Wheels of frustration

I love roller derby.
I've always loved to skate so when i was told about a derby team here in huntington was accepting ladies, i was on it like (place colloquialism here).
A year and one child later, i still love derby however its a difficult love to sustain. You must feed the gear demon $ you must pay dues $ you must maintain your skates $ you must pay for gas to get to and from practice $ you must pay USARS fee to play $ you must pay for uniforms $ you must pay whatever cost that could hinder you from being on wheels and working your ass off (literally i've lost at least 2inches).
The reward is that you haven't let your team down. You're apart of something bigger than yourself and it runs better with you than without.
....that being said, we started out having one off skate practice and one on skate and unanimously decided that we needed 2 days on skates.
We do endurance drills...a lot. I understand that its important but considering how we did at our last 2 bouts i was thinking that we might focus on the game a bit more. (After all you don't teach basketball players to just dribble.)
How are we supposed to get better at the few skills we have learned if all we do is endurance?
We have 2 on skate practices. Why not have one endurance and one rule and strategy? Hell, we could even do half and half instead of rule and strategy for the last 15-30 minutes of a 2 hour practice.
I love that i hurt after practice and the next day but it would be nice to leave the rink and instead of saying 'wow i hurt so much' say 'wow i learned so much'
In my time with JCRG i had made that statement once.
The two days off a week that i get from work are the two days i go to derby practice. I dont have a day off to myself to relax and do nothing. I raise my daughter, i work, i play derby so when we arent on skates i get a little irritated. Especially since i pay $40 a month on dues that i'm barely able to come up with as it is.
How is knowing i can i do 50 jumping jacks going to help me during a bout when the ref is yelling at me and i dont know what his hand signals mean?
I think im done ranting for now...i really want to skate :(