I wanna play ROUGH!

So I've done it again, posted something about my upcoming game, Country Carnage on August 20th, and nothing about me. So now I've got some time, I'll fill in the blank about me.

My name is Kiyomi, and I am addicted to contact sports. Before I found them, I was an average hard working theatre devotee trying to pass my classes at Ryerson Theatre School. After first year, I decided I needed to take some time to myself and I joined the waterpolo club. I had a lot of fun, but in third year all the academic and show related stuff took over my free time. I had to quit. I was disappointed in myself. Then I saw something about Whip It and I knew I wanted to get into that. I convinced my sister that the best birthday gift would be a fresh meat package (skates, and safety gear). I danced around the thought, and I started emailing the two big leagues in town. Luck happened to send me to the GTA Rollergirls. They invited me to start coming out to practices, but because I was still trying to get sorted through the final projects of the school year, I had to tell them I probably wasn't ready to come out. My skates hadn't come in yet anyways.

Then I forgot about it. I started to think it wasn't meant to be and went back to giving all my waking hours to theatre school. When classes ended, summer started and it hit me like a wall. I was friggin bored. Some friends from the waterpolo club invited me out to the Rugby practices. I went to one and was still feeling it out. My job wasn't going to start until the end of June and it was only the start of May! That's when I got an email from Splat asking if I was still interested in roller derby and if I wanted to come see the game in Toronto that was coming up.

I went to the game and decided that I needed to try it. I went over to talk to Splat once the game was over. Her and Newfie Bullet talked to me and said to come to the next practice to watch. I liked what I saw at practice... Call it fate, but the next day my skates finally came in the mail. I would be ready to start skating by the next practice. At my second practice, I laced up in my new skates. Getcha Kicks taught me some falls before running off to join everyone doing drills. I was trying some of the falls and skating around when Coach Sloppy came over to help me out.

Before the end of practice, I found myself on the big girl side of the practice space in a pyramid drill of speed.... Okay, don't get me wrong, this wasn't like Whip It, I wasn't magically the fastest girl on the track. Actually it was the opposite, I was getting lapped. When they started hitting each other, I just back on to the small side of the practice space. I was determined to leave feeling more comfortable on my skates. Every day, I laced up my skates and rolled around on my street.

On my third practice, I got into the arena and people were all scattered around. It was skills testing day. The girls who were "fresh meat" had been around for 2-3 months already and needed to be tested to be allowed to play and scrimmage under insurance. There was no extra space in the arena to skate so they told me I could try the skills. At each station, I got a quick 1-2 how to do the skill before being tested. I passed more than half of the skills at was 4 laps short of the 25 laps in 5 minutes. I was happy with myself. Unlike the rest of the girls, there was no pressure for me to perform well. People came up and told me not to feel bad if I didn't do well, and I responded that it didn't matter if i failed every skill because it was only my third practice with skates on.

There was a fresh meat skate in only 4 weeks. I was told if I could pick up the failed skills quickly, I could join the other fresh meat to play. So that's how I found myself skating as a Chrome Molly only 4 weeks after my first practice....

Now only one year after joining, I am known as the scrappy and infamous eSkimo Jo #7734 of the GTAR Chrome Mollys. The co-captain of the Chrome Mollys for the 2011 season, sort of bench wench to the Derby Debutantes and all around team player to the GTAR travel team, the G-sTARS.

Roller derby practices are year round and obviously the sport has taken a large part of my life. Especially during the summer time. But I mentioned at the beginning that at the time when I started derbying, I was also practicing with a rugby team. This is a big part of my life too.

Although I often mention rugby much less, I still love it. I just know that between my two sport loves, that unless you've used to play rugby, you probably don't really find any interest in it... Except to say, that it is a tough sport. It doesn't ask for an audience and beg for people to watch our games and validate our sport. It is already proved it's ground as a sport.