Attitude/Plan

Check it out. Practice actually went well. Main reason is I focused on the idea that practice was going to be the same whether I've passed assessments or not. Same drills. I could work hard on everything. Or I could get mired down in the fact that I'm still not official. I chose not to get mired down. Well, I worked hard at not.

I also focused really hard on staying low. My agility then suffered, but I don't care. I expect that will come with time. I need to learn (re-learn) how to jam while staying low. The pulse squats and lateral squats that I've been doing three times a week appear to be helping. I'm up to a minute on each, with the goal to get to two minutes, and then do sets of two minutes.

I've decided to start heading to the rink early for some individual practice on Thursdays. This will help two things. Certain individual skills that I just need more practice than I get during regular practice. And my three-hour endurance for Sundays. I got in about an extra 30-40 minutes.

Highlights. Scrimmage at the end, we didn't have enough skaters, but we did it anyway. Coach put me on white (I bring spare tops). White only had four skaters. Black had five. Lovely. We had time for maybe five to six jams, not sure exactly.

• After one of the jams, one of my "teammates" pointed out to everyone how I put myself in front of the jammer. Jammer was big sister. She's amazeballs. She's fast and jukey. And yet, I showed "no fear" putting myself in front of her. I vaguely remember, my two other teammates were hung up on the outside of the track while dud me was stuck on the inside. But here comes black jammer on the inside, so I remembered to position myself not sideways but square. The skater who was regaling the story said it gave them about three to four extra seconds of holding her up, just my doing that. Not too shabby! (erm, it's hella awkward being praised publicly.)
• They handed me the star. Do you want to be jammer? HAHA! No, but I'll do it anyway. And I got through AND got lead. Not due to any skill on my part. The skill was all in my blockers playing offense for me. I saw one powerful skater hitting opposing blockers out of my way. I juked a bit, mohawked around, so there was some skill. But mostly amazing blockers playing offense. Except as soon as I got through and got lead, the other jammer got through. No chance of out-skating her. It was big sister again. Everyone hollered at me to call it off. So I didn't actually get to DO anything with lead, except call off the jam with no points for either team. meh. I'll take it.