I hit the ice tonight to help coach the local "learn to play hockey" program for women. It's the first time I've gone in a couple seasons, as my work/commuting schedule just hasn't allowed me to join them. Things changed last week when I switched to a 4-day work week. (So far, it's been a wonderful switch!)
Anyho, I absolutely LOVE coaching these women. Several are the moms of the girls I used to coach. Others are younger, in college or just out of college. The first year I ran the program we'd have 20-30 women out on the ice, spread out amongst 3-6 stations. Tonight, it was a small group with 6 skaters and 3 coaches. This year it's a tough timeslot for those who work 9-5pm to make on time, so things got off to a slow start as everyone arrived when they could and got geared up. Eventually the head coach decided that we really needed to get things moving, and she knew just what to do.
She came to me and asked me to lead practice.
Well... so much for just following along.
I started everyone off with a round-the-circles skating drill, to get a chance to watch them more closely. Everyone finished the drill and I told them that it looked good, but there was one problem- nobody fell. If you push yourself beyond your physical capabilities, you'll know it immediately because you fall. And by falling, you'll learn exactly how far you can push yourself. But you have to fall.
One of the reasons I love coaching these women is that they are comfortable speaking their minds about how they're feeling. There's one skater who always gets bored first, another who is always super enthusiastic about every drill and yet another that struggles with developing her "hockey sense". To develop her hockey sense she requires progressions, reasons and drawings. Without these things she and I naturally both get frustrated as she struggles through the practice. Challenging the first skater while building the hockey sense of the third and also simultaneously figuring out what the second needs can be quite the challege. And those are only a few of the skaters on the ice!
Tonight, the women expressed how uncomfortable they were about falling.
How do you change from uncomfortable to comfortable?
You practice.
I explained how you can fall safely and demonstrated how a knee touch can transition into a softball slide. Then I had everyone practice that a few times at the blue line. Each time, after we all got to the other end of the rink, I'd discuss why some of the things I was seeing were good or bad and how the bad could be corrected. Next up, it was a knee touch transitioning into a softball slide which turned into a log roll.
Many of the same rules apply for falling safely in both roller derby and ice hockey. Fall small, under control, pick a cheek and do whatever you can to avoid hitting your head or flat on your back. In hockey, it's also pretty important to be able to rotate your body (while still sliding on the ice) to get your feet out in front of you. Those boards and the net can do some pretty nasty damage if you hit them going head first. Swinging your legs in front of you might result in needing some new blades on your skates (or at least a sharpening), but you're able to absorb the impact with your legs rather than your head and vital organs. If it's gonna hurt, make it hurt as little as possible. Sacrifice your gear before your body, and your body before your brain and spine.
After the falling exercises, it was back to the circles. Forward, backward, with a puck, without a puck. Eventually I (and that first skater mentioned above) got really bored with circles, so I made up a drill that combined skating, puckhandling, positioning, 1-on-1 and hockey sense. Skaters approached two cones (set up in the defensive zone roughly where you'd normally be challenged by offensive players) and did some sort of move that was challenging to them as they passed. A weave, a fake, a small circle around the cone, a kneefall, etc. After they cleared the defensive zone, they cut to center ice where another cone was set up to mark where the defenseman would start. Defense ideally matched speed between the center line and blue line, then challenged the skater while simultaneously angling them to the outside (away from "home", which is the area in front of your own net and where a large percentage of goals are scored from). Everyone went through that a few times, then I started changing it up a bit with a few 2-on-1's to get some passing and partnering in.
To get cross-ice movement and face-to-face passing going, I set up another drill. One cone low near the face-off, another high on the other side between the face-off and blue line. One skater takes a puck and passes it to the skater coming out of the other corner, waiting until that skater has make a 90-degree turn at the high cone to make the pass. The new puck carrier then continues across to the far "lane" (to the side where the pass originated), where they turn again and head towards the net. At this point, their partner has hopefully switched sides and caught up to them in the other lane and they can enter the offensive zone with a pass that doesn't put either skater off-sides. After they'd gone through it a few times, I explained how to use the neutral zone to offensively re-group before the defense really began to put pressure on at the blue line. Hockey players often feel like they have to rush, rush, rush once they get the puck out of their defensive zone (just like derby girls who "race" with the pack, rather than controlling the pack). I managed to throw in a couple 3-man runs while the zamboni warmed up, just to get the third man worked into the drill and therefore closer to a game-like situation.
While skaters changed into street clothes I drew out a rink on the locker room white board and explained what exactly those last two drills were supposed to simulate. Most specifically, how a skater wanted to keep the puck on the outside while in their defensive end but then take it to the center in the neutral and offensive zones. Taking the time to draw it out and further explain it made things click for all the skaters in the locker room. Especially since the experience was still so fresh in their minds.
And in the random category: Porkchop tastes mighty fine, especially when cooked with wine and served over wild rice. Nom!
Friday, 20 January 2012
Appreciating the past.
Ever felt like you were in too deep? Read this!
I love it when I finally master what I'd thought was impossible. I love it even more when I can inspire OTHERS to achieve THEIR impossibles. You see an amazing woman (or man) out on the track? Well, they were once fresh meat too.
When I don't think I can pick up my feet anymore (especially to jump, run, or juke one more time) the ONLY strategy I use is to visualize myself doing it. Sometimes it gets me through, sometimes it keeps me in the game until I can get help, and sometimes... sometimes I utterly fail. The only thing that really matters at that point is that I pushed myself further than I'd thought possible- both physically and mentally. Every path to success is littered with many failures. Every mountain has its ups and downs.
At this time of year six years ago, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to skate again. The same injury that took away my ability to put one skate in front of the other was the final straw that put me on academic probation, took away my voting privileges in my sorority and ultimately made me realize that I was fast becoming someone I really didn't want to be. I was extremely lucky and after years of work I was able to regain all that I'd lost. I set out to heal myself by teaching others and it made me become an even better skater and person than I'd ever been before.
There have been (and still are) many days where the only thing that I look forward to is getting my butt whooped by a bunch of girls. Or I'll set out to thoroughly whoop my own butt and someone else will force me to put a smile back on my face and a dance back in my body. Many days, fulfilling the needs of others is what satisfies my own needs.
Nowadays, some might just see a fast girl on skates. I see the faces and moments that brought that girl to the track; and keep her coming back. I feel the burn of screaming muscles, the ache of unhealed wounds, and an ever-burning drive to skate faster, smarter and longer. The desire to belong and feel wanted. I see a girl who fails in order to experience more in life than she'd ever dreamed was possible.
I love it when I finally master what I'd thought was impossible. I love it even more when I can inspire OTHERS to achieve THEIR impossibles. You see an amazing woman (or man) out on the track? Well, they were once fresh meat too.
When I don't think I can pick up my feet anymore (especially to jump, run, or juke one more time) the ONLY strategy I use is to visualize myself doing it. Sometimes it gets me through, sometimes it keeps me in the game until I can get help, and sometimes... sometimes I utterly fail. The only thing that really matters at that point is that I pushed myself further than I'd thought possible- both physically and mentally. Every path to success is littered with many failures. Every mountain has its ups and downs.
At this time of year six years ago, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to skate again. The same injury that took away my ability to put one skate in front of the other was the final straw that put me on academic probation, took away my voting privileges in my sorority and ultimately made me realize that I was fast becoming someone I really didn't want to be. I was extremely lucky and after years of work I was able to regain all that I'd lost. I set out to heal myself by teaching others and it made me become an even better skater and person than I'd ever been before.
There have been (and still are) many days where the only thing that I look forward to is getting my butt whooped by a bunch of girls. Or I'll set out to thoroughly whoop my own butt and someone else will force me to put a smile back on my face and a dance back in my body. Many days, fulfilling the needs of others is what satisfies my own needs.
Nowadays, some might just see a fast girl on skates. I see the faces and moments that brought that girl to the track; and keep her coming back. I feel the burn of screaming muscles, the ache of unhealed wounds, and an ever-burning drive to skate faster, smarter and longer. The desire to belong and feel wanted. I see a girl who fails in order to experience more in life than she'd ever dreamed was possible.
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Bwah?!
"4 hours out on a Friday night can negate 2 WEEKS worth of training." <-- An example of the interesting tidbits one gathers when going through USAHockey's 10 and Under coaching education module.
Nifty info to have for derby, but WTF?!?! THIS IS 10 AND UNDER!!
Oh, and apparently a woman drinking 2 oz of liquor is equivalent to a man drinking 4 oz of liquor.
My brain hurts.
Nifty info to have for derby, but WTF?!?! THIS IS 10 AND UNDER!!
Oh, and apparently a woman drinking 2 oz of liquor is equivalent to a man drinking 4 oz of liquor.
My brain hurts.
Monday, 9 January 2012
A whole line-up of jammers
After a solid weekend of derby and hockey, I *think* my legs might be justified in being sore for the next week or two. Okay, on to the exciting news.
The BC Rollers acquired their very own practice space last week! This is HUGE news for their league, as they had been commuting an hour each way to their former practice space. That translated to a 6-hour time commitment each practice for many skaters and they've been struggling to maintain membership. Growing the league's membership numbers was simply proving impossible due to such a large time commitment.
I was scheduled to coach Sunday's practice, so I had to get into the space ASAP to figure out what I really had to work with. Cleaning party Saturday AM? That's a GREAT time to see the space and get to see a few skaters at the same time. So that's where I was, bright and early on Saturday morning. I popped my freshly-washed bearings back into my wheels and away I went (with a very large cup of coffee in hand.) I took a few laps around the track to test the floor and soon wandered into the bathroom where the cleaning party was hard at work.
I got to know the hallway wall a bit more intimately than I wanted to when I discovered that there's a dip in the floor as you're coming out the bathroom. Remember that nice cup of coffee I had? Generally, doing a 180 while skating through the bathroom door and holding a conversation is something I'm perfectly comfortable with and able to accomplish without incident. Hitting that dip... well... I maintained my up-right position AND my hold on my coffee cup, but the wall behind me got splattered with flying coffee when I whacked my (still un-padded) elbow on the wall. *sigh*
The day's lone Junior derby skater arrived for practice not long after I had my little incident in the hallway. After cleaning up my mess, I joined in on the very first practice held in the new space. Dodgeball and floor hockey on roller skates? Fantastic. We eventually ended that practice with a sweep and partial mop of the floor. The official opinion of the junior skater is that mopping is fun when you're allowed to do it on roller skates. A drop-in visit from a CCR skater, then it was off to hockey practice for me.
Sunday brought more hockey and derby with an away hockey game and a (short) 2-hour practice for the BC Rollers. It was a particularly fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants practice with skaters of all experience levels out on the track and lots of excitement in the air due to being in the league's new home space. We even had the help of Rusty Nailher's four-legged companion, Cowboy, for tennis ball keep-away and obstacle avoidance practice. (I hope I didn't scare the fresh meat away with that one...)
The hockey game ended in a tie (2-2) despite our having a crazy number of shots on net. A fun thing with the team this year is that we've got four current/former derby players on the team. Usually I and another derby gal are both centers so that we're rarely on the same line-up together, but I'd requested to be wing for this particular game. I was paired up with one of the other derby gals as my wing partner and we were rotating three wing pairs and two centers through on the offensive line. Normally the other center and I "find" each other on the ice as we each skate backwards in a half-circle at a fairly decent speed and INTO each other. (Hence the reason for never putting us on the same line-up!) We've been working on staying out of each others' lane of travel for the past year or so and that effort finally seems to have paid off as we successfully completely the game without ANY collisions. Whoot!
Our three derby girls who were up on offense also happen to all be jammers. So roughly every other time my partner and I were skating, we had a full offensive line of roller derby jammers. Yeah jammer line! This made for some super-fun weaving, cycling and scrambling in front of the net as we all found each other with our passes and kept attacking the opposing team's goalie from all sides.
I *believe* my wing partner got both goals and I got one assist. I'm still not quite sure how the goalie managed to stop all the shots that were happening on the other lines, but somehow she pulled it off and kept the game to a tie. My hat's definitely off to her for that and to her teammates for tying us up in front.
I'm looking forward to this coming week's version of hockey and derby!
The BC Rollers acquired their very own practice space last week! This is HUGE news for their league, as they had been commuting an hour each way to their former practice space. That translated to a 6-hour time commitment each practice for many skaters and they've been struggling to maintain membership. Growing the league's membership numbers was simply proving impossible due to such a large time commitment.
I was scheduled to coach Sunday's practice, so I had to get into the space ASAP to figure out what I really had to work with. Cleaning party Saturday AM? That's a GREAT time to see the space and get to see a few skaters at the same time. So that's where I was, bright and early on Saturday morning. I popped my freshly-washed bearings back into my wheels and away I went (with a very large cup of coffee in hand.) I took a few laps around the track to test the floor and soon wandered into the bathroom where the cleaning party was hard at work.
I got to know the hallway wall a bit more intimately than I wanted to when I discovered that there's a dip in the floor as you're coming out the bathroom. Remember that nice cup of coffee I had? Generally, doing a 180 while skating through the bathroom door and holding a conversation is something I'm perfectly comfortable with and able to accomplish without incident. Hitting that dip... well... I maintained my up-right position AND my hold on my coffee cup, but the wall behind me got splattered with flying coffee when I whacked my (still un-padded) elbow on the wall. *sigh*
The day's lone Junior derby skater arrived for practice not long after I had my little incident in the hallway. After cleaning up my mess, I joined in on the very first practice held in the new space. Dodgeball and floor hockey on roller skates? Fantastic. We eventually ended that practice with a sweep and partial mop of the floor. The official opinion of the junior skater is that mopping is fun when you're allowed to do it on roller skates. A drop-in visit from a CCR skater, then it was off to hockey practice for me.
Sunday brought more hockey and derby with an away hockey game and a (short) 2-hour practice for the BC Rollers. It was a particularly fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants practice with skaters of all experience levels out on the track and lots of excitement in the air due to being in the league's new home space. We even had the help of Rusty Nailher's four-legged companion, Cowboy, for tennis ball keep-away and obstacle avoidance practice. (I hope I didn't scare the fresh meat away with that one...)
The hockey game ended in a tie (2-2) despite our having a crazy number of shots on net. A fun thing with the team this year is that we've got four current/former derby players on the team. Usually I and another derby gal are both centers so that we're rarely on the same line-up together, but I'd requested to be wing for this particular game. I was paired up with one of the other derby gals as my wing partner and we were rotating three wing pairs and two centers through on the offensive line. Normally the other center and I "find" each other on the ice as we each skate backwards in a half-circle at a fairly decent speed and INTO each other. (Hence the reason for never putting us on the same line-up!) We've been working on staying out of each others' lane of travel for the past year or so and that effort finally seems to have paid off as we successfully completely the game without ANY collisions. Whoot!
Our three derby girls who were up on offense also happen to all be jammers. So roughly every other time my partner and I were skating, we had a full offensive line of roller derby jammers. Yeah jammer line! This made for some super-fun weaving, cycling and scrambling in front of the net as we all found each other with our passes and kept attacking the opposing team's goalie from all sides.
I *believe* my wing partner got both goals and I got one assist. I'm still not quite sure how the goalie managed to stop all the shots that were happening on the other lines, but somehow she pulled it off and kept the game to a tie. My hat's definitely off to her for that and to her teammates for tying us up in front.
I'm looking forward to this coming week's version of hockey and derby!
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Holidays, wha??...
The Albany bout, physics class and holidays have all passed and WHEW- what a busy month.
The BC Rollers lost according to the scoreboard, but I'm pretty certain they won the hearts of Albany's derby community. I can't even describe these girls, they are definitely a sight to see.
I passed physics with a "C". Holy cow, am I glad that course is over.
I got to spend some time at the family farm over the holidays with Rusty NailHer. Flower Father got a few trees taken down for him along a fence line and Rusty got to see some amazing poetry of mine from the 2nd grade. "There once was a fish..." Oh boy. I was a sad, sad, sad little 2nd grader.
Tuesday brought my date with the oral surgeon. Goodbye remaining wisdom teeth! My new serger also arrived. Unfortunately I couldn't play with it since I was on painkillers. ARRGGHHH!! And to further heighten this week's geeky excitement, today the FedEx truck brought my Silhouette Cameo! (There might have been some skipping and squealing going on.... just maybe.)
If you're a female who'd like to learn how to shoot, check out this post by A Girl and Her Gun.
ETA A Girl and Her Gun's link: http://agirlandhergun.blogspot.com
The BC Rollers lost according to the scoreboard, but I'm pretty certain they won the hearts of Albany's derby community. I can't even describe these girls, they are definitely a sight to see.
I passed physics with a "C". Holy cow, am I glad that course is over.
I got to spend some time at the family farm over the holidays with Rusty NailHer. Flower Father got a few trees taken down for him along a fence line and Rusty got to see some amazing poetry of mine from the 2nd grade. "There once was a fish..." Oh boy. I was a sad, sad, sad little 2nd grader.
Tuesday brought my date with the oral surgeon. Goodbye remaining wisdom teeth! My new serger also arrived. Unfortunately I couldn't play with it since I was on painkillers. ARRGGHHH!! And to further heighten this week's geeky excitement, today the FedEx truck brought my Silhouette Cameo! (There might have been some skipping and squealing going on.... just maybe.)
If you're a female who'd like to learn how to shoot, check out this post by A Girl and Her Gun.
ETA A Girl and Her Gun's link: http://agirlandhergun.blogspot.com
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