VIDEO: Roller derby 101

First, don’t beat yourself up: Roller Derby can be  confusing for novices to follow.

Perhaps it’s because, unlike most games, there’s no ball to watch, a ground-zero element that can make sense of the action churning around it.

In derby, you watch the jammer. Each team has one and they score a point for each opposing player she passes during the two-minute jams, which are called jams. The good news: Jammers wear a star on their helmets.

With the jammer is the pivot, who manages her pack’s pace and often, directs plays to allow jammers to move through the pack or to block opposing the jammer.

The four blockers try to stop the opposing jammer as they try to score.

The game is divided into two 30-minute halves.


BY THE NUMBERS

400 - Estimated number of roller derby leagues

11 - Countries with leagues

50 - Roster of the Pikes Peak Derby Dames

20 - Roster of traveling team, the All-Stars

29 - Average age of All-Star players

20 - Pikes Peak Derby Dames bouts, 2009

$350 - Cost of skates, average

$65 - Cost of a uniform, maximum

3 - Knee injuries

1 - Broken collarbone

1 - Concussion resulting permanent neurological damage

1863 - The birth of the modern roller skates. James Plimpton’s quads allowed for maneuvering on a curve as well as skating backwards.

1935 -  Year sport promoter Leo A. Seltzer formed the Transcontinental Roller Derby, which paired coed partners in an endurance race much like a dance marathon.

82,000 - Attendees at a five-day bouts at Madison Square Garden in 1951

15 million - Weekly viewers of televised bouts in 1969

1970s - End of roller derby

2001 - Year first modern banked-track league, the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls, formed in Austin, Texas

2003 - Year part of that Austin team split off into their own league, the Texas Rollergirls, creating the beginning of the modern flat track movement

2005 - Year Courtney LaPar formed the Pikes Peak Derby Dames.