Jammer

So much news! What's that phrase, it's always darkest before the dawn? Well it's been pretty fucking dark lately. I needed a bit of light.

I really, really did not want to go to derby last night. Texted my friend when I saw she was a fucking no on the check in to give her a friendly hard time. She wasn't feeling well. So I said I had no such good excuse. Then she comes back and says she's going to come but be off skates because she just can't stand not going. We are alike in this. We just can't not go.

The first drills after the warm up were tough. Coach wants us to work more on our offense. It was really confusing me, feeling awkward. I kept thinking, I haven't even come close to mastering defense. I should do that first. He says we're playing much tougher teams next year. Wonderful. /sarcasm.

Anyway so I was starting to come unglued. A really nice skater helped me refocus. And we moved onto other drills. But not long after, coach just says he didn't have much planned for our final practice, what did we want to do? I heard some rumblings of skating games, so I just said scrimmage. I NEED scrimmage time. I'm nervous of this upcoming holiday bout. So we played.

But we weren't in our usual white/black teams. The two captains were just going to pick random teams. Lovely. I made a joke to the girl next to me that it's middle school all over again, I'll get picked last.

First captain makes her pick. Then I hear my name. I was picked first by the other captain. First! I could have kissed her. It felt so nice to be her first pick. It was so glorious, I didn't even pay attention to the next picks, I have no idea who technically got picked last.

But then we realized the teams were stacked, ours all blockers, theirs all jammers. So we needed to trade one, now we're set. So we have 10 skaters. Errybody has to jam every jam or we're short. I feel the usual nausea about scrimmaging, but this is what I need. I need to do this.

I thought about this skater when I was a newbie at the other team, whom I've always liked, was always nice to me. I remember once on scrimmage night, she said to me she always feels sick coming to scrimmage night, like she was always so nervous. But then years later, I was in the rec league, when we were allowed to come on their Thu night team practice, she was there. She was talking about how busy the league kept her and she wished she could join the rec league. I told her it was great and we were even allowed to scrimmage with the team once a month (if we passed assessments, which I had yet to do). She said that wasn't enough, she longed to scrimmage, was all she ever wanted to do.

I thought that was meaningful, that there was once a time scrimmage made her want to throw up and now it was all she longed to do. I thought about that last night, as I was feeling scared to scrimmage. Maybe one day, that'll be my story.

But I wasn't doing half bad. For me. There were several times I was aware enough to let go of the brace so as not to get a multi player (I got that penalty last week). We were holding the jammer pretty well, sometimes getting lead. I was avoiding that jammer panty like the fucking plague. They tried to give it to me once, and I was like nope. Nobody really fought me on it.

Then they wanted to give me the pivot panty. Pivot isn't a very different position from blocker, usually it's someone more vocal who can organize the rest of the blockers, but the big thing is the jammer can pass the star to the pivot if the jammer is having trouble.

I think on my second run of being pivot, the star was shoved into my hand. I didn't have time to get it on my head because I had some blockers to get through. And then somehow I did get through. So I'm skating around, finally able to put the panty on my head. And hit the blockers again. I don't get through again before the jam is called off. I was feeling sick, out of breath. I skated over and was just trying not to come apart when my captain yells at me to just stop, look at her. She said, I know being jammer puts you in a bad mood (if only that's all it was, right? a bad mood?), but that was some of the best skating I've seen you do.

So we jam a few more times. Then we're at the final jam of the night. My team were all were like, you should be jammer for the last one, it doesn't matter, it's just practice. OK fine. And guess what, yo. I got through AND I got fucking lead. AND there was no jammer immediately on my heels requiring me to call it off. I skated around as fast as I could, thinking, fuck I have to do this again? I just got through, I should be done. I don't really remember clearly, I think I got around one skater then fell. I was struggling and my team just said, Roxy call it off! Oh yea, I can do that! So I did. So I maybe got one point, I don't really know, I didn't think to ask.

And everyone is just high-fiving me. My team is telling me that's some of the best footwork they've ever seen by anyone, my mohawking and toe stop work, they said they didn't even think I knew I was doing it, it looked that natural. Coach mentions I stood up as I was coming around, when I hit the wall. I need to stay low. I feel like I'm getting better at this. But it's still a frequent critique. A highly annoying one, at that. It's my dream to have people shut up about getting low with me.

So that's that, no more scrimmage for me before the holiday bout. But I needed that shot of confidence going in. And I expect come next year, I won't be able to avoid the jammer panty anymore.