Stumped

Sunday afternoon I was stumped.

I had to lead Fresh Meat practice in, "Jamming, Blocking, Light Scrimmaging".

Which should be a cinch, since "blocking" is right in there. But in reality, I was stumped on what to do. Why?

Because the previous night New York's Gotham Girls came and played against LA, and it was AMAZING to watch. Mainly for badass Gotham jammer Bonnie Thunders.

The girl's got smarts and footwork like nobody's business. The rest of the team follow suit; they're a team of long and lean athletes that know their stuff. I believe the only reason they lost to LA was because they didn't keep tighter packs. You can't go one-on-one as well on the bank against a fast-moving jammer.

Anyway, after seeing Bonnie skate, my mind became overloaded with awesomeness. How the hell am I going to teach our Freshies a damn thing about jamming when Bonnie's in town?!


I sat down to write up my lesson plan. And threw it away. Went back to a blank sheet of paper, started scribbling, and threw that away, too. I swear I threw away four to five lesson plans when I usually don't go beyond numero two-o. I had looked at drills, plans, and other training stuff online and that hadn't helped either.

I just couldn't get beyond not feeling worthy enough to do the job effectively.

I finally wrote up something that was semi-suitable and trundled off to wRECk League.

Which turned out to be the best way to use the cntrl + alt + delete on my brain to restart it.

I didn't play particularly well at wL, but there were a few skaters from a league in San Diego that have flat track experience but have never been on the bank. And that's where I was able to draw my lesson plan from.

After scrimmaging I took advantage of the hour of downtime between wL and Fresh Meat practice and quickly wrote up my lesson plan in about five minutes. BOOM. Finally done.

And FM practice ended up being awesome.

It's not that I came up with anything mind-blowing, but I came up with a series of drills that built up to the results that I wanted to see. Which I try to do at every practice, but somehow it worked particularly well for this one.

Which made me happy, as I saw some vital improvement in so many of the skaters! I hope that they take what all the trainers are giving them and putting it all to good use!



When it comes to other league stuff, especially politics, I'm really beginning to take this attitude:

Thank you, Xena.