Today's featured blog is BeLEAGUEred: Adventures in Roller Derby League Administration. This new blog is the work of a good friend of mine who has written a great guest-post for our own TPE previously. BeLEAGUEred focuses on the ins and outs of league administration, straight from the source.
BeLEAGUEred addresses an important gap in derby blogging - you can't swing a pair of skates on the internet without hitting a (sweet) player blog, but league administration just doesn't have the same online resources. It's essential to tell derby stories from all sides of the sport - sharing the ideas of players, refs, NSOs, fans, and administrators too. Without the folks who run leagues, we're just skating in circles. League administration blogs like this one also offer key insight for readers interested in how your your derby sausage gets made: new admins and experienced admins looking for ideas on how to make the roller derby machine run deserve support. With BeLEAGUEred leading the way, it's my hope that we'll see more of that conversation spread.
Knuckle Slamwitch of Toronto LOCO has a clear, (leg)whip-smart writing style that makes obvious her intelligence, pop-culture sensibility and passion for the game. With multiple league experiences under her belt, she's qualified and smart, making her a great voice to lead discussions on league administration.She's already listed some future topics and is casting her nets wide for informed voices to interview (it could be you!). Get in contact via her blog to share your experiences and help start a great new blogging project.
In the mean time, thank your league admins for their time and effort. Those people work hard.
Showing posts with label structure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label structure. Show all posts
Monday, 7 January 2013
Monday, 10 October 2011
Getting Back on Skates + Fitness Challenge
Due to starting up my PhD, my actual time on skates has been pretty much nil. For the same reason, my time to blog has been basically nonexistent. After some hair-tearing and soul-searching, I put my skates back on last Friday. I've also decided to keep blogging on Mondays and Thursdays, so please check back on those days for new posts.
Last Friday was the beginning of LOCO's Best Fit You challenge. Skaters can, if they choose, compete in three areas, each with its own 10-skate card as a prize. Our areas are highest percentage of weight loss, highest percentage of improvement for a fitness test, and a point-based day by day system of eating according to Canada's Food Guide. Some skaters are opposed to the food guide challenge, others to the weight loss, but I decided to try all three. Though I'm not a fan of the weight-loss challenge (for reasons of size acceptance), I took part largely because I don't have a scale at home and I was curious to see whether there would be any corresponding change in my weight after the challenge.
But I digress. Getting back on skates can be intimidating. I hadn't skated in ages. I was worried that my fellow skaters would have continued getting more awesome while I was hunched over Ulysses in the PhD1 cave. This of course was indeed the case, but I was welcomed back regardless. I chose to work with the newer skaters, because my skill acquisition has been a bit patchwork and my T-stops are terrible. (They still are.)
In some ways, the Best Fit You challenge was incredibly well-timed. It gave me a clear starting point to get back on my quads and a clear structure of activity and nutrition aimed toward a specific end-point. Structure can be key to getting back on skates: often, we've stopped skating because we stopped making time for it. Having the sense that the structure is being imposed for us (in this case, in the form of a league-wide challenge) can make getting back on skates seem easier than it really is. Am I advocating tricking yourself into skating? Frankly, yes.
League or team challenges can be a great way of encouraging absent skaters to get back in the game. It's not really about winning: it's about having these structures ready-made for skaters who are looking for reasons to skate but aren't great at self-motivating.
Now, I'm off lose a point for drinking coffee. It's totally worth it.
Last Friday was the beginning of LOCO's Best Fit You challenge. Skaters can, if they choose, compete in three areas, each with its own 10-skate card as a prize. Our areas are highest percentage of weight loss, highest percentage of improvement for a fitness test, and a point-based day by day system of eating according to Canada's Food Guide. Some skaters are opposed to the food guide challenge, others to the weight loss, but I decided to try all three. Though I'm not a fan of the weight-loss challenge (for reasons of size acceptance), I took part largely because I don't have a scale at home and I was curious to see whether there would be any corresponding change in my weight after the challenge.
But I digress. Getting back on skates can be intimidating. I hadn't skated in ages. I was worried that my fellow skaters would have continued getting more awesome while I was hunched over Ulysses in the PhD1 cave. This of course was indeed the case, but I was welcomed back regardless. I chose to work with the newer skaters, because my skill acquisition has been a bit patchwork and my T-stops are terrible. (They still are.)
In some ways, the Best Fit You challenge was incredibly well-timed. It gave me a clear starting point to get back on my quads and a clear structure of activity and nutrition aimed toward a specific end-point. Structure can be key to getting back on skates: often, we've stopped skating because we stopped making time for it. Having the sense that the structure is being imposed for us (in this case, in the form of a league-wide challenge) can make getting back on skates seem easier than it really is. Am I advocating tricking yourself into skating? Frankly, yes.
League or team challenges can be a great way of encouraging absent skaters to get back in the game. It's not really about winning: it's about having these structures ready-made for skaters who are looking for reasons to skate but aren't great at self-motivating.
Now, I'm off lose a point for drinking coffee. It's totally worth it.
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