Our featured skater for August is the incredible Admiral Attackbar.

Attack is an incredible skater. Not only is she one of the best jammers in Europe (maybe even the world!) but she is also a feared blocker and pivot too. She won the ‘Well ARRG’ award at our 2014 awards ball for her insane strength which she attributes mainly to crossfit. She’s more than a triple threat – she’s a serious force on track. Don’t just take our word for it – WFTDA have recognised her skills and awesomeness and she’s been a featured skater for them too. She’s also one of our coaches, and will be coaching at our bootcamp on the 30th August. We are well proud of her.

Home Team Affiliation:
I’m not actually affiliated with any home team at the moment. I chose to opt out of home season this year in order to focus on training for Twisted Thistles games and going to the States.

Joined ARRG in:
I started Fresh Meat in May 2011

Favourite position to play:
Jammer

Best ARRG memory:
There are so many that I couldn’t possibly pick one that stands out as the best but going to The Big O this year in Eugene, Oregon was an amazing experience. We played five really hard bouts over 5 days, which was a truly exhausting and exhilarating experience, after which I got to play against Team USA, which was also pretty cool!

Worst Derby injury:
I’ve actually never really been injured (touch wood!) but because I’m like 5ft tall I get my own fair share of hits to the face but thankfully nothing serious.

Best Derby advice:
Cross train, cross train, cross train and never compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle.

Any funny/embarrassing derby stories?
When we played London Brawling at Track Queens in Berlin I got a blocking with the head penalty for falling over and accidentally putting my face in someone’s butt.

Derby Hero:
I have quite a few but at the moment basically the entire Texecutioners team from Texas Roller Girls are my current faves. What I love most about them is that they’re not a big team. Most of their skaters are really small but they are all just phenomenally good at playing together and using amazing footwork.

What do you do outside of derby:
I’m a graphic designer and I spend a lot of time at CrossFit. My other hobby is eating.

Fun facts about you:
I have a rock collection

Anyone can learn to skate… Anyone can have speed, strength, endurance, dance around, be A GIANT. But, when the pressure is on, and The World is watching, those who skate together, focus, and work as a unit will reap the rewards of all their efforts. And the giants.. well, the giants they will fall.

This year ARRG took on The West Coast of America. Teams full of top class skaters – individuals and giants who work hard to climb those WFTDA rankings. Teams like: Rose City’s Axels of Annihilation, Arizona, Sac City, Tuscon and Emerald City. We surpassed all the predictions and our coaches learnt A LOT!!

We learnt about footwork, we learnt how to adapt our styles quickly, we learnt about blocking with whatever you’ve got, we learnt about communication, we learnt how to work as a team, play as a team, help each other, support each other and take on the goliaths without fear.

Now in School of ARRG Knocks 3 we are going to show YOU how!

Oh, and it wouldn’t be School of ARRG Knocks without a theme.. SOAK 3’s theme is FAME because.. you know.. we wanna skate forever! 🙂

Get your ticket now!

And a big ARRGy thanks to David (HaJuken) Lewis, for his work in making this video.

What a fantastically jammed packed Fringe of joy! There was just so much going on I don’t even know where to begin. First we had one heck of a Fringe bout on the 10^th of August when the Twisted Thistles took to the track at Meadowbank Sports Centre to knock about in #DieARRG fashion against the Stockholm Roller Derby All-Stars.

They went back and forth, and for a while it seemed close, with both teams playing well with excellent jamming and impenetrable walls, but in the second half the Twisted Thistles pulled through and came out with a well-deserved 194 to 104 WIN!

But ARRG never rests, especially not in August. Just a few short weeks later (August 24^th) in a closed home bout against the Helsinki All-Star Ninja Turtles, the Twisted Thistles again worked together and slammed the turtles, Shredder style, racking up a final score of 218 to 133.

If that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, the doors of Meadowbank were thrown open and the Fringe crowds streamed in for the second of the Edinburgh Fringe bouts: Die ARRG With a Vengeance! Which featured the Helsinki Queen Bs and ARRG’s Cannon Belles. In this bout the Belles debuted some new skaters and exploded right out of the gate. Powerful hits and power jams kept the Belles’ score going up, with a final tally of 322 to 69.

After the fringe bouts, in true ARRG style, we partied ARRG with Helsinki and remembered how nice it is to be nice.

But, but, but! That’s not all we have going on at ARRG!

Starting up on September 1^st, we have the latest round of Fresh Meat strapping on their skates and pads to give derby a go. Learn how to give it a go by emailing newskaters@auldreekierollerderby.com.

On September 28^th, the Cannon Belles, fresh off of their win against Helsinki,  will be back working closely together and bouting against the Middlesborough Milk Rollers B Team at Meadowbank. Doors open at 2pm. Tickets will go on sale soon.

Then, on October 26^th, the Twisted Thistles will be kitting up for their next home bout against the Brighton Rockers.

There’s LOADS more coming up too: European travel bouts and lots of off-skates fun for everyone to get involved with. Want to learn how? Give us a shout here. You know you want to be a part of ARRG.

Plus, In top secret news: there are plans afoot for another amazing ARRG bootcamp! Keep your ears to the ground and you eyes on Twitter (@auldreekierg) and Facebook for more details.

This May, Auld Reekie Roller Girls travelled with a team of ten to Finland to play  Helsinki Roller Derby and host a day long bootcamp for skaters and officials across the league. It was a challenging but incredibly rewarding experience and one I don’t think any of our skaters are going to forget for a while..

We caught up with Captain Crazylegs to find out a little bit more about the ARRG’s first ever bootcamp and find out some exciting news for skaters closer to home!

What made you decide to hold a bootcamp in Helsinki?

Tigre Force from Helskini suggested it to me – we were really keen to go over and play them in a sanctioned bout to assist them on their WFTDA Apprentice journey, and because they looked like a really fun team to play.  When we started discussing the possibility of visiting them, they suggested we stay an extra day and hold a boot camp there too; there are some up and coming newer skaters in Finland and Helsinki thought this would be a good opportunity to use some of our experience to pass on some training tips.

How did you go about planning the bootcamp?

Oh so many emails!!   Helsinki put together a basic outline schedule (luckily for us!), we just had to come up with coaches & drills to fill them… we had 9 hours to fill, two tracks, one classroom and lunch provided, which was fab!  Ella (Ella Bella Bang Bang – bench coach), Bronx (Bronx Betty – vice captain) and I did lots of planning together and really thought about what people would want from a boot camp and what we could provide – then we just needed to fit it all together so that each participant had a good full day of sessions.  We’re entirely skater coached in ARRG which means most of our A-team skaters regularly coach and all have key areas they do best.  We also had the benefit of Cherry Fury’s extensive reffing experience to run officials sessions alongside the skater sessions.

 How did you travel to Helsinki?

With the usual giddy hilarity – we all booked flights seperately because of work committments etc…so we ended up flying out in pairs or individually – like the wacky races…. it’s impossible to fly direct from Edinburgh so we ended up having this mad dash across Europe – with everyone going via a different country – it was funny seeing Facebook updates from everyone – a few slept in Amsterdam airport, some went via Germany, or London, 3 of us got delayed in Paris for a few hours, had a fight with Air France Customer Service and then arrived with no luggage!

Do you have any favourite memories from the trip?  

Panic texting Tigre from Helsinki on the morning of our bout and asking for 2 complete sets of pads and a pair of size 6 skates for us to borrow otherwise we’d be down to 8 skaters in the bout!  Within 5 minutes I had a lovely “all sorted, we have what you need” text back. The Helsinki girls are truly, truly wonderful.

Was Helsinki different from other away games?

I think this was my most enjoyable ARRG trip ever – and that’s saying something because there have been many good ones! It was just a bit special…maybe because we sent such a small skeleton team on this trip, faced some setbacks, stayed with lovely hosts instead of in hostels, Ella, our bench coach, was pregnant, everyone was looking out for each other, it was just a lovely bonding time through the ups and downs with a lot of laughter.

How do you think the Finnish girls experienced the bootcamp? Did they have fun?

I really hope so – we had so much fun running it – the feedback we got straight afterwards was all very positive; one skater even asked us how long we had been running our boot camp for – that made our day!  Everyone was keen and enthusiastic – the scrimmage at the end was so much fun.  I loved that everyone asked lots of questions too.

 How different was training another league? (Were there any language problems?)

No language problems at all – not even with some of our Scottish accents;  we were all a bit shy about coaching a bunch of strangers who had all paid money for it, but I was so proud of all of my team mates, everyone really put their heart and soul into delivering the best most fun boot camp we could.

What is your favourite drill? 

I learned it courtesy of the Toronto Roller Derby Head Coach and it’s all about re-forming your wall as fast as you can – you work within 20ft and have jammers coming at you from both directions so you have to develop super lightning fast reactions to wall up and hold back the jammers as long as you can within a 20ft space.

What is your advice for any coaches starting out?

I think there are probably much better people to ask advice from! But I always try to have a plan that I’ve thought through properly, with a purpose or tactic to build up to incrementally, like stepping stones. I guess you also need to be adaptable – have spare drills up your sleeves just in case you get more or less skaters than you expect.  I love spending time thinking about a ‘problem’, something that makes things difficult for us as a team, then inventing a drill to solve that problem – my team mates Cider and Zillah are also good at this 🙂

 

What did you learn from leading the bootcamp? 

I learned how team work can translate into other parts of roller derby; I absolutely loved seeing our whole team getting involved in running the boot camp, everyone looked so industrious and smiley on the day!  I also learned that we do have a wealth of skills and knowledge within ARRG that we should probably share more.
Were you nervous?

Of course!!  I felt really responsible for trying to give a huge number of skaters and officials value for money and the feeling that they had learned something new and useful.  No pressure there then!

Your three personal highlights from the Helsinki trip

The amazing Finnish hospitality – I’m still amazed by them putting us all up, feeding us, making us amazing breakfasts, being so generally lovely.

Winning with a team of ten skaters – hardcore, tiring, but very rewarding!

The afterparty – as Cider summed it up “Wow, that escalated quickly, I mean it really got out of hand”.

Is there going to be a bootcamp closer to home in the near future? 

YEAH!! We have been fairly insular in ARRG this past year or so – our league grew and exploded so very fast and unexpectedly that we had to have some huge re-shuffles to give everyone a place and a happy home.   I think that by running this boot camp in Helsinki, we brought back a bit of the old ARRG pioneering, spirit and the feedback from skaters who attended couldn’t have been more positive, which led us to think this might be something skaters in Scotland and ‘up North’  might also enjoy – an intensive day of intermediate training drills with skaters who have years of bouting experience, and tactics talks and even old fashioned league structure chats, refs / officials training and of course a mammoth crazy scrimmage at the end.

ARRG are very excited to announce that we will be hosting a skating and referees bootcamp, ‘The School of ARRG Knocks’ on the 6^th October 2012. Stay tuned for more details but get the date in your diary now!