The Lincolnshire Bombers are fast approaching their first bouting season with their new travel team. After a 10 month break, working hard, training new skaters, skating in mixed bouts, recruiting, we are back with a vengeance, taking on some pretty worthy teams, testing our new skater line ups and March 19th will see our first bout against Manchester’s Rainy City Roller Girls and, man, are we excited to be back!
I myself only joined the Bombers at the end of April 2010 having never even put on a pair of skates in my life before. I remember joining and buying myself a really crappy pair of skates, thinking it would be at least a year before I would even need to upgrade to R3’s…… since then my life has totally changed for the better.
The team has gone through a lot in the last 12 months and the whole team agrees we have never been closer than we are today. Half the new travel team are brand new Bomber skaters, never having skated A Team before and man have we had to work hard to prove our worth to get on that team. On joining I knew straight away that I wanted a place on the main bouting team. Two weeks after starting I watched the girls skate against Royal Windsor, the first bout I ever watched and I was hooked. I’ve always been a fast paced and reckless kind of person, fast cars, motorbikes, horses… anything fast… roller derby seemed just my kind of sport… and much more affordable and accessible than the things I have been into in the past.
From then on I focused and trained as hard as I could. I still remember Kaos’s loving comment of encouragement, three weeks in, when I moved to the afternoon intermediate group and I was a little scared of learning transitions….”were you told to leave the track? No… stop being such a wuss and get back on there… the worst you can do is fall over and have to get back up and try again” and ever since then, every time I felt the slightest bit of fear, I heard Kelly Kaos telling me to get back on that track and try harder.
From evenings of outdoor skating, practicing transitions and toe stop turns, to gruelling off skates fitness training and our structured team training hosted by the amazing She’za Payne, I have loved every minute… but it has definitely not been an easy ride.
In October 2010 I was Lucky enough to get the opportunity to skate with the Bombers at the Great Northern Showdown. This was my first ever public appearance with the Bombers and was an amazing experience. We had a real mix of skaters, from a hand full of brand new skaters, some skaters returning from up to 6 months off skating due to injury and some skaters returning from breaks, mixed with some of our A team girls to give us a chance to all skate together for the first time.
We worked really hard for this competition and our main goal was to win the first game, so we could at least win one…. Much to all our amazement we finished winning the tournament, with tears in our eyes… all that hard work and hard times had paid off. That was one of the most amazing experiences and as a team; we all became even closer and more positive about times ahead.
Since then, we have upped our training and had many more tears as some of us newer skaters had to face off against the A Team girls to prove our worth… and those girls are tough. Now, here we are, the week of our bout and everyone is so excited, many squeals and whoops when the 19th is mentioned along with that nervous excited feeling at the thought of it all….
Win or lose every single one of us has worked our socks off for this, blood sweat and tears. We have given everything, so no matter the out come of this game, we know we have tried our best.
Diss Continued! – Lincolnshire Bomber Roller Girl
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