Saturday 25th October 2014
There was no training today.
It was bout day!!
Unfortunately, Insane Bolt's puppy managed to eat the line-ups on the morning of the bout...
The SWAT A team were taking on the Bristol A team in an exciting double header. Of course, a team of freshies travelled up to Bristol to support (I say support, mainly gawp and gaze in awe).
The first bout was between Bath and Neath Port Talbot. Having watched lots of derby previously, I found myself explaining the rules to the other freshies for a lot of this.
These two teams had a couple of really good jammers and some really good individual blockers, but they didn’t seem to wall up very often as members from both teams skated together in the pack. This may have been a really good offense strategy as the jammers found it easier to get through, but the stronger blockers were still able to deal some awesome hits!! (The way Bath plays has changed since this bout. They now have really strong walls and all sorts, but I can’t tell you because I don’t want to ruin their tactics!! WHAT TIME IS IT?? BATH TIME!! I haven’t had the pleasure of watching NPT skate since, so can’t comment on them now, but I’m sure they’re still awesome!!)
Then SWAT took on BRD!!! ARGH!!
My thirst for solid walls was quenched as both the Bristol and SWAT walls began the first jam. Those poor jammers!! Haha!
No, seriously, both teams had ridiculously solid walls and the jammers had to work so hard that Dot Slash was even sick!!!
It was such an awesome game!!
Oh and yeh, SWAT won.
The article can be found here; Express and Echo
Monday 27th October 2014
As of today, I (not just me, all the freshies) am allowed to attend any of SWATs practices on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, although only the Saturdays are specifically for fresh meat.
This was also the first session I shared a lift with somebody!! An advanced skater none the less!! ARGH!! (You have no idea how early I got to the meeting point because I didn’t want to keep Pimms waiting!!)
To make up for the lack of a session on Saturday, we covered fresh meat skills today in Exeter. The floor is a lot slippier than at Cullompton, but luckily not as slippy as the wet floor last week.
We covered backwards skating, pushes, quick steps and hopping over cones. Dot came and found me again and is continuing to build my confidence. She wants me to skate without sucking my thumb and not to be so scared of everything. She suggested giving me a stressball or something to keep my hands busy as often I don’t notice that I’m sucking my thumb like a baby. Next time I’m going to try to prove to Dot that she’s not wasting her time.
Thursday 30th October 2014
Today Reckless Rowly took a footwork session for the advanced skaters. He made us all take our toe stops off at the beginning and then we got on track (with the advanced skaters!!!) to do the warm up.
This was SO funny!! Pretty much all of the freshies stayed on their skates whilst the advanced skaters who were used to using their toestops (all of them) fell over!! I guess not having any toestop skills in the min skills tick sheet turned out to be a good a thing!!
As this session was a footwork session, we were allowed to take part in a lot of it, but it was really hard. This session really highlighted my inability to do transitions. We haven’t been taught these yet, but a lot of the other freshies seemed to pick it up really quick whereas I just couldn’t. (Again, don’t compare yourselves to others!!!!)
I can’t wait until Saturday when we’ll get to skate again!! That’s three times in a week!! Get in!
Bye for now,
Bambi