Hyper photo by Fluke

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!

Stockholm Rollerderby Bootcamp Weekend

This weekend we hosted and put on a bootcamp in Stockholm, during Stockholm Wintergames. It was superduperfun, lots of work with three different group skills... I made a really nice colorcoordinated scedual and Loony, Becky, Twisted and med coached on-skate classes and benchcoached while we had Hyper teach gear and Fluke rules... it was overall a really fun time... I will write more about it when I get back from lunch with my non-derby friend.

Crawling in dirt and LIKING it

So we try to do an off-skate activity each week - one of the days we don't have on-skate practice. So one of our fresh meat practice fount this Nordic Military Training - that are a bunch of people that meet up and do drills no matter what the weather or time of the year it is... So since the fresh meat had a  rules session tonight, and Loony had to work -  me, Twisted and Mousetrap Mary decided to see how much fun this can be a cold November night in Stockholm when it's around 10 degrees Celsius...

We got there and they asked us if we wanted to be in the the Basic or the Rookie group - since we felt like we should hang with the kool kids, we chose Basic.. .and if this was Basic, I really do not wanna know what their Regular group is like (or I probably do... )
AND IT WAS AWESOME... I will be sooo soooore tomorrow and we probably did planks for about 15 minutes during the training, we made human tunnels we had to crawl thru on the wet grass and there were burpees, jumps, sit-ups, push-ups, some jogging, more jumping, me smiling and laughing. We had a ONE minute water break during the entire practice, and I thought I was bad in giving people waterbreaks.
Did I tell you it was fun, I kept on smiling the entire time! It was almost as fun as the Ruffie training we did with Fysgruppen in Malmö - just different... more raw, wet and dirty...I for sure have to scrub my nails before I head to the office tomorrow...

I wish I had a picture to share with you guys - but as always - my camera on the phone is just not co-operating with me... so I hope my picture painting with words have been good enough for you!

The sauna re-visited

Two Danes and parts of Team Sweden

So yesterday was my annual Midsummer non Midsummer party - and as it always tend to happen, everyone ended up in the sauna with beer, rosé, gin&tonic and me and my wineschorle... the up and downs of the drunk... we had a beer relay where Jazz crashed into the grass and we did semi-nude jumping into the lake... Krazy Kris and Enoc were our play-leaders and made us play merrily in the sun... we even had a game of soccer going for a while...

For some reason I volonteered to get all the meat for the the party, I don't think why I thought I was qualified to do that, considering I was vegetarian for 10 years and Loony still is... so we walked around the supermarket aimlessly and just picked up some random meat... and of course I ended up being the BBQ girl too... yeah... I don't know why people want to get food poison so badly that they let me be in charge of those things...

Stockholm vs. Kallio - bouting time

Twisted jamming towards a win

So as we all know me and Malou went to Stockholm last weekend and worked at the Stockholm vs Kallio bout, Malou as a fab announcer and I brought SwedeVix with me so people could try on skates and get amazing socks spelling out worlds like WHISKEY, VODKA, BEER, EVIL, BACON and GAY...  oh, and we had lots of other more derby related things too... well, I guess we also watched two bouts... well I watched and Malou had the pleasure to talk about them while they were going on.

I must say that Kallio are a very lovable team, they seem to have a great and happy attitude towards each other and the other team, even if I must say that their names are on the raunchy side, but you just cannot dislike a team that are called Rolling Rainbows... makes me think of unicorns, and we all know I love unicorns! And most things I know in Finnish are very offensive...

First up was Stockholms rookie team vs. Kallios rookie team, it was not a full length bout, it was just 15min x 2, and to be honest, the Stockholm rookies crushed the Kallio rookies, by lots and lots of points, I acctually don't even know exactly by how much, but it was by quite a lot. Looks like Stockholm has quite some talent among their rookies.

Second was the bout we all waited for, Stockholm vs. Kallio - two teams that previously had played each other and last time Stockholm walked away with a win, but that was a couple of months ago. It started off looking like it might become a nailbiter, especially after the Stockholm jammer got sent to the box and Kallio managed to put more points on the scoreboard than STRD, this did not last for long, since the Kallio jammer got sent to the box and Hyper evened out the score, and that was the closest Kallio came to winning the game. With 13 minutes left of the first period Stockholm was up by 55 - 21 and Stockholms jammers continously earning lead jammer status and adding onto the lead, point by point, calling it off in the right time, and with Kallio playing a very back heavy pack, this payed off,  by halftime the score was 55 - 24, in the favor to Stockholm.

The second period could have been a time for come-back for Kallio, but it wasn't - Stockholm continued to score and giving Kallio very few opporunities to score on them, the Stockholm pack playing tight and distracting the Kallio blockers who did not really get their jammer through let along stop the Stockholm jammers. With 12 minutes left on the clock Stockholm was up by 108 - 39 points, and I was quite confident that they had it in the box. Husse, Hyper, Blood and Twisted were a very successful jammer combination, and both Husse and Twisted are looking fierce blocking too... and I must also say that Kallios jammer who had the number 9 (Camilla T. Bagger) did a really good job too, since I have her jotted down in my notes.

It was great job by both teams, and I must say that I was quite weary in the end of the two bouts since it was about 40 degrees celcius in Visätra Hallen (where the bout was held) and that is funny, considering it is an icehall... yeah we joked about that quite a lot. I was about to melt away... but I was only wearing a bikini-top for quite a big part of the bout, considering they had an Aloha theme...

The afterparty was not as wild as I had expected, and I think that Jazz Ass, Husse, Twisted and a shoppingcart took the win... and the pony race was won by a VERY selfconfident Husse... there was also a human pyramid built at the afterparty... and I was in it, and I am happy I am still alive...

over and out...

Stockholm vs. Hamburg - bouting time

Picture of STRD warming up stolen from Facebook

Stockholm arranged their first bout this weekend, and it was amazing and fun, me and Loony were announcers and Hamburg got beaten by Stockholm. Stockholm did start off a little shaky the first jams, until they ended up in a powerjam situation, and capitalized MAJORLY on it, and htey never looked back. Hamburg was never even close to catching up during the entire game. Hamburg only fielded 10 girls for the Stockholm trip and they started to look tired in the second period - I must make an extra shoot out to Heavy Miss Gale, who I think was in more than every second jam, and was by faaar the most effective Hamburg blocker, until she fouled out with a few minutes left on the clock.
Stockholm played tight and you could tell that they been working harder on some aspects of the game, such as bridging, stringing out the pack keeping the Hamburg jammer in play and hitting her over and over.
Stockholm really is one of my favorite teams, probably because I feel like I have always been a part of STRD and it made me so happy to see them skate so hard and smart. Ahhhh Stockholm - you guys are great.
Exactly a year ago on the day of the game was when I dragged HussInsane to her first Stockholm practice, and in this game she was for sure one of Stockholms most effective blockers, but also made a few successful attempts with the star on her helmoet, but not only that she was also wearing the captain C on the arm, and just frankly looked great. HyperNova looked as great as ever jamming, fluidly getting through the pack and Twisted T is really turning out to be quite a double-threat.  Stockholm has lots of talented and hardworking skaters, and that makes me happy and I am looking forward to see lots of them next weekend for Team Sweden try-outs.
Oh, and the final score was 150 - 55 to Stockholm....

Hanging with friends in the sun - with skates on side

Spreading gears and girls in sun

I went outdoor skating (again) on my new purple Pure wheels together with, SpeedSlut, Twisted, Jazz, Crazy Kris and my beloved Mad Maloony and we only skated for about 30 minutes before we found a piece of grass in the sun and chilled. It is nice to take it chill once in a while - so we sat around - snacked and had a tiny bit of sparkling pink wine. Yayaaa...
After working on our tans for about an hour we got up and skated back to the city where me and Loony picked up CallaVera and my future wife to be Smashed and hauled them to Ekerö (where my mother lives) so we could just chill and look out over the water.
Stockholm is so different to outdoor skate in compared to Malmö, in Stockholm there are hills everywhere, while Malmö is flat like a pancake. I am still getting used to being outdoors again and hills make me a tiny bit nervous - while Loony and Kris just bolts right down them, her and Kris are both crazy, I guess that is why they have Mad and Crazy in their derbynames....

Oh, oh, oh, and there was a bunch of older people singing/interpetating Fjäril Vingad syns på Haga right behind our little picnic spot... it was odd, but for SURE entertaining.

I love Stockholm - it's something special about the place you grew up...