Beyond Fresh Meat: Derby Middle School, Week 1

Once our Fresh Meat cycle of 3 months ends, we begin a 2-hr, 1x a week, 5 week program called "Derby Middle School." This is Pacific Roller Derby's way of transitioning our newest skaters into regular league practices without thrusting them into situations before they are prepared to do them. Each of the five days has a core curriculum that has been determined ahead of time by our Athletics Committee to cover all aspects of beginning strategy and intermediate skills and is echoed into lesson plans of regular league practices throughout each week. The new "White Stars" can now attend regular league practices, but must refrain from any full contact drills. All contact elements are taught within the Middle School, beginning strategy topics are broken down, and minimum skills are refined. By the end of the 5-week period, the White Stars are ready to test for "Orange Star," which allows them to be drafted to a home team and begin to participate in full contact scrimmages. This not only cuts down on our league injuries and helps existing league skaters, but helps with skater retention... as it is much easier to learn over a longer period of time than to learn in a trial-by-fire situation. Long gone are the days of being thrown into a scrimmage against all of the vets, being told to "just get in there!" We have learned over the years that that really doesn't help anyone.

This first session was led by one of our league's best skaters, Phoenix Bunz, and her husband and referee extraordinaire, Great Scott. They just transferred here from Ohio Rollergirls and are casually integrating into the instructional element of our Athletics Committee. PRD is extremely grateful for their contributions. Here is the core curriculum of day 1 along with Bunz' lesson plan.

Week One	Saturday June 7	Instructor(s): Bunz and Great Scott		Location:	Hawaii Kai	9am-11am
Personal skills assessment and strategy basics.

Derby Middle School, Week 1:

Dynamic Warm-up/Stretching-Everything you do on tennis shoes, we do on skates

Squat Cirlce

Merry Go Round (transitions)

Hold your underpush-emphasize the power

Pace-line weaving, weaving tight, partner weave, front to back

Pace-line Speed Changes-Adjust your speed, match the feet of the person in front of your

Line Racing-Utilize the Jammer Line

Pack Skating-Getting Comfortable in tight Spaces

Pack Commands-Moving around the pack, falling small

Pack Indian Runs

Gotham Knee Drags-Endurance, build up your core, Get up quick

Gotham Pushes-Endurance

Covered basic hitting techniques-hip check, shoulder/body check, sheriff, backwards blocking, positional blocking/booty blocking, side-ways blocking

Practiced hitting trainers, slow speeds, stationary target

Push-up Circle-work on strength and core