About halfway through my first round with the Jet Cadets (our fresh meat training program) our league coach, Big Poppa, pulled me aside with concerned eyes and told me he wanted to talk about my skating. "Because you can skate," he told me "I mean you can reee-ally skate, OK? But you don't look like you can you can. Because you're always..." at this point be broke off, hunched up his shoulders, held his arms at awkward 90 degree angles and did some awful version of the robot dance. "I mean, do you ever just - you know - skate around? Get loose, get comfortable? 'Cause captains are gonna look at that and..." he shook his head.
My friend Riley put it another way. "You know what Megan? People are always going to underestimate you and that's OK! Because you're awesome and they won't be expecting that you're good!"
Um... yay?
That was two years ago and since then I've launched several campaigns against 8 wheeled awkwardness to varying degrees of success. After all - it's tough to tell your body to relax and do what doesn't actually come naturally in the middle of trying to:
Block the jammer
Yell about the jammer
Stay low
Ward off offensive blockers
Keep track of the penalty box
Know where your skates are
Keep your hands to yourself
...and so one has to wonder whether a certain degree of competency on skates is simply out of reach for those of us without a relative degree of natural grace.
That question remained unanswered in the back of my head until the Windy City versus Rocky Mountain Rollergirls bout at the Division I playoffs this year when Athena De Crime racked up a HUGE power jam late in the second half of the game. As a fellow awkwardian (yes, I made that up just now) I mean no disrespect to Athena, but she's hardly a continuum of smooth moves. Even so, here she is, herkey jerkying her way through the pack and onto the scoreboard with logic defying effectiveness. And T stopping into the bench? I think I'm in love.
and she's not the only one
Actually - when you start to look for really awesome awkward skaters they're sort of everywhere. from Shaolynn Scarlett to Penny Racer these athletes that wiz by in apparent discomfort and nonetheless perform their roles with admirable strength and agility. It's enough to make you wonder why anyone ever thought that awkwardness is a disability to begin with. After all, roller derby is that everywoman's sport where tall, small, round or thin we find our way to do battle with those tools we were given and why should ease of movement be any different?
<posted on 9.26.13>
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