I attended a Gotham Girls Boot Camp and lived to tell the tale

Another goal I had for 2011 was #4. Attend at least one bootcamp hosted by another league. On October 1, I got my chance! I attended a Gotham Girls Game Strategy Camp and got to skate my tail off for 5 hours, plus a lunch break in the interesting area surrounding their warehouse.  So much sweet graffiti. NYC <3. Roarshock, Eloda, and Doc attended off skates and took notes.

The boot camp started off with some off-skates jogging, jumping, and skipping around the track.  I saw Gotham do this as part of their warm up at Eastern Regionals. Then we did some dynamic stretching, which felt really good! I felt so warmed up and ready to move. (Two days later would be a different story, when I was pretty much unable to move.)

It was a good mix of skating and talking about strategy. I learned some interesting stuff about how to work in a better wall, the importance of being able to stop quickly, and I even had an "aha!" moment when doing a jammer drill.  I also kinda figured out how to almost do a hockey stop.

It was kinda awkward for me at first being the player who brought three coaches with her to the clinic, but in the end I was really glad. Some girls there were the only representatives from their league, so during strategy talks they were also fussing to take good notes. My advice to anyone attending a boot camp: bring an off skates person to take notes for you! The other thing that was bad at first was when I was working on a drill that I wasn't doing it right, I occasionally heard hey Short, you need to get down wayyyy lower!  Ahh, all eyes on Short Temper >:(  But then when I was practicing hockey stops and sometimes even getting them right I wanted to be like Roarshock, Roarshock, did you see what I did, DID YOU SEE???


Another one of our coaches, Hanna Solo, attended the jammer bootcamp a couple weeks ago. Between her and the rest of our coaching staff we've already done a bunch of new drills, and I think offskates warmups are going to become a regular part of Thursday practice. I am starting to recover quicker from them ^_^.  I really do like the offskates warm up drills Gotham showed us though, because it really does make me feel warmed up and ready to skate, more than any other drill I've done before.