Another One for the Books

            First of all, let me apologize that it's been so long since our last blog post. Life happened, we all got busy. The blog posts will be back in full swing though! So with that, let's kick off the New Year with a new blog post!
            As many of you know, this time of year is a time to evaluate how the past year has gone and how we would like to improve over the next year. The first of January is a marker that everyone can understand and it's easier than setting a random arbitrary date as a reset button on goals. It also happens to be the beginning of our season. So it's even better for us to review the past year and set goals for the new one.
            In review of this past year, obviously it's been an amazing one because we've been part of our derby family. That's not to say that this past season didn't come with some bumps and bruises on the way. It was what I would like to refer to as a "growth season." Now, I know all seasons are growth seasons, but there are always those seasons in sports where more people move to different teams or different coaching staff or different strategy. This season was spent building up enough skaters to supplement our current bouters and get a full roster. In doing so, it was instantly a season that required more learning because there were more new bouters than I would assume is average. There has been a feeling out process to find where many of us new skaters fit in roles that help us contribute to the league. We also lost some very wonderful skaters this year. Sometimes, after the loss of a skater, it felt like our leg had been amputated. It emphasizes the importance of each skater to this well oiled machine. There are numerous adjustments that need to be done to compensate and fill the role that that individual filled.
           We competed hard but had a couple hard upsets this year that required us to not only learn more about derby, but to learn more about each other in terms of how each person copes with the upsets. We've made numerous adjustments to how we play and operate with each other. So, as I said before, this year definitely seemed like a huge growth year. This league is so much stronger than RHDD was when I joined a little over a year ago. Even being relatively new (seeing as how we have some skaters that have been with the league over three years), I have still been able to witness the level of growth and strength that RHDD has accumulated.
          Our direction for the future is pretty clear. We plan to hone the skills and lessons we've learned this year. To become stronger as individual players and as a team. We've set our team goals to mainly improve how we work with each other. After all, you can try to play derby alone, but you won't get very far. We plan to learn individual strengths and weaknesses for each skater and build on and compensate for those. We plan to play our game and no one else's. I won't go into full detail of the specific goals that we've set out in case competitors are reading this. I'd hate to give away our trade secrets or ways that we've changed for this season before anyone plays us. But I will tell you this, you can expect to see a better RHDD hit the track every time, you can expect us to work efficiently together (even better than before), and you can expect us to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Lady McDeath #22