We’ve been on a long hiatus – holiday times also means off-season around here, and we definitely took advantage of that this year! Time spent with family, too many mince pies, and (perhaps) a bit too little exercise left us all anxious to strap our skates back on once January hit. 2014 is a big year for us as a team, with many goals put into place years ago coming to fruition this year.

But first! Let us tell you what has us raving about January.

January is a training month for us, where we use the time we have to awaken our slumbering skills (Hello, Transitions!) and learn new ones. As a result of that, our fabulous training committee has set up several exciting guest coaching sessions for us. We had our first last night, with the amazing Ballistic Wistle traveling up from London to help us out. Ballistic Wistle is a coach for Team England, coaches the London Rollergirls, and also skates as a jammy jammer of doom on Southern Discomfort Roller Derby team.

To say it was a great training session with SO MUCH INFORMATION passed on would be an understatement.

Ballistic (or “Balls”, as we affectionately called him) helped us identify some of our weak areas, pointed out our strengths, broke down components in a very helpful manner, and focused us on our blocking skills.  We won’t give away everything (if you want to see these skills in action, come to our next home bout in April!) but we focused on hits, position, balance, and speed control.  EVERY team member raved about how much they learned, from our newest B team members (that would be…ahem…ME) to our most seasoned A team skaters.

Because we can continue working these drills, we’re sure to improve.  Also, we have a Jammy Jammer focused guest coach coming up soon, so keep reading here for an update after that session!

So glad to see you all here again, and let’s ROCK THE 2014 SEASON!

–Cali Floor’Ya