Tough Breaks

It's the moment that we hope won't happen to us.

We hope that the Derby gods will show us favour and spare us that split second, bone shattering event that will take us out of the game.  We've all had the close calls - those moments where you're on the track and your gut lurches as you realise the what ifs of the last pile up.  When you fall or land on that strange angle and you feel your body pushed and wrenched into directions you know that it can't go, but somehow you skate away unharmed.

I've seen that moment happen for others and feared for how I would cope.  How would I deal with the pain?  How would my family deal with the stress?  How would my mental health cope with having the derby crutch yanked away from it??

And last Saturday night it happened to me.

I didn't even have time to register there was a pile up in front of me but my body plow-stopped instinctively.  I don't think I will ever forget the sound of the bone snapping, or erase the image of my leg bent at ninety degrees where it should never bend.   But I'll also never forget Pam's face immediately in mine - eyes locking me in - strong and sure. Or Crash and Baddy tirelessly counting with me - keeping me focused and calm as we waited for the ambulance to arrive.  Don't get me wrong - it wasn't a picture of serenity - there was much swearing to be done and I did it with great gusto.  My teammate texted me the next day "So gutted for you, yet exceptionally proud of your use of the f-bomb...a lot of f-bomb! <3"

The ambulance arrived, along with pain relief, along with Mr Buzz.  Despite having three children it was my first experience of using nox gas and I'd highly recommend it.  Ketamine, not so much, apparently I didn't blink for 4 mins.

I remember moaning a lot in the ambulance as we wobbled over East Christchurch's broken roads.  At the hospital we waited, had xrays, and waited some more.  Mr Buzz and I both noted that this was the most quality time we’d had without kids in a long time.  Official diagnosis - Compound comminuted spiral distal left tibula and dual fibula fractures with Grade 1 Gustilo soft tissue injury.  Say that with a marshmallow or two in your gob.

I was admitted into the trauma ward and readied  for surgery first thing on Sunday.  My fracture was compound, meaning that the bone had gone through the skin and they needed to operate quickly due to the risk of infection.  So the next day they fixed it up with an iron rod and a few screws, turning me into a bionic cyborg woman.  The next week is a bit of a blur of painkillers, hospital food and bedpans.  But also plenty of time to think and listen and absorb life lessons from what was going on around me.  How lucky I am.  How much I love my family.  How amazing and supportive my ORDL family are.  How derby is so much more than just a sport to me.  How beautiful and strong people are and how strange and random life can be.

So I sit here, finally back in my own home, a week later, following the Twitter feed of my team-mates battling it out on the track at the Triple Beheader in Dunedin.  And my emotions are a rollercoaster.  I desperately want to be there on the track with them - playing hard and having fun but everytime a pileup or player down is mentioned a wave of fear comes over me and I don't know if I'm going to be strong enough to push it away.

I can see my gear bag sitting across the room.  Lugging it to training has become such a part of my life, I think it can go sit in the garage for a few months now.  I have a lot to do before I can use it again.  I have to make sure my family are doing okay under the extra pressure this has brought them.  I have to do my exercises.  I have to conquer the fear.

Derby was never easy for me.  I had to work damn hard to get to where I was.  Can I do that all again?? And then some?? As I look at the Triple Beheader bout photo just posted on Facebook and tag each of  my beautiful teammate's glowing, post-bout faces it dawns on me that I don't have a choice.  I can't give up Derby.  I can't give up on my derby family.  They are both part of my Soul now. 

 

Sneaky Epiphanies

Sometimes you go looking for them - you might be confused about something or maybe you can't seem to find the missing piece that will make it all make sense. 
Then other times they sneak up on you.  
You're doing your everyday business and they tap you on the shoulder out of nowhere and rudely butt into your life. 
This was one of the second type.  
I was working through some chairpersony exec stuff on the computer when suddenly a big loud epiphany wrote itself in bold capitals across my brain....


IT'S ONLY A GAME.

Hmmm...whatever do you mean??


IT'S ONLY A GAME.


Are you sure? Are you sure it's not the reason for my existence?  

Nope.

Do you mean my life shouldn't revolve around this league? 

Nope. 

I don't need to pour my heart and soul into it so that it can run smoothly and happily and grow and become stronger and awesome-er and have a super duper venue of it's own and join WFTDA and play leagues from far away lands and host bootcamps taught by living legends and save the world from eternal damnation???!

Nope.  

But my leaguemates are the most amazing women and so much fun to be with and have taught me how to be part of a team and work together with people completely different than me.

Yep.

And my depression is so much better than it's ever been before and I'm so much fitter and stronger and healthier.  

Yep.

And I've learnt so much about myself and not giving up and facing my fears.


Yep.  
It is a funtastic, amazing, challenging, even life changing, game but still...... IT IS ONLY A GAME. 


She's right you know....it's only a game people.

High flying and hard hits.

"They hit so hard I actually pee-ed my pants a little" a teammate (who shall forever remain anonymous) admitted in the changing room at halftime.  Being a mum of three I'd learnt a long time ago that a little extra protection was always a good idea in this department but for other's this was a new lesson. 
Everyone had been taken by surprise by the relentlessness and power of the Pirate's blocks.  I still remember the stunned look on everyone's faces as they skated back to the bench after their first jam.  
Maybe taking on the Pirate City Rollers straight after a month derby holiday to recover from tournament wasn't a great idea in retrospect.  
They were only the oldest league outside of North America, they only had six years bouting experience to our one, they only had 5 members of Team New Zealand on their team.  
But how could we say no?? No matter what the scoreboard said in the end it was sure to be an amazing learning opportunity and we just couldn't turn it down!
It was a whirlwind trip but for me the promise of 24 hours child free had been the pot of gold at the end of the school holiday rainbow.  
Most of us grabbed the same flight up at lunchtime and not one of us pulled out the Skates on a Plane joke.  
I hate flying. A lot. I'm usually okay during the smooth bits but takeoff and landing have me knocking back the Rescue Remedy and doing some relaxation breathing (which for the record isn't actually that relaxing but it does give me something to focus on other than the fact I am in a huge chunk of metal in the sky).  
It was a rough flight - in the words of the pilot "It's not a good day to fly". We certainly challenged anyone's stereotype of the 'tough derby girl' though. Between my heavy breathing, cries of 'are we going to make it? are we going to die?' from my teammate next to me (who I offered to share my rescue remedy with and ended up squirting the dropper all over her face instead of in her mouth.....) and the vomiting across the aisle we were a sorry lot! Daroll as usual helped out with her favourite comforting line...."I can see the ground - if we crash now we'll still be sweet."  

Feeling rather invincible after surviving that I managed to completely avoid my usual prebout nerves - skating in the bout was guaranteed to be a more enjoyable experience than the flight to get there was.
After everyone got over their initial shock of how physical the opposition were we rallied with some bench chatter of 'we knew it would be hard' 'we need to remember to have fun' and 'just focus on making each jam better than the last'.  And we did - we made sure each jam was the best we could do and we didn't give up, even when their score hit the 300 mark while ours still sat around 50.  
And we had fun, so much fun! There were plenty of crazy moments from Warbow laughing like a madwoman because she was enjoying Pirate's hits so much, to Crash's flying leap that got her expelled from the game ('I was sure my legs could stretch that far!').  
I'm so proud of how we played.  I am so proud of all our jammers who were brave enough to take on that pack and I only hope that one day I will be that brave too.  
I am so proud of myself for willingly skating into hits from Terror Santana to save my jammer from taking them instead - if you'd told me a year ago (back when I was too scared to even do a knee fall) that I'd be doing that I would never have believed you.  Don't you just love how the 'derby you' can take on challenges you never even hoped you could in such a short time?
The Pirate's were great hosts and gracious victors and we had a blast.  Looking forward to hosting them in shakey Christchurch sometime next year - maybe we can keep that score difference to under 200 next time??!! 

NZ Tournament - part 3

We only had one game left for the day and it was my personal favourite.  
We played against ARDL and although we lost against the eventual champions of the day we played awesomely.  
Our defence held them to their lowest score of the tournament at 66 and a last minute burst from our jammers brought our score up to a respectable 29 against that.  
I loved looking at the photos from this bout, they show how good our teamwork had gotten by the end of the day.  
They say a picture paints a thousand words, so thanks to Sandy Carter Photography I'll finish with some of my favourite shots from this bout that show off our newly found teamwork mojo.....

NZ Tournament - part 2

To be honest I think most of us went into the next three games hoping to learn from the experience and keep our losing margin respectable against such great teams.  Next up were the hosts of the tournament - Swamp City. These girls were very good and hit very hard. As we expected it was a rough and physical game and we were sad to see one of our best jammers out with a concussion.  It looked like an ambulance would be needed for her so it was decided by the refs and team captains to call the game with 8 minutes left to play.  The score stayed at 92-10 and we were pleased not to risk anymore injuries at that stage.

We were thrilled that we would get to play Richter City Allstars - they were like our 'big sister' league and had helped us a lot over the first year of ORDL's life.  Our long term plan was to bout against their B team next year and then get good enough to challenge the big kids in 2014.

Our Head coach's pep talk in the changing room beforehand went something like this.....its gonna be tough, but hey we got nothing to lose, and we coooullddd win and that would be epic, actually if we get close it will be epic......

A few jams in we were yet to score at 11-0.  

We were all starting to hope that the game wasn't going to be a total embarrassment when something almost magical happened.  

We became a team.  

Suddenly we were finding each other on the track quicker, holding our walls stronger, switching from defense to offense together, and winning!

It was a crazy! In hindsight, we probably got wrapped up in the moment a bit much and it maybe cost us the game by two points (Final score 60-58).  But we didn't really care.  It honestly felt like we won. Just look at these faces.....

NZ Tournament - part 1

Today I get to double my bout experience.
Today I get to play against some of the best players in New Zealand.
Today I get to be a tiny part of New Zealand roller derby history.

But first I have to get up stupidly early.  I've set my cellphone alarm to Rooster and it wakes my room obnoxiously at 6.30am.  
'Wow that's one big cock', teammate Hammer mumbles from her pillow.
I drag myself out of bed and force down some breakfast.  I hate eating this early but I know I'll need all the fuel I can get.  
Down at the venue I resist the urge to immediately throw my skates on to see how the floor feels, and take a moment to soak it all in instead.  
Two tracks...two!  13 teams - so much derby to play and watch in one day!  
I know that's no big deal to a lot of my overseas derby readers but for New Zealand this is awesome, and I'm here.  
We make our way upstairs to the team room - 13 teams all allocated a small space in one lounge - it gets a bit whiffy by the end of the day but you overhear some classic one-liners....
'I'm so glad I bought a new bra'
'We scored 3 points against Richter!!!'
'Have you pooed yet?'
'At least I can drink now!' this one from a freshly injured skater.
Finally it's time to get gear on and warm up, skate off some of the nerves.  
Our first bout was against The Coasters.  We got a healthy lead early on which allowed us to jam some of our second string jammers. It was good to give them the experience as well as rest up our main jammers for our later games.  

We won the game with a score of 113-34.
Our next game was against Whenua Fatales.  These ladies were hard hitters! Luckily regular scrimmage with the likes of Crash and Knox had us all well conditioned for this and we won 174-18.

It was awesome to feel our teamwork getting stronger with each jam played but we still had our toughest pool bouts ahead with Richter City and Swamp City, both strong possibles for taking out the whole contest.  
Our first two wins also guaranteed us a place in the quarter finals, where we would most likely play against ARDL - another likely to make the final.  Bouting three of the top four teams in New Zealand in one day, not bad experience for a two year old, one team league!
To be continued.......

Off to tourney!

So I've started many blogs lately - one on discovering my hamstrings, one on rediscovering the penalty box - but they are all sitting there unfinished.  

Instead I've been focusing on getting ready for the first ever New Zealand derby tournament!  Yep - crosstraining my ass off and mastering all those techniques and strategies that I need to be at my best.....

Hang on...nope, that's not what I've been doing at all......instead I've been fighting off the worst cold ever, missing way too much training because of it and still not able to do more than a few laps without having a coughing fit....arrrrgggghhhh!
Far from the ideal build up.  But it's happened and I'll have to roll with it. 
I will play the best I can and have an awesome time.  
I will nearly double my bout experience in one day!  So much learning and so many great people to meet from other leagues. 
On top of that I get three whole days break from housework and childcare (yes I do love my children and no I don't feel guilty for looking forward to a few days away from them.  No matter how much someone loved their job they wouldn't be expected to love doing it every hour of every day...end of feminist rant....), a day shopping in Wellington (where I'm sure I will nervously avoid all tall brickish buildings) and just generally hanging out with some of my favourite people.

Bring it on!