Teamwork: more than just socialist propaganda?

Another Monday night scrimmage come and gone with Lane County Concussion. They (LCC) scrimmage every Monday, often with a handful of women skating with us as well, which is cool until one of them skitters around you like you were standing still. Clearly the result of girls maturing faster than boys.

Getting to regularly skate with new people helps broaden your horizons and forces you to develop your book of derby lore beyond the limited chapters your team might subscribe to. It also means you have to create trust and understanding in a couple jams to avoid being decimated by those choads in the white shirts for the next hour and change. While some people have enough experience or are good enough at following quick instructions to instantly fill the gaps, others struggle to play like they are anything other than a team of one. This recent scrimmage was a good example. One team had a slightly better blocking lineup than the other, but was prevented from outright dominating the entire evening through solid communication and teamwork by the other blockers. When our team worked as a unit, life was good. When we devolved into four individuals each trying to take on the entire opposing line, not so much...

Cohesive play and strong communication are essential to successful pack play. Being able to collectively go from trapping for easy points to a kill-line when your jammer is in the box for blitzing someone in the tramp-stamp is critical and can mean the difference between an unfortunate 20 point swing and an annoying 60 second pace-line while your friend with the star sits in the corner and thinks about what they have done wrong. In my experience, guys seem to have a hard time with this concept. I have had moments of trapping someone in the back and having to physically grab blockers from my team like a deployed parachute to prevent them from chasing a blocker on our jammer at 20', all while yelling at them loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage in the next two generations of their offspring. It is mildly frustrating, kinda like safety lighters and child-labor laws. I have considered suggesting some sort of a ear-bud radio system, but then I would probably hear a bunch of grumbling about being too demanding or how that Buzzed guy is a loud douche. Obviously there is room for improvement here.

2 Months Later...

So the alien abduction was a hoax, so I'm back with an update to briefly summarize the past 2 months:

I moved to Corvallis for grad school, skating semi-regularly with the Lane County Concussion team until my car decided to cook the motor. My landord plays on the Sick Town Derby Dames team, so I am eventually going to be refereeing in some capacity here. Once the motor is rebuilt then I'm going to be on a regular 4x/week derby schedule plus whatever outdoor skating I work in around class.

The last couple months have brought a few more new skaters at PMRD with our new guys moving along nicely. Unfortunately, our captain and league president (Carpe Demon) suffered a bad fibia spiral fracture at the end of our first coed scrimmage and will be recovering from the injury until February or so.

I got to play in RCR's coed scrimmage last weekend where I witnessed the shock and awe that was Quadzilla. Seriously, I think he is 3 people sharing the same space and time, he was that good. Great eye-opener to how far I have left to go, but I would be pretty content to achieve maybe 1/3-1/2 his skill.

Hopefully I'll be somewhat more timely in my updates, and the weekly remind from the new phone should help with that as well...