skate teams and derby dreams...

Photo: June 2006 game against FTW, that's me in front with the yellow patch on my boobie, Mandi Festo is to my right, Doris Badenov is jamming and coming up on my left.

I finally had a night of deep sleep, first time in months. My birthday was Wednesday and I wasn't feeling well, so I was up all night Wed. night into Tuesday morning. I slept for a few hours before heading to team practice, where I didn't skate but helped run drills. Anyway, I had a really vivid dream last night and, yes, it was about derby. It was the first game of the season. We played at Bladeworld but it had more of a NHL hockey rink feel, with tiered seating. We were getting schooled, mainly because my team wasn't acting like my team. Now I'm not the best skater at all on my team, but in my dream they were very frustrating. An IC player would fall, and all my fellow team skaters would stop skating and help her up as Sloppy Flo from FTW would rack up points. During the last period I came out of the locker room (though in real life I'd NEVER be in the locker room during a period) only to see newbies dinking around on the rink with FTW sitting in their team box and my team high up in the crowd seating. I was still in all my gear but my team wasn't. I kept trying to find someone who knew what was going on. I finally came across a gal from the Vice Squad (CG) and she told me that they instituted a mercy rule for this game and decided to let newbies "get the feel of a bout" and play the last period. The final score was 259 to some low score in double digists (I don't remember)...unfortunately the scoreboard had a glitch, and even though no scoreboard goes into the 1000s, the score read 1259.
I was sooo pissed...I stormed back into the locker room, which apparently we only had one because a few other FTW and Copper Queens were in there. I started to throw my gear at a locker and a Waitress asked me what my problem was. I got all lippy and said I was done with derby because if my team couldn't take a game seriously and play normally I didn't want to be in derby anymore. My team would never be that dumb as to abandon their positions to help a girl up who fell, or just watch a jammer go by, or not hit someone because they were afraid of making the other girl angry. I don't know why I'm having these dreams, but with our first game of the season around the corner against FTW, and the pressure we have to win a game, I can kinda guess why I had it. In the history of the Iron Curtain's existence, the team has NEVER experienced a win. Our league was founded in 2003, December...the FTW was the first team, the IC was the second. Vice didn't appear until much later. Unfortunately, IC usually had half a team...the season before I joined it had 6 members, a full team was 12. IC was known as the team that would recruit the leftover skaters, the ones FTW and Vice didn't want. So the other rosters were padded with excellent talent, IC had 4 great skaters and the other 2 were not-so-great. We had girls quit regularly...one only skated a single bout before quitting in the season before I started. When last season started, we had two skaters quit afterwards...one moved to Virginia Beach, the other quit derby altogether. We were convinced we were cursed or something. So last season was a lot of losing, skating as if to win it, but losing nonetheless. But now, it's different. We have a full team (not 9 while everyone else had 12, like last year) and we have extremely talented skaters. We aren't all rookies (4 vets and 5 rookies last year)...we have two and they kick ass. Maybe now that it's very possible we'll win, it's more pressure. I don't know. FTW has 11 and we do too. They assume we suck I'm sure. Even if we don't win, all I want to do is close that gap in scoring (no more losing by 40 or 50 to FTW and 100 to Vice) and give them a run for their money. Ahh, anytime I think about it I get all fluttery in my stomach. I'm probably going to be very very nervous for our first game. Everyone expects IC to lose, we are the underdog. The time has come for another underdog I think.

As you can see, when you join roller derby, it's all you think about. It's all you do! Nothing else matters...not even a master's thesis that needs to be written (which I have to work on today before going to scrimmage at 4p).