Paris RollerGirls Winter '12 Open Practice

Shot: Gosh -- thegoshphotographies.blogspot.com | Art: Koz

As part of the winter recruitment wave, the Paris RollerGirls open the doors of their gym for you to have a look at what Derby is and experience what it feels like to sit in the suicide zone around the track.

In-between the two workshops to prepare for the entrance test, you can go and witness the Monday evening 3-hour training in St. Denis, just like in last september when it went like THAT.

 

Open Practice

Monday Jan. 30th, 19:00 - 22:00

Gymnase Pasteur (10 rue Pasteur 93200 St. Denis)

Metro: St. Denis Université

Opération Tonnerre: PRG Vs. Go-Go Gent

I haven’t been writing much lately – I mean, actually I did write a lot, for work, which is why I couldn’t take care of this blog. Still I take the time to report on the match of last weekend Opération Tonnerre, featuring the Paris RollerGirls Vs. the Gent Go-Go RollerGirls.

ORGANIZATION & BERCY VENUE

We had managed to get the Bercy Venue just like for Goldfinger against Malmö last June, after weeks of pleading and harassing for them to give us a second chance. We were quite late on the schedule last time and they didn’t like it at all.

This time we had learned from our previous mistakes and the organization was close to perfection, so that the keeper of the gym even came to congratulate the Paris RollerGirls’ organization and confided that he wished that all the clubs using the gym were as squared as us. Epic Win! …And Epic Reward for the girls who spent sleepless night sweating on the event - Marion could tell you more about it than me.

OnWheelz DiscoRoller

In France, there are no roller-rinks, no roller-discos, no real flat indoor spaces devoted to skating... From time to time some punctual events are organized and we can go clubbing on wheelz! The OnWheelz Discos are organized by my friend Jim (whom I rollerdance with). He used to do three nights per year until last year when the place he used to book became a municipal gym.

Just like every year, there is this big LGBT event called the TIP (Tournois International de Paris) gathering sports teams and associations from all Europe, with animations by all the represented sports.

-- By the way, I had the indescribable chance to find myself on one of the promotion flyers saying "Chloé does sport to fight against discriminations, come and join her!"... Long story.

 

The only LGBT skating association, Les Enrolleres, where I give Slalom-skating lessons, was taking part in this huge event. And along with Jim they decided to organize a new edition of the OnWheelz as part of the Tournament. The biggest difficulty was to manage to get enough people despite the early hours: having become the city's property, the gym had to close at 00 AM... This time, the OnWheelz is going to be a "Before" party.

The originality of this edition was the Roller-Derby Demo at the end!

I was in charge of it, having to take care of several organization stuffs and coordinating the PRG and Jim. I had been named Captain of Team Awesome, and my friend Cherry LieLie was Captain of Team Amazing, so things got quite simple because we easily agree with each other. We found tee-shirts for the two teams on which we drew the numbers of all the girlz. I made a music playlist for the show. We agreed on a little presentation -- which didn't turn that well because it's tough without rehearsal haha.

Other things didn't turn out as expected... little misunderstandings here and there. But it got better after explanations.

Why I Started Derby

My derby name is KOZMIC BRUISE, Number B612...

...and I'm proudly part of the Paris RollerGirls.

 

I dropped by about one year ago, I liked it and stayed a bit... but then we had to face a terrible but common problem for Parisian sports(wo)men, and this during a good bunch of months: no gym to train! We had to stop training during automn because wind and drizzle don't mix very well with skating...

 

Luckily enough we finally found a (provisory) gym in the near suburbs on a campus, and we could resume our trainings for good in January.

It was a second try, we lost girls on the way but new girls arrived. I came back too, more motivated than ever, after difficult automn months when I had to make an aweful decision -- quitting freestyle skating competitions because I was choking in there little by little, my passion was becoming more and more poisonous to me...

 

I clung to Derby to forget Freestyle, yes indeed, but also (and above all) because I found self-confident, amazing, improbable, and loving people coming from everywhere in the World.

This is all new to me because I never practiced a team-sport. I've always done creative individual activities (dancing, freestyling) so this is quite a new challenge and I'm really curious about it!