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Commentary by Liz Manring
It’s as if I was born to be a roller derby goddess.
This epiphany struck me as I was watching the Tucson Derby Brats, playing in their junior roller derby league at Bladeworld in Tucson a few weeks ago.
Each 10-to-17 year-old girl who walked through the door looked more of an Avril Lavigne wannabe than the last. As the group laced up and started skating around the ring, I had this incredible urge to go home and dig through my dresser drawers to find my long socks, then find a mallet to break open my piggy bank so that I could buy a pair of roller skates.
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I don’t know why I wanted to join the group so badly.
I’m a woman writing sports in what is still a man’s world despite two waves of feminism, Title IX and a woman actually having a shot at the presidency.
I’m OK with that.
Because, like the sport of roller derby, I can exist in this kind of world and still hold my own. I enjoyed watching roller derby for the first time that day because there I saw women with an attitude not so different from my own play a sport that was created for women. This isn’t like most sports women excel in — modified versions of sports originally designed for men, i.e. softball from baseball, and women’s basketball from men’s vis a vis the smaller orb.
The leagues are still fairly new. There isn’t an actual Roller Derby rink in Tucson. So they make their own on top of the Bladeworld hockey rink. I watched them roll out strips of clear rubber into an oval shape to mold their own circuit rink, and stick the strips down to the floor with red duct tape.
They create their own turf.
I wish I had the guts to keep the bright red streaks I once put in my dark brown hair. At Bladeworld, there were girls with red streaks, pink streaks, blue streaks and some with simply bleach streaks. Something about colored hair screams defiance. And if they weren’t under 18, most would probably be awash in tattoos. I thought I was being deviant with my one-inch tattoo on the top of my foot, of, get ready for this rebellion — a one-inch bass clef.
Once these girls push open the doors to Bladeworld they don’t appear to have a care in the world for anything but roller derby.
Probably this is because roller derby allows you to become a completely different person.
Before you ever compete, you establish this new identity in creating your roller derby name.
I noted several of the names, trying desperately to come up with one as creative for myself. One was named Pixie, another Veronica Scars. There was Lexie Luther and Honey Smacker.
They walked around like they owned the place. Two of them took their empty quarts of Simply Limeade to the concession stand and filled them up with water. No Evian for these girls.
Two by two, they walked out of the little locker rooms next to the rink in their gear. Skates and helmets along with elbow, wrist and knee pads. But along with a blue or red team shirt, most had something incorporated into their wardrobes that defined them as individuals. It could be colored tights, a shimmering red skirt, yellow shorts or a green helmet. Outside of that world, it’s considered unacceptable to live and work with colored hair. If I’m planning to walk into work in the morning, I have to look respectable. Like a dignified, upright citizen... a feminine Clark Kent.
But as a roller derby queen, I could be Superwoman, an alter ego in a clan of women who can be warriors and feminine at the same time.
I’m not sure if I would skate the circuit as a blocker, pivot or jammer. I can see myself as part of the defending pack more so than the jammer who has to score the points by navigating through all the other players. I would much rather be the person slamming into people than being slammed. I don’t honestly care. I just want to try it once.
First I have to remember what it’s like to skate. To roll around a rink that small that quickly takes practice, and a little bit of talent I’m sure. And one 6-year-old girl with “Bootyfly” on the bottom of her pink shorts was out between jams getting a head start on that practice while I was there. She wore full pads and black tights with a hole in the leg, a battle scar from the roller derby lifestyle.
“For some people, the roller derby name is a new identity,” said Zoe “Whiskey Mick” O’Reilly, a founder of the Tucson Roller Derby and coach of the Natural Disasters, one of the teams in the junior roller derby league. “For some, it’s just a name. But using that is when many discover their new sense of aggressiveness and really use it out there.”
Roller Derby began its latest revival in the early years of the new millennium when several adult leagues began popping up all over the country. The Tucson league formed in 2003, and now there are leagues in every state in the U.S.
“There’s not a lot of outlets for women to play this kind of contact sport,” Whiskey Mick said. “And it’s much sportier than it used to be.”
But while it’s evolved into something more sporty, the women who skate with a roller derby team maintain a sense of feminine identity, and typically choose a roller derby name based on a strong, female personality in history, like Florence Nightingale, Joan of Arc, Foxxy Brown or Pocahontas. The Web site ehow.com gives seven instructions on picking your roller derby identity, and stresses sexiness and uniqueness in a name.
In the end, you don’t pick your name; your roller derby name chooses you. After several weeks of soul searching, it came to me: Raquel Belch. A) Because her famous character K.C. Carr in the film Kansas City Bomber, like me, hails from Missouri and B) because I can belch almost on command.
Now that I’ve got the name, I might just be ready to lace up some skates and hit the rink. Eh, on second thought, better wait for that health insurance to kick in.
