ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES: The drama behind roller derby
The voices ricochet through the skating rink like sharp knives.
“OLY! OLY! OLY!” Pause. “OLY! OLY! OLY!”
Then three points hit the Olympia, Wash., scoreboard, but not for the Pikes Peak Derby Dames, which has seen the Olympia league, the No. 9-ranked Oly Rollers, take a healthy lead in just the first 10 minutes.
Two skaters, De Ranged (Sarina Hayden) and Psycho Babble (Melissa Hayden), spit one word in unison. It’s not “fudge.”
For two years now, the Derby Dames’ travel team, the All-Stars, has been on the verge — of finally pulling in one direction, of winning more than losing, of becoming a player on a national stage. But with every point on the board, what seemed so close slips away.
“Set! It! Up!” yells EckoGirl, whom the outside world calls Candy Jones. In this insular world, most Dames’ players don’t even know their teammates’ real names. “Talk. To. Each. Other.”
Then, 38 to 7; 43 to 7; 68 to 22. Derby moves fast.
“Take a breath,” says coach Old Derby Bastard (Tyler Purvine), a pale, lanky man decorated with popular emblems of the sport: tattoos and metal.
“They’ve never fulfilled their potential,” he says as he walks back to the border of the track. “The only thing that will push them is another team. We need a wake-up call.”
This game — just about every game, in fact — means much more than rankings.
For these women, many of whom couldn’t even skate when they started, it’s about becoming heroes in at least one corner of their lives.
It’s about being part of something. It’s about having a mission. And, of course, it’s about hitting someone hard without getting arrested.
“It’s an addiction,” say most derby girls. (In one of many contradictions of the sport, no one ever seems to call them derby women.)
But what does this team of hairdressers, nurses, accountants, nannies and students really want?
Is derby just a social diversion, as it was in the early days, or are these girls real athletes determined enough to train, to sacrifice and finally, to take roller derby from its vaudevillian roots to its place as a world-class sport that might even pay its players?
Among the Derby Dames, those aren’t easy questions.
Back on the floor, a tall, lean player with a smeared Joker face weaves and wedges her way through a wall of skaters.
Then a blocker named 4x4 hits Psycho so hard that her helmet shimmies. Still, she scores for the Dames.
The 22-year-old Victoria’s Secret sales associate shrugs it off, saying “that’s derby.”
The clock winds down to halftime: 76 to 37. The room smells of burning rubber from all the hard stops.
The Dames are not happy.
The new derby
This isn’t your grandmother’s roller derby. It’s not wrestling on skates, and it doesn’t revolve around faux interleague grudge matches.
For the most part, it’s not coed and not played on old-fashioned banked tracks. It’s not run by male owners peddling controversy, sex and violence to a predominantly male crowd.
That said, roller derby is also not breaking attendance records at Madison Square Garden, as it was in the ’50s. Or drawing 15 million viewers to televised bouts, as it did in the late ’60s.
That era’s derby, like disco, bell bottoms and oversized afros, faded away.
Three Austin, Texas, women resurrected the game — a version of it anyway — in 2001. It was “by the skaters, for the skaters.”
Sometimes more theater than athletics, the early days of modern derby featured players/characters with tattoos, irreverent names, heavy makeup and short skirts.
They were dangerous, sexy and in control. They weren’t afraid to sell derby with sex, but in the new derby, at least it was theirs to sell.
Red Dragon (Julia Vendeland) remembers going to her first recruitment night, shortly after Slugs-N-Kisses (Courtney LaPar) formed the league in May 2005.
“As you can see, I don’t have any tattoos,” said the 45-year-old paralegal. “I walked in, and there were these really rough-lookin’ chicks. I just took a breath and acted like I belonged.
“I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew I got to skate and hit people.”
Most teams have held on to the audacious names and outré attire, although now as accessories to required uniforms.
But as wild as it is, roller derby seems to be going mainstream.
In 2006, A&E ran a cable reality series called “Rollergirls”; shopping mall fixture Hot Topic has a derby-themed line; and “Whip It,” a new film directed by Drew Barrymore and starring Ellen Page (“Juno”), hits theaters Friday.
As many as 4oo leagues and thousands of skaters — as many as 6,000 women in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association alone — play the globe. Most active players are 25 to 40.
Many Dames have families. Most have jobs that allow for time off — for injuries, for away games, required duty at fundraising events, practices and league responsibilities, which is also required and can eat up 15 to 40 hours a week. The skaters run the league.
“We pay to play,” they repeat like a mantra.
In fact, playing can be expensive: the equipment ($700 to $1,600), insurance ($50 annually), dues ($300 annually) and travel (roughly $800 year plus food and trinkets).
They also pay in more profound ways.
One All-Star, Count Smacula (Holly Lawson), has permanent neurological damage — numbness in her face, arms, hands, legs and feet — from a headfirst crash into a wall during practice.
Susie Q-T (Amanda Andrews) broke her collarbone when she got sandwiched between two other skaters.
Wrists and arms often are broken. Noses too. Knees are damaged.
But ask what worries them most and they may surprise you. It’s not the $1,000 deductible on their mandated insurance (which, for many, is their only insurance), time off work or the possibility of permanent disabilities.
No, they worry that they won’t be able to skate again.
‘I want to be No. 1’
It was an early flight the day before the bout, but the Derby Dames are cranked as they load into three rented vans headed from Seattle to Olympia.
The red Chrysler van, at least, is rowdy like a little girl’s slumber party. Silly ditties are sung. Grown women indulge in baby talk and giggle as if they’re on nitrous oxide.
Driver De Ranged hits the brakes to avoid a car, and their rousing rendition of “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” devolves into screams, curses and laughter. Then, more of the chorus (and only the chorus).
“I never curse,” says De Ranged, whom most call De. “But after a derby weekend, it’s effing this and effing that. It’s funny.”
DeRanged, 29, and sister Psycho, 22, are stars — and for good reason. They have the drive and discipline that comes from competing in professional sports. Psycho played roller hockey. De started speed skating at 5, eventually competing with the world team three times, and was a boxer.
“We started (skating) at 16 months,” says Psycho as she rummages around in her skate bag. Her parents owned a local rink, Bossa Nova. “We could skate before we could walk.”
Psycho recently worked at Victoria’s Secret but says she wants to be a nurse. De works as a grouter for her fiance’s construction company.
“God, it stinks in there,” Ecko says, fanning her hand over Psycho’s open bag.
She’s right. Despite frequent washings, the players’ knee and elbow pads usually smell like sour washcloths. The skates, which they call quads, aren’t so fragrant either.
The team calls the sisters the Wonder Twins, which, depending on the inflection, is either a tribute or a subtle jab. Some say they’ve taken over since they joined almost two years ago.
They have a rep for being hotheads, which can be a problem when they sit down to decide bout lineups.
“They taught us so much about general skating,” says Pepper Slay (Kellie LaPage), one of the team’s go-to skaters. “Before De and Psycho came … well, they really raised the level of play. We didn’t win anything. We won, like, one game.
“Some say we’re not much without De and Psycho, that we can’t do it, which is kind of a cop-out.”
In fact, when the Twins joined, the team was ranked No. 27.
“I want to be No. 1,” says Psycho, who has lately been taping her fingers to refrain from flipping refs off. “I want to be the best, (to) which some on the team are, like, ‘Ah, that’s OK.’ Some people want it more than others, try more than others.”
Psycho, De and a handful of other All-Stars want more.
The after-party
The wake-up call coach ODB was looking for comes at 9 p.m., when the Oly clock runs out with 197-54 on the board. Only the old board doesn’t say that. As if tasked with doling out false consolation, it reads 97-54.
On the way back to the hotel, the mood in the red van is bleak.
“I think some people play harder than others,” says Kamilla BloodSpilla (Kristin Dellezem), who runs a before- and after-school program at Bricker Elementary School.
Kamilla looks out of the window. “I just wish everyone wanted to play as bad as we did.”
Ecko and the Swiss Missile (Amanda Sharpless) nod.
Then Kamilla gets to the heart of it: Were all their recent wins flukes?
Psycho turns around. “No, we’ve just been playing higher-ranked teams. You know, if we want to win, we can play lower-ranked teams.”
“No.”
“Yeah,” Psycho says. She sighs.
By 10 p.m., almost everyone has headed to the bar that’s hosting an after-game party. Jell-O shots will be consumed. Women will dance. That’s what the team does after a game, no matter the score.
The Twins, though, hang back. For now, the two soak in the hotel’s hot tub.
They are tired of losing. They are tired of playing with a team that can’t decide if it wants to play with the big boys. The Rocky Mountain Rollergirls, one of two Denver leagues, have tried to recruit them, they say. The team knows.
Would they leave?
They shrug.
“We’ve got to do something,” Psycho says. She shakes her head, tendrils of brown hair sticking to her face. De just stares at nothing.
Lower than low
In the weeks after Olympia, Psycho, De and some others skip practice. Morale is at an all-time low.
“It was the straw,” Kamilla says later, “that broke the camel’s back.”
Running out of time
Another hard fall. The room groans, which almost never happens in practices or bouts. On the television, Oly scores against the Derby Dames again.
“Son of a bitch,” whispers Fanny Fister (Tiffany Fuhs), an intimidating blocker who is surprisingly soft-spoken off the rink floor.
Seven All-Stars sprawl across Snow White Trash’s (Heidi Johnson) family room. They’re revisiting Oly to prepare for a bout against Sacramento’s Sacred City Derby Girls. It’s the first since their crushing loss to Oly.
“And I was feeling really good about Saturday,” says Kamilla, her 4-year-old son Rivers pin-balling the room on a cupcake high.
“This time we won’t be trying any new plays,” says De, who is making a rare appearance without her sister.
“No strategy,” Kamilla adds. “Just what we know.”
They watch the screen.
“I really want to beat Boston,” De says forcefully, like it’s both a wish and a command. They aren’t scheduled to play Boston, though, until Sept. 19. “We really need to train.”
“Time’s running out,” says Snow, a hairdresser with a teenage son. She’s wanted to play derby since she was 2 years old.
The Oly game ends. It starts again on mute.
“Does anyone know if anyone is going to quit?” Kamilla asks.
“Everyone says they’re going to quit,” Pepper says. “And they don’t.”
“I say it every morning in the shower,” Snow says.
Quiet.
Snow again. “We’ve got to win tomorrow, you guys.”
Another kind of game
By about 6:45 p.m., the Dames and ODB are crammed into a puke-yellow hallway behind the City Aud stage. Their numbers are scrawled on their biceps with magic markers. Smack’s 1-2-3 — written in white to be seen over her tattoos — is already half worn off.
This pep talk is short and to the point.
“Let’s cream them,” Kamilla yells, looking around for support. “Don’t you want to cream some girls?”
They yell, pile hands like a pinwheel and launch into a brutal rallying cry. “Let’s go (expletive) some (expletive) up.”
By halftime, the score is 99-42, with the Dames in the lead, and the second-floor locker room is a happy jumble of voices, Pedialyte bottles and smeared makeup.
“They don’t know what to do.”
“Penalties? We are doing (expletive) great.”
“We thought we were doing bad, but we were playing top-ranked teams. We’re not playing chumps. We’re playing winners.”
“All right,” says ODB, who was a professional speed skater and has coached three other women’s sports teams. “Let’s bring it in.”
They do, beating No. 11-ranked Sacred City 167-70.
After signing autographs on the floor, everyone heads to a bar across the street, even Psycho and De, who usually avoid after-parties because they’re not into drama.
“Love Shack” cranks up, and Psycho, who has changed into a strappy little sundress, dances with no one in particular, her number still written on her arm. They dance with eyes closed and drinks in hand like they have no tomorrow. They dance like winners.
A crossroad
But things change.
In July, about a month after Sacred City, De and Psycho threatens to punch a referee during an intraleague game. When the league tries to discuss the resulting grievance a few days later, the Wonder Twins Quick. Echo Girl quits the same week.
The Dames later hear that the two were in talks with Rocky Mountain about two weeks earlier.
“High-profile transfers Psycho Babble, DeRanged and Ecko Girl, all from Pikes Peak, may boost Rocky Mountain’s tournament prospects,” wrote the Derby News Network, the Web’s authoritative voice on all things derby. “The Colorado Springs team may have an uphill climb replacing those key contributors.”
The Derby Dames seem, at turns, sad, angry and quietly relieved. It could mean more play, a chance to carve out a new path for the league.
Not Kamilla BloodSpilla, who says the split was like getting a divorce without being served.
“When they left, I think they took the wind out of us,” says Kamilla, who joined the team early on, in May 2006.
Sitting at her kitchen table, Kamilla, 26, shrugs, as if pushing away the thought. “Everybody wants to have a kumbaya, sitting and talking about things you can’t change,” she says, watching her son pick at his dinner. “I wish we’d just gone back to practices as if nothing had happened.”
Kamilla is mercurial, but you know where you stand with her. “I’m not in it for the friends,” she’s said repeatedly. “I’m in it for the sport.”
And like just about every Derby Dame, she’s given the sport some significant pieces of her life.
“I’ve done it since Rivers was 6 months old. I’ve missed a lot of things for that. I missed his birthday one year for an out-of-town thing. I missed little things like learning how to talk, learning how to walk. I missed just being with him.”
So why do it?
“I want Rivers to grow up knowing that if you want something, it takes sacrifice and that the people who love you will understand. It’s OK to have a hobby you really love.”
She looks at the clock. It’s about 30 minutes before one of the extra practices they have now: Four a week, not two. To get ready for regionals, they say.
If the Twins’ departure wasn’t bad enough, the previous Sunday some of the All-Stars, many of whom are new, showed up for a 30-minute scrimmage with Rat City, which is out of Seattle.The Derby Dames lost 178 to 3 with Kamilla scoring the only points.
“That was the most embarrassed I’ve been in two years,” Kamilla says.
To make it worse, she watched De and Psycho and the rest of the Rocky Mountain team scrimmage.
“They looked real good,” she says.
And if the Dames win their first two games at regionals and Rocky Mountain does the same, they’ll play each other. “It’ll never happen,” she says.
You get the sense that she’s not really sure if it’s even worth it anymore. The physical abuse. The scheduling. The insistent tug of mediocrity.
“It comes down to what the league wants. Do we want to play to play or to be in the Top 10, to go to nationals? Half the team wants that and half doesn’t.”
She shakes her head.
“The ones who want it,” she says, “eventually, they may go if things don’t change. At some point, you just have to give it up.”
Then, she laughs. “But I’ll never quit derby.”
What a feeling
The 30-plus recruits stand in the lobby of Skate City, where the Derby Dames hold most of their practices.
Some were in the military; some still are. Some are moms. Some are butch, and some are cheerleader-perfect. Only a quarter of them have been to a bout. Which may be why no one looks nervous.
“I’m actually excited,” says 23-year-old Sarah Sorensen, who wants Cosmic Collider as her skate name. “I’ve actually been waiting for this for months. It’s good to belong to something.”
Typically, though, only two out of every 10 stick around.
“Once they find out it’s not just skating twice a week and wearing cute outfits,” ODB says, “we tend to lose them.”
Five walk out before the team starts scrimmaging. Another two, both teachers in Monument, leave when they find out about the 8:30 p.m. practice time. They hoped it would be about exercise and new friends — like Pilates with hitting.
Still, the room is charged with hope.
“I feel excited,” ODB says, looking around the room. “Who knows what kind of talent is out there.”
Snow White Trash watches from the edge of the group. She’s not practicing with the All-Stars tonight — or any night any time soon. A few months ago, during a practice that wasn’t even required, Snow, 42, broke her leg in three places, spirally. There’s a rod down the middle of the bone now to hold it all together.
After the accident, her mother moved in with her. Her team has been there, too, to kill time with her and cart her around, since she can’t drive. That’s derby, she says.
After the hourlong scrimmage, ODB opens the floor for a free skate. He turns on the ’80s rock, the disco ball and the colored lights. In the semidarkness, the Derby Dames are barely distinguishable from the newbies.
Snow sits on a wall at the back of the rink, where the girls usually put their skate bags and purses.
“Recruitment is always exciting,” she says. “I don’t know why, but it is.”
Then, over the speakers, the message of “Flashdance” unwinds.
“Take your passion,” Irene Cara declares, “and make it happen ... You can dance right through your life.”
Snow smiles.
