# It's Derby Time Again

I don't tend to go on and on about the things I've found to enjoy. I like what I like, and I'm happy to have you like what you like. That said, I've heard that a joy shared is a joy increased, so I figured I'd write up something about one of my favourite things.

I've played a lot of sports, and found a reasonable measure of satisfaction from most of them, but before Derby, I hadn't ever really found a group of people who resonated with me, whose values reflected my own, and with whom I could be comfortable. I have some social anxiety, and I've struggled in the past with fitting in. The ultra-masculine mentality that goes into most sports doesn't really work for me. I dropped off of two soccer teams because of that macho ego, one of which led to one teammate threatening to kill another, and the other because of an actual fist fight in the middle (at the end, since they shut it down) of a game.

I don't claim to have an understanding of the entirety of the derbyverse, but I do know what I get out of the group I skate with on a regular basis, so that's who and what I'm writing about.

You know how it feels when you find something that is just perfectly for you? It puts little flags in your week of something to look forward to. You plan your life around it, work your ass off, and get to see the benefits. That's the kind of thing that Derby is for me.

I could always ice skate. I could stride okay, and I could do forward cross-overs. My one-foot balance was pretty good. But that's about where I topped out. The couple attempts I've made in my life to play ice hockey have been not great. I struggled with stopping, and I always had to be way too conscious about my feet in order to be effective at all. The one time I went out to play at the local ice rink, some kid cut me off and I had to hit the deck or plow into him. Falling awkwardly on ice without padding sucks, and it wrenched my knee in an unhappy way.

I felt the same awkwardness when I started roller derby. Recruitment night, I was just trying (very hard) not to fall while experienced people were showing me things I wasn't really sure I could believe. Running on the toe-stops at the front of the skate, super-smooth transitions, one-foot derby stops into a running start. I was overwhelmed. I pushed too hard and pulled a hamstring, then bowed out with the excuse (and a valid one) that Ollie was too young to be part of Derby and there wasn't anyone to take care of her while practice was going on.

Six months later, I saw what my wife had achieved in Derby (we'd gone into the same recruitment night together) and I watched her playing in her first couple games. By this time, Ollie was enrolled in junior roller derby, and I was jealous.

I love sports. I love pushing myself and getting better, and being able to see the improvement. So watching my wife improve so much while I sat on the sidelines and watched was hard. In April, 2017, I got a set of equipment and started to referee.

I wasn't comfortable on my skates, but I've always been good at not falling, so I was able to deepen my understanding of the sport while getting better with my footing. Through the summer, when Kim broke her ankle, I got in shape and got ready to work through benchmarking.

Kim re-joined the fundamentals program alongside me so that she could get her skate legs back after her injury, and I pushed hard and was able to benchmark in time to play my first game in October.