'What is this Roller Derby?'

With WIRD's Trivia Night only seven days away preparations are in full swing. There are groups sweating away to get things sorted and my contribution right now is these shiny new informative doovies to scatter on tables.







As always, take what you need to help make your own league. :)

'Girls can't wait to skate', Illawarra Mercury

Thanks to Bree Fuller @ the Illawarra Mercury and Sylvia Liber for the pics

Successful first training at the Sports HUB

Marking out the track according to the WFTDA specifications and using a rope template which I whipped up after spotting one being used by SRDL. Not sure if ours conforms to their design as it was reverse engineered from a quick glance from a distance and some careful untangling of the WFTDA track plan. Our measurements have been converted to metric, though this isn't helping with us learning what 10 feet looks/feels like. Our track came out a bit dodgy last night and I suspect we need more practice.



The new venue was amazing! Staff were very helpful and it was great not having to worry about hitting walls or door handles. The new surface did play some havoc and our trainer took care to keep reminding us about how to handle the floor and which muscles to really push with to get traction. If nothing else, skating on plastic will drive home the mechanics of skating.

WIRD's First Grading

A few weeks ago one of our training committee put together a grading package for us. Drop Bear did a whole bunch of research and put together the following system based on some conversations she had with other trainers and other gradings she had looked at. We pretty much all passed 'Red' on the day and will be testing every two months or so.

RED STAR (beginner)
Fitness: 20 push ups and 20 sit-ups
Skills:

• T-stop, plough stop, and a turn around toe stop
• Single knee fall, a double, and a 4 point fall
  
• Able to be able to recover from a fall and keep going
  
• Jump while skating, hop from one foot to another while standing still- to each side, and forwards and backwards
• 5 minutes of continuous skating in correct stance, able to smoothly do cross overs in each direction

ORANGE STAR (intermediate)
Fitness: 30 push ups (20 of these on toes if possible) 50 sit ups and a 60 second body bridge (aka: plank).
SKILLS:

• 5 minutes of sprinting aiming for 30 laps of the track
• Snake pace line drill (pace line with an arm's length between skaters where the person at the back snakes between skaters and takes the lead)
  
• Do all falls and be back up and skating again within 3 seconds
  
• Fall big (like from a big hit in a bout) and be up and skating again in 3 seconds
  
• Skate for one minute and squat when the whistle goes while maintaining motion, ten second break, and then skate in a squat for another full minute

GREEN STAR (bout ready)
Fitness: 50 push ups, 100 sit ups and a 60 second body bridge and side bridges
SKILLS:

• 5 minutes of sprinting aiming for 30 laps of the track
• Double-snake pace line drill (not sure but suspect this means two people snaking through a pace line)
  
• 30 minute endurance pace line
• Do all falls, be up and skating in good form within 2 seconds (in line with new WFTDA Minimum Specs - Aug 2009)
  
• Fall big (like from a big hit in a bout) and be up and skating again in 2 seconds

Successful grant application

The Wollongong City Council cultural grant which we applied for back in late April was successful. WIRD have been given $1500 towards our 'Steel City/Skate City' event planned for the first quarter of 2010.

It was a bit of a shock as we had been informed we didn't get it and so when the envelope was opened at our Merch craft day I was in such a state of shocked awe that it took me a few minutes to realise this news equalled me having written a successful grant application. I then jumped around like some kind of loon.

Check us out.

Next up, sporting grants.

WIRD's 2009 Membership card

With offers of support flooding in, including offers of discounts to skaters, I decided it was time we had some proof of membership. Whipped these up and got them voted in - it was decided to print them on purple paper and go the whole hot laminating road from there.

We are also attempting to formulate a two-tiered member structure to cover social/associate members. I'll let you know how this progresses.

Recently our focus has come back to the Code of Conduct and so I tossed that little blurb on the back of the cards. I am also in the process of memorising the CoC.

Get your red hot Roller Derby on YouTube

Wollongong Illawarra Roller Derby has made it to the (small) big screen!

Check out our channel WIRDVideos.

Realised about ten minutes after I uploaded our first clip that it really could have been WIRD TV and that would have been hot. Alas.