This is me

Things people should know about me, but probably don’t:

I am the most insecure person you’ve ever met

I can’t take a compliment

Even when I know I did well at something, I will never say it out loud

I only focus on the bad things I did during a bout

I ask Matty 100 times the night of a bout if I played okay, at least

I yell at you because I care

I push you because I believe in you and know you can do better, even if you don’t believe it

Contrary to popular belief, winning is not the only thing I care about, I care about my team and

their feelings

I will tell you exactly how I feel, and I won’t apologize for my opinion, but I will apologize for misunderstandings or the delivery

I take action first and think later, on and off the track

I live, eat, breath, sleep derby, it’s the only thing in life I’ve ever been this passionate about and committed to

I get frustrated if I think other people aren’t as committed and competitive as I am, but then I have to realize that not everyone is like me, and that’s a good thing

I am finally realizing that perception means a lot, regardless of how I think I’m coming across or what my intention is

I want us to have 100 people in our league, fighting for 20 spots, it enhances my competiveness and pushes me to try harder and do better

I take all my shit out on the people that I love the most, which is the most hurtful thing I can do, ask my wives, I’m probably the biggest bitch of all to them

I get so nervous before a bout, it’s almost paralyzing to skate out onto the track, and every time, I ask Weezy if I can go home, she just looks at me a laughs

I don’t have friends anymore, I just have derby sisters

I love everyone on my team and in my league, they all have unique characteristics that I appreciate

I have to be the best at everything I do and I have to learn everything I can about it

People think I’m intimidating and unapproachable, which I think is funny, considering I am socially inept

I am not a bitch, but I am opinionated

I try to say what I mean, but not be mean when I say it

I would do anything for anyone

Rollercon 2009

I’m leaving on a jet plane; don’t know when I’ll be back again. Can’t wait, only 15 more days until I plop my happy butt down in that window seat and get the heck out of Santa Cruz for a week. Heading out to Vegas for Rollercon 2009. This will be my second year, and, like I said, I can’t wait. Last year, I didn’t want to come back home. Rollercon is a week of being submerged in derby. Class after class, workshop after workshop, challenge bout after challenge bout. I live and breathe derby, and Rollercon is my heaven.

Last year I took it easy, tested the water. This year I am jumping right into the deep end of the pool. I am more confident in my derby skill level, and I am pushing myself harder this year, and taking more challenging classes. All my classes are advanced classes, and I am confident I can hang with those girls. A few jamming classes and a few blocking classes, taught by the most talented women (and one man) in derby. Plus I have probably signed up for every challenge bout that was put out there on the forum. I just want to play derby, all day.

The real reason I love Rollercon, watching the level of skating that is going to be going on. And the fact that I get to play with and against these derby hero’s of mine. These girls that I read about on DNN, watch on rollersport.tv and browse through thousands of pictures of on Flickr. These are the women that I get my inspiration from before a bout. These are the woman that I look up to, and want to be like. I study their form, their fast feet, their agility, their strategy, I soak it all in. It’s like I’ve been window shopping the most amazing pair of shoes, and now I get to buy them.

Matty and I fly in Tuesday morning, and leave Sunday afternoon. I would say poor Matty, but really all he has to do is lay in front of the pool and drink for five days. Oh, and come watch me skate a few times. And as if my schedule wasn’t full enough while I’m there, we’ve managed to cram in a Motley Crue show at the Hard Rock on Sat night. There are a few things that I want to do, like ride the rollercoaster through New York New York, or head to the top of the Stastosphere, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m okay with that. Really, I just want to skate.

Talking Derby to DNN: Joy Collision, Charm City Captain

Talking Derby to DNN: Joy Collision, Charm City Captain
by Mercy Less - July 13, 2009 - 2:07am
In the days after the Texas Rollergirls' top-ten marathon weekend, DNN's Mercy Less interviewed representatives of each participating team for their reflections on the bouts. In the third of four interviews, Mercy talks with Charm City captain Joy Collision.

DNN: How did you prepare your team for the bout against the Texecutioners?

Joy: I guess it's just constant preparation. We're playing so many games, hard to distinguish between preparing for just that game and any other game. We did look for some footage of Texas to see if we could, maybe, watch them and see how they played. But, we couldn't find any with their current roster, because they have a lot of newer transfer skaters this season. New people skating that haven't played so many games this year. We had to just try and work our strategy and get all of the players skills up to the level that we wanted, and work on our team play.
We did set up some scrimmages with the Harm City Homicide boys. We did know that Texas was basically a larger team than we are, so we thought that maybe getting hit by the boys and knocked around by them a little might help us prepare for getting knocked around by the Texas girls. They were, of course, really, really grateful because we haven't done so much stuff with them before. It's actually really fun, and hopefully we'll do that in the future. I think it helps both of us.

DNN: What was your feeling about your team's performance going into this game? What were your expectations?

Joy: I definitely feel like our team has been growing and getting so much better since the beginning of the season. It doesn't even look like the same team as when we first started playing in February. We have so many new girls that have really come into their own. I, of course, wanted to see us do well. I didn't, at the time, feel like we were assured a win against Texas in any way. But I didn't think it was out of our reach by any means. I feel like Texas is a wonderful team, and would've taken a loss as a victory. I still feel like it's a victory on our part, even though we didn't win that game. I feel like we played really, really well in that game, and I was satisfied. I was totally satisfied with our skaters, before and then after.

DNN: What was the most challenging part of that game for your team?

Joy: There's a couple of challenging things that happened during the game. One of which, is of course that some of our jammers that are normally in the jammer lineup weren't jamming. We definitely relied heavily upon people that we haven't had jam as much. They really pulled through, especially in the second period, for us. Bambi's Revenge, she's a newer jammer and she really came through for us in our second period. That was definitely a challenge that presented itself.
Right before the game we kind of knew we were going to have some issues with that. I hurt my knee, so I wasn't really going to be able to jam very much at all. We always had to make some adjustments during the game. They work really well together, and they are a very experienced team. Just the size of the girls and their knowledge of the game was the biggest challenge to us, I think.
The fact that it was at 11:00 am was challenging. We usually play our games at night, and we do practice in the morning, but after a long flight, it was definitely like, "Wow. I wouldn't mind sleeping in an extra hour." I'm sure they wouldn't have minded either. They had played Gotham Girls the night before. You have to do what you have to do.

FOR THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW.

http://www.derbynewsnetwork.com/2009/07/13/talking_derby_dnn_joy_collision_charm_city_captain

Engaged...

So Matty proposed to me on Wednesday night, I cried, a lot. I'm so happy. It feels so surreal. The ring is beautiful, vintage, from the 30's or 40's.

Anyways, I guess its not official til you right a blog about it.

Ha ha!

This is fitting...

Aries
July 10th, 2009

The stars award you a free pass of sorts today. It's basically a license to act any darned way you want to for 48 hours. The funny thing is, if anyone is comfortable in their own skin to start with, it's you. This should be good. Call your friends and tell them you'll be unofficially on stage for the next couple of days. You wouldn't want them to miss this, would you?

Desi Cration Interview with DNN

Talking Derby to DNN: Desi Cration, Texecutioners Co-Captain
by Mercy Less - July 8, 2009 - 1:39pm

In the days after the Texas Rollergirls' top-ten marathon weekend, DNN's Mercy Less interviewed representatives of each participating team for their reflections on the bouts. In the first of four interviews, Mercy talks with Texecutioners co-captain Desi Cration.

DNN: How did you prepare your team for the bout against Gotham?

Desi: A whole bunch of hard work. We’ve added in some extra workouts. A lot of it was just coming together as a team and really stepping up as far as knowing that there is just a whole bunch of competition out there. In order to stay with the best, you’ve gotta train like crazy.

DNN: What was your feeling about your team’s performance going into this gigantic weekend? Did you have expectations?

Desi: We had expectations to do our best. I don’t know that there was really a clear, defined answer to that. Of course we want to win, but what we wanted coming into this weekend was to have the experience, and to play against three fantastic teams, and really getting some good competition to play against. I think we really did everything we intended to do, just by coming out there, playing under the new ruleset, playing against teams that we haven’t played against. Doing all those things really was our biggest accomplishment.

DNN: What would you say was the most challenging thing about each game for your team?

Desi: (laughs) Sleep deprivation by the end of the weekend! Both nights when we got there, we didn’t get in until after 2:00 am. Other than that – that was a major thing – but it did represent what happens in tournaments, not getting enough sleep.
Gotham being the first one, we were most looking forward to, and had really high expectations of that game, and knew that it was going to be fast-paced and against the best in the country. They proved themselves at Nationals, their team is so deep, and they work like such a well-oiled machine. That was kind of a difficult part, in that you can’t take out one player, you have to take out an entire team when you try to work with Gotham. So understanding their team play was probably the most difficult thing about Gotham.
Archived DNN Boutcast - video and text
DNN Recap Article
Playing against Charm City, playing in an environment where it wasn’t an actual public bout, so there was no production, was quite difficult. Not to mention we were going up against the likes of Flo Shizzle and Dolly Rocket, Joy Collision – I mean, we really had our hands full with quite a few of their skaters. The fact that it was in a non-prodcution environment.
Archived DNN Boutcast - text
DNN Recap Article

TO READ THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW, VISIT DERBY NEWS NETWORK OR CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW

http://www.derbynewsnetwork.com/2009/07/08/talking_derby_dnn_desi_cration_texecutioners_cocaptain

Bonnie Thunders Interview with DNN

Talking Derby to DNN: Bonnie Thunders, Gotham Girls Captain
by Hurt Reynolds - July 10, 2009 - 6:09am

In the days after the Texas Rollergirls' top-ten marathon weekend, DNN's Mercy Less interviewed representatives of each participating team for their reflections on the bouts. In the second of four interviews, Mercy talks with Gotham Girls captain Bonnie Thunders.

DNN: How did you prepare your team for the bout against the Texecutioners?

Bonnie: We’ve been prepping for this bout quite a bit because we were playing progressively harder teams this season for interleague. So we started with Boston, went on to Charm City, followed by Carolina, so I feel like that was good preparation, in that we were challenging ourselves a little more each time, and learning a lot about our playing style by playing our opponents, really seeing where our own weaknesses were.
Additionally, of course, I think endurance is a huge one, and I do believe that's one of the ways in which we won the game. We do have a really high level of endurance with the entire team at Gotham. That helps, not just with physical endurance, but mental endurance - to be thinking clearly even though you've been playing for 60 minutes, and also having....it was really, really warm in there, all those factors on top of it.
Just in general, we came up with a plan - after every bout, working on improving what didn't work in that bout, and I think that we just built that momentum forward from the beginning of this season, culminating in this bout. Now we're able to regroup aain, and wrap up and prepare for Regionals.

DNN: What was your feeling about your team's performance going into this game? Did you have expectations?

Bonnie: I definitely had expectations. I really had high expectations, especially for our rookies, because they've been so strong lately. I was really glad to see that they all had pretyy good games. There were a couple of very, very new rookies - two girls that have only played one home season in the past. I was really excited for them to play such high level derby, so early in their careers. I felt that we did a really good job of filling in the holes of skaters that we lost last year.
I also had expectations for older girls' skills as well, not only living up to their reputations from last year, but also improving. I think that's the hardest part of being a veteran - how do you get better when everyone else is getting better, too. You have to be constantly improving your own skating even though everyone else is coming up under you, eating at your tail, so to speak.
So those were my expectations, for our rookies to get some good experience, and and really feel what it feels like to play a really high level derby game. Also for our veterans to push themselves that much more to show themwhere they've come since last season.

DNN: What was the most challenging thing about this game for your team?

Bonnie: I think that Texas had a really good offense, not that we didn't expect it, but it was a very strong offense. They really supported their jammers in the pack and I think that was somewhat of a challenge for us, because I don't think we had faced that before this season. That was something we really learned a lot about. How we need to overcome strong offense from another team, and really trying to stop their jammer.
I think the other thing about Texas is that their jammers actually improved really well. Obviously everyone expected Rice Rocket to be jamming a whole lot, and she didn't. It was really amazing to see the improvement their jammers had since last year. Especially Olivia Shootin' John, she's really come a long way. Nationals [2008], she didn't skate very many jams in their game. She had skated a lot fewer jams than she did in this game.
Lucille Brawl - she had never really been a jammer, but she really was a jammer. There were some girls on Texas who we totally didn't expect to be that strong as jammers - they really stepped up a lot from last year.


TO READ THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW PLEASE VISIT DERBY NEWS NETWORK OR CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW

http://www.derbynewsnetwork.com/2009/07/13/talking_derby_dnn_joy_collision_charm_city_captain

SCDG vs Bakersfield

Really? Another bout already? Didn't we just have one?

I am really excited about this game.

I am still riding the high of last weeks bout. I am so proud of my team. We played the best game of our lives. Everyone I've talked to said that was the best game they'd ever seen us play! I can't wait to play again with all my girls.

SCDG rocks, and we are so ready to kick ass!

Thanks Santa Cruz for being so supportive.

Don't forget to buy your tickets at santacruztickets.com.

See ya at the bout!