farewell, fair floor.

Last Thursday, we bade a bittersweet farewell to the portable sport floor we’d rented the past six months. Its sendoff, at the end of a practice, was another one of those all-hands-on-deck barn-raising types of events where pretty much the whole league pitched in to take the squares up and pile them on pallets for the Roc City Derby folks to pick up. Many hands made for light work, and I like that it’s an occasion where refs, NSOs and skaters can all work together … and in some cases interact with our newest league members in training (nuggets) for perhaps the first time.

Coach Flyin Phil made the point that the sport floor aided the team because the fast surface helped build and refine skills more than possible than the previous (and now, alas, our current) linoleum flooring of our space, a former dollar store. The better surface also allowed us to host better scrimmages, a key part of developing up-and-coming skaters. We definitely want to get or rent another floor at some point in the future. These floors are expensive, so it may take some time, but we’ve come to the conclusion it would be a great investment.

So farewell, fair floor. You made us better as a team — and, during installation and packing up, brought us together as a team. For all that, I know I’ll remember you fondly.