Ok, I’m seriously sorry for the lack of posting. It’s really stupid actually, now that stuff has actually happened in my derby life, I’ve stopped posting. Oh well, going to try and change that now.
Since my last post I’ve actually played four bouts (!!!!). One against Copenhagen’s B team, Kick Ass Cuties, one against Crime City Rollers B, one against Stockholm Roller Derby BSTRDS (B-team) and one bout against Oslo. The one against Oslo was very unofficial, and with both teams focusing on using players who had never bouted before, or who’s had little playing time.
Playing the first three bouts was amazing. I learned A LOT. But, weirdly enough, something also happened with my confidence. What I needed to work on became so much clearer, and I started comparing my self to everyone else. I became bummed about not playing as much as I wanted to. I also looked at the statistics after every game and noticed that I was almost always the one who was on the track the least. Even less than the ones I started fresh meat with. I’m sure that is because of coincidences though, if a player for instance gets a penalty they are registered as “on the track” although they’re not playing, and I didn’t get many penalties during those games. Still, I started thinking and feeling that I was the baddest player on the roster, and that I would probably not be picked for the next one. I became self-aware, and started being afraid of doing mistakes, which resulted in me becoming more passive (or at least it felt like that).
This probably sounds a lot worse than it was. I’m sure it wasn’t even noticeable. I just constantly felt that I could have done better, and that everyone else was doing better. I know that you should never start comparing yourself to others, you should only compare yourself to yourself. But I just couldn’t help it.
Anyway, the bout we played yesterday, against Oslo, really helped on my confidence. Suddenly I was one of the most experienced players on the team, and I had a lot more playing time. I was given more responsibility by being pivot a lot, and I was on the power lineup. When you play like, once every fifth jam, it’s so much harder to stay focused, you sit and wait a lot, and you almost get nervous before every jam you actually do play, and so you don’t feel that you did the best you could. But yesterday, I had the time and opportunity to really try out stuff, I got in some good hits, I made the jammer cut the track (the ref didn’t see it though, grr), I tried offensive blocking, and I basically found that I could do most of the stuff i wanted to do. I was also a part of some great accomplishments we did as a team, like one jam when we held the jammer for a full jam, and she never had an initial pass! And after the opposing team took the lead by two points, we just focused like shit, and then the opposing team did’t score at all for the remainder of the game, which was about six minutes.
All in all, it was a great game, and I feel good and optimistic about myself as a derby player again. I’m really looking forward to scrimmage tonight with this newfound confidence! Muahaha!
Not that many pictures of me from the last bouts, but here is one of me during victory laps from the bout against Stockholm.
Foto by: Erlend Lånke Solbu
