Amy Cora (RollerFit Coach) a.k.a. PorFavor (S2D2)
My first encounter with skating came in junior school, it was the time when playing on the street was safe and you knew all the neighbour kids. I eventually became the only kid in the street who didn’t have roller blades and my mum didn’t want me to be left out of all their games because of this, so she packed me and my sister in the car and headed off to closest Big W. Armed with the coolest pair of barbie skates (I thought they were cool) and pads I was soon skating forward just trying to keep up. This evolved into trips to the local rink and attempting to play roller hockey in the street without losing the balls down the drains. I never learned to turn around of stop or go down hills but that never phased me.
Eventually that period of my life faded away and the blades were put away, until two years ago when a friend of mine told me she had found a fitness class where you got to spend the entire time on roller skates, missing the rink I grew up going to I decided to go. Initially I was sceptical, having grown up on rollerblades, and failing terribly the one time I attempted to roller skate. But I went along anyway and wasn’t even fazed by the amount of time I spent on the ground, mainly because I wanted to be able to do everything straight away (patience was something I had to learn).
If your looking for the motivation to get back into sports, this may be your answer, I would go with friends, laugh, have ridiculous amounts of fun while seeing improvements in my fitness, flexibility and overall happiness.
Before I knew it I could stop, skate forwards, backwards, started gaining speed and my endurance was improving on an exponential scale. A few months later and you would find me at every single class that Stacey put on, and she was always happy to answer my questions and teach me any thing I asked. Then a few people planted the seed of Roller Derby in my head. This was my first exposure to the sport and I decided to go watch a local game. After seeing just one bout, I was hooked and this solidified my love of roller skating and this gave me the motivation to work even harder to get to a level where I could compete in this amazing new sport.
Two years on from that first lesson and I’ve competed on my leagues travel team, South Side Derby Dolls, The Force where we had a victory in the 2013 5×5 championships, I’ve played co-ed derby, a clockwise challenge bout, competed in my first Artistic competition (clearly I couldn’t get enough, so I added a second discipline), and have had many opportunities to skate our beautiful city at night time and during some of the cities wonderful festivals. I can transition, stop, jump, speed skate and my most recent endeavour, coach. It has been and intense few years of roller skating but getting to share the knowledge that I have gained has to be one of the most rewarding experiences.
I still consider RollerFit and Stacey’s coaching to be an important part of my training schedule. So If your looking at learning to Skate, want to play derby or maybe one of the many styles of figure skating (on quads) is more your style, I thoroughly recommend heading on down to a RollerFit class. We are now running in over 7 locations in Oz with talented coaches from different skating style backgrounds who love to see new faces and we want to see all of the wonderful roller sports sport grow. We cater to all skating levels so get in touch with us to find out more!
