Existential Crisis -- PART 2

Where were we?

Ah yes....the (assistant) coach trap.


I love coaching. I've done it for a long time. I've coached track, softball, volleyball, basketball; I've coached science competitions and academic bowl teams. It seemed like a natural fit. Except for that one thing. Oh! You don't know about that one thing?

EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE TEAM HAS SKATED FOR TWICE AS LONG AS I HAVE. AT LEAST.

Oddly enough, I didn't have that realization until two practices into my new stint as assistant coach. I don't remember the details, but they aren't important anyway. I was working with a fellow league member on a drill and told her, "I see. This is what you're doing wrong. Try doing it this way." When she looked at me like I had LOST MY MIND it hit me: she has been skating for 4 years. 4 fucking years!!


Even by the most generous of counts, I haven't even been skating for 2. Let's assume we start counting from the first practice I attended, August 22, 2010. That means I've been skating for 1 year and 9 months (+ a few days). Great. Not bad.

Oh wait.


There was that time where I broke my ankle, October 10, 2010. At the time that I broke my ankle I would have been "skating" for 50 days -- yes, exactly. Let's assume that I attended 2 practices a week (generous). So in the time from August 22 to October 10 I would have attended approximately 14 practices. Trust me when I say that I went to no session skates and mostly likely only attended practice once a week. I also hope you'll believe me when I say that I certainly was no Atomatrix during those assumed 14 practices either.

To much imagined fanfare, I returned to practice on December 26, 2010.

Let's assume that I skated and played in bouts until my knee started giving me problems. Heck. Let's assume that I kept skating and playing in bouts until the day I went in for surgery: December 28, 2011.

367 + 50 = 417 total days of skating

417/7 = approximately 60 weeks of skating experience

60(2) = approximately 120 practices attended

I played in 2 bouts and attended, let's say, 20 non-derby skating sessions.

Then, my career ended. (Or so I think.)

So...

142 times that I've put on my skates. I'm lucky I can even do a cross-over, let alone anything else. Why would these other, more experience skaters listen to me?

To be continued...

Existential Crisis -- PART 1

• I'm the co-founder (and current president) of a new league: Northwest Derby Company. Like us on Facebook (or something)!

Taking Care of Business

• I'm clearly a proponent of shameless self-promotion!
• I haven't skated in a bout since March.
• I haven't skated as a member of this league since then either.
• I've made a rocky transition into coaching.
• I'm having an existential crisis.

There, I think that about catches us up.

Now for the color commentary:

The business side of the league is going really well. We're preparing to meet with our venue to discuss our next season (HOLY SHIT! Season 2!!) and what our budget will look like in the foreseeable future. This puts us in a really good place to do lots of awesome things with bout production and community involvement. It's all very exciting.

Pretty much since the beginning of this new league, I've been a "non-skater". At first because I was recovering from my knee surgery. Now because I haven't recovered. After months of fighting it, this is me publicly stating that I have not recovered from my knee surgery. (God, even just writing that made my heart twist in my throat...) I've been forced to come around to a very big realization: I cannot skate roller derby.

I played in the March bout where I was promptly sidelined -- after 4 jams -- by knee pain. I'm in the bout photos!! I'm laying on the ground with my leg up on the team bench icing my knee. I told myself I just needed to rest a bit more. I committed to line coaching our April bout and then potentially rostering again in the May bout.

April came and went. My performance in practice was less than stellar. My knee was less than stellar.

After the April bout, I mentioned that I didn't HATE coaching. Line coaching, surprisingly, is a lot like managing a class of junior high school students. You have to get everyone to sit down and not yell at the authority figures. So a tentative deal was struck:

Coach Dan: "You should consider being my assistant coach. I think you'd be pretty good at it."

Me: *unladylike snort* "Sure. Right."

To be continued...

Pain Heals

I have a soft spot for inspirational sports films. Especially when Gene Hackman is in them. But there has never been a motivational speech quite like the one from The Replacements.

 

As I recover from my knee surgery (too goddamn slowly) I have to constantly remind myself that it will heal. The scars are pretty cool. But derby, derby lasts forever. Or some shit like that.

At the end of every practice, our coach has us do suicides. They suck. For a variety of different reasons. One being that a 180-toe stop at full speed is still something I'm not terribly good at. Two: a 180-toe stop, even at 75%, wrenches the shit out of my knee. Because the knee that had surgery is on the same leg I put most of my stopping pressure on, occassionally it gives out. And when it gives out, I go crashing to the ground. And when I go crashing to the ground, I usually ram said knee into said ground. It's excruciating.

The good news? It hurt LESS when I rammed into the ground today, then when I rammed it into the ground 2 weeks ago. That's progress, right?

Teacher Mode

I'm a teacher by profession. Junior high to be exact. Some people might consider that crazy. "Junior high?" They say. "I'm sorry. Why would you want to subject yourself to that?" In the years I've taught Junior High, the truth as become apparent to me. Because I, for better or for worse, am a Junior High-schooler at heart.

Turns out that I'm something else at heart, too. A fucking teacher.

And this is what I often look like...

 

I became a teacher because I love that moment when someone finally gets 'it'. But I make a good teacher because I'm task driven. My love for teaching could have died a cold, lonely death a long, long time ago and I'd still be a decent teacher because my main motivation is to get shit done. Period.

This drive is serving me well in my new role as Provisional Government Member of my new league. And I hate it. The last thing I want to do after herding cats all day is to come and herd cats all night. Where by "herding cats" I mean "teaching junior high" and by "herd cats" I mean "organize derby girls".

Turns out, the task master hidden inside of me is not particular about which herd of cats I'm facing. I've started to catch myself at board meetings doing the same things I do in a classroom full of 35 9th graders. I repeat myself, I ask others to repeat what I've said, I throw names into my discussion to make sure people are paying attention, and -- the ol' standby -- slapping the palm of my hand on the table and starting a tirade with, "Alright, listen..."

That's usually the beginning of the end.

If you've pushed me to the "Alright, listen", things are about to go downhill fast. I've learned, in my years in the classroom, to channel my drive to cross things off a checklist. I find myself breaking jobs into tiny pieces and imposing strict deadlines. I also use the acronym "SOL" a lot. This approach requires a lot of patience, which is a virtue I lack. When I want to rip my hair out because you're spending DAYS talking about step 5 when we're only on step 1, I have to remind myself to breath. Meditate. Relax.

Thank goodness derby is a contact sport.

There you are!

Some things become annoyingly apparent when you've stepped away from derby:

• The snappy metabolism you THOUGHT you had decides to leave you cold, alone, and unable to fit into your jeans.
• The butt you didn't realize you were so proud of seems to be nowhere to be found.
• Your big toenail starts to grow back; healthy and unmangled (perhaps not so annoying).
• You can't frivolously eat a package of Newman-Os and then skate them off later.
• It becomes really difficult to fit practice into your new and exciting lifestyle of couch-sitting and TV-watching.

But worst of all, you realize the calluses and rough spots on your feet that you've lovingly cultivated into patches of little-to-no feeling have disappeared. That's right. My fucking feet hurt. Again.

The first time I got my Antiks, I went through this terrible break-in period. I constantly had hot spots in all the normal places: the ball of my pusher foot, my big toes, the inside of my right ankle. But I had toughened those spots up and broken in my skates after a few months of skating on them. But now I'm back to dainty little girl feet. After two days of skating in a row (not even hitting -- just skating!) my feet are screaming in agony.

Oh cruel world! How could you have turned my skates against me??

(Not to mention, my knee hurts like a bitch. Seriously. What if I can't go back to derby? What if I never heal? ACK!)

The Eye of the Beholder

You know you've chosen the right derby spouse when they give you a gift that, from the outside, seems like a gift no one would enjoy, but it gives you a big surge of excitement anyway. And causes you to exclaim, "I've been looking for these EVERYWHERE!"

Apparently, vegan glucosamine supplements are to me what diamonds are to a normal girl.

Other things...

...that make me go weak in the knees. (Just because.)

Edward Norton in American History X

Vegan Chocolate Cake

 The 5 o'clock shadow

Really fantastic tattoos and really talented tattoo artists

This piano cover of one of my favorite A Perfect Circle songs

Seeing my husband for the first time after he's been gone for months.

My fantasy is that when I go to the airport to pick up my husband in April, he is ripped like Edward Norton, hasn't shaved, is carrying a vegan chocolate cake, and 3 Libras is playing. I WILL lose my shit. (Then I can get a tattoo later...much, much later.)