Scrimmage, bitches!

On Saturday, the Rose City Rollers (Portland's nationally-ranked derby team) held an open black-and-white scrimmage. It was $5, and open to any derby girl as long as she had WFTDA or USARS insurance. (So, basically, any girl who has been with a league long enough to have bought the insurance. I think probably everyone had passed minimum skills, but it wasn't a requirement.)

Since Sick Town has lost its warehouse, we've been scrambling for practice locations. So of course we jumped on the chance to go up and scrimmage at Rose City's hangar. I think there were nine of us who went.

At first, there were just enough girls on the white team and the black team (all of us Sick Town girls were on white) that we only had to play every other jam. Later, as more girls showed up, it got to the point where you'd get to play every third jam.

I got to skate with a lot of awesome girls, both from my league and from others (mostly RCR freshies, but there were some RCR team girls too, and a fair number of Cherry City (Salem) girls, Emerald City (Eugene) girls, and even a few from out of state.

I was able to keep up with the pack almost all the time!! It was harder when I fell and had to catch up, but even then, I managed. One *really* awesome thing was when the other team tried to trap me (this is a well-known derby strategy, to trap one opposing player so that your blockers and the trapped girl become the pack ... if the other opposing blockers are more than 20 feet ahead, they are then out of play and can't block your jammer). Well, they NEVER managed to trap me! I'm getting pretty good at spotting the holes and getting away ... which is good, because even though my speed is improving and will continue to improve, I'll never be the fastest girl on the track.

I think I'm having more of those wonderful moments where I feel like I know what I'm doing -- moments where I block someone effectively, escape a trap, hit someone out of bounds. I had a lot of those during the scrimmage on Saturday. (In the interest of honesty, I must also admit that I had a few boneheaded moments -- especially the one where I got up from having been knocked down, and tripped on my own skate and went down again. D'oh!)

Anyway, GOD that was fun. It was hot -- I think it got up to at least 97 on Saturday, and the hangar where Rose City practices and bouts is not air-conditioned (other than that, though, it's pretty awesome). But when I was skating, I didn't notice the heat. It was just fun.