How do you become a roller girl or referee?
The Dollies have an open door policy where you can come along any week and try Roller Derby for free!
It’s free to try the first time you come, then it’s £5 per session. We meet every Sunday at Parklands Leisure Centre in Oadby at 12.30 until 2.30 (although you are welcome to stay and watch or help out at the scrim that runs from 2.30 – 3.30).
We can lend you roller skates and safety equipment, but due to the popularity at the moment it will be first come first served.
If you are unsure what to expect, this is what happened last week…
New skaters
We had a great time teaching some new potential players and referees on Sunday. We were impressed with how quickly everyone picked up new skills and even those who had never put skates on their feet before were trying difficult skills by the end of the session!
We started out doing some stretches, as when you do a new sport you are going to be using some muscles that you didn’t know existed! (It’s worth noting that even the advanced skaters to warm up stretches at the beginning of the session, it’s a very important part of the training).
Next we ran an agility course where we set up stations around the hall where each skater spent two minutes getting to grips with an agility skill, such as side stepping, toe stop walking, sprinting etc.
We then learn’t a skill called a ‘Plough Stop’, this is similar to the way you stop while skiing, you turn your feet out and push hard into the floor to slow and then stop yourself. Then to check that everyone had grasped this, we ran some shuttle runs as a race so that everyone could practice their plough stops at speed!
We then tried some laterals which is basically moving yourself laterally across the track as tightly as possible. Good Lateral movement makes you a valuable skater. It enables you to track jammers’ across the track and change direction quickly.
Finally, we thought we’d push everyone as they were doing so well and showed them the basics of what we call ‘edges’. It can be a difficult thing to master, but we had some progress in the short time that they had to try it out.
Needless to say, we can see a lot of potential in this lot and are hoping to see them progress quickly so that you can come and watch them play or referee soon! Or why don’t you join them????
