JHM Journalism Foundation » The Johnnies » 2007 Winners » Arts
2007 Winners - Sports (3rd place)
Shut up and skate
Roller derby’s back, and today’s rollergirls are a sight for sore eyes
By Tracey Lindeman
Link, September 12, 2006 (Concordia University)
Slap on those skates, ladies—roller derby is back with a vengeance and it’s got every Betty, Suzy and Homewrecker lacing up and hitting the rink.
“Its popularity is mind-blowing,” says Montreal Roller Derby league founder Alyssa Kwasny, better known as Georgia W. Tush on the track. The 21-year-old Concordia student issued a call-out over the Internet last April looking for like-minded ladies to start up a league, and was pleasantly surprised to find 13 rollergirls-to-be at the first recruitment meeting.
“I’d been waiting for someone to start it in Montreal for like, a year, ‘cause I heard about it happening in the U.S.,” Kwasny says. And that’s when she discovered that teams and leagues were cropping up all over Canada—there are now 10 leagues in the country.
“And I pretty much thought roller skating was dead,” she says.
No guts, no glory
Roller derby was inspired by American film publicist Leo Seltzer’s Transcontinental Roller Derby, a roller skating race started in 1935 designed to simulate the distance from Los Angeles to New York City—around 5,000 kilometres. Spectators cheered as participants struggled to gain first place by shoving their opponents out of the way. Seltzer caught on, and encouraged participants to exaggerate crashes, promoting maximum physical contact. By 1940, there were over five million roller derby fans. Since then, the sport has experienced several revivals, the most notable being in the early to mid 1970s—a period that inspired Norman Jewison’s cult science fiction film Rollerball.
“Every time I mention [roller derby] to my parents and stuff, they’re like, ‘Roller derby? I remember watching that in the 1970s,’ and then they’ll bring up Skinny Minnie Miller,” Kwasny laughs.
Miller wasn’t the most famous roller derby star, though—Ann “Banana Nose” Calvello beat her way to the front of the pack with her notorious bad temper and violent behaviour, and remains the only professional athlete to have competed for seven consecutive decades. Born in 1929, Calvello played her first roller derby game in 1948 and her last in 2000. She died of liver cancer last March, but lived to see roller derby come back once more.
Oddly, the last roller derby revival died because of the 1973 oil crisis, which drove the cost of gasoline so high teams could no longer afford to travel to other cities to compete. But Kwasny and her gaggle of rollergirls aren’t ready to hit the road just yet. After attending an inter-league meet-and-greet in Toronto last month, the team has assessed their strengths, weaknesses and the progress they’ve made since forming in April.
Attended by members of several Canadian leagues like Hamilton’s Steel Town Tank Girls, the Hamilton Harlots and Toronto’s Chicks Ahoy, the meet-up allowed new rollergirls to learn the ropes. After all, though there are 10 leagues in the country now, the oldest one is a mere nine months old.
“It was our first scrimmage—we’d only practiced scrimmaging twice before,” Kwasny says. Nerves almost got the best of the Montreal league when their number came up, but things went better than expected.
“We ended up being in the championship game, and Hamilton whooped our butts.”
Kwasny says over 1,000 fans made it out to the Hamilton Harlots and Steel Town Tank Girls’ first bout. South of the border, the American roller derby renaissance has amassed a huge fan base, with hundreds of spectators making it out to every bout. But because many teams are recently-formed, some rollergirls don’t have the experience to bolster their egos.
“I was so excited and nervous, I couldn’t sleep the night before,” says Lisa McIntosh, or Holly Homocide on the track, of Arizona’s Coffin Draggers. “When they called my name, my legs were shaking so bad I thought I was gonna fall. It was a great feeling.”
Us girls stick together
Roller derby is equal parts speed, endurance, strength and ass-kicking.
According to Women’s Flat Track Derby Association regulations, teams are composed of five members—a pivot, three blockers and a jammer. The two pivots set the pace of the jam around the rink, and the pack of six blockers (three from each team) follow behind them. Once the pack hits the 20-foot mark, the jammers are released and have to catch up, making their way through the pack as many times as possible, and gaining a point for each opponent they pass after the first go-around. The first jammer to successfully make her way through the pack is called the lead jammer, and she can call the jam off at any time. Each jam lasts two minutes, and there are three periods of 20 minutes in every bout.
There are over 50 roller derby leagues in the United States, and most leagues are home to at least two or three teams. About 30 of the American leagues are members of the WFTDA, which sets the rules of the game. But rules are made to be broken.
The two most famous aspects of roller derby are the drama and the violence, which often lead to nasty bruises, wounded egos and trash-talking. But after all is said and done, you’re more likely to find opponents bonding over a beer or two than pulling each other’s hair out.
“We tend to stick together,” says Sally Slayer of the Smoke City Betties. Teams often get e-mails from rollergirls in other cities asking to come to a practice or two while they’re in town visiting. “When you join a team, you’re really joining a sisterhood. We have each other’s backs no matter where you are from or who you are. I think that acceptance is also why a lot of ladies join—you make really great friends in this sport that you will remember for life.”
Most rollergirls aspire to attend RollerCon, the ultimate manifestation of the roller derby sisterhood, a convention held every year in Las Vegas for hundreds of rollergirls—and maybe a few men.
Today’s game is dominated by strong females with a knack for partying as hard as they play, and largely appeals to those involved with their area’s punk or rockabilly music scene.
“There’s a lot of rock ‘n’ rollers, I’m not gonna lie,” Kwasny quips. She describes some of the tattoos and piercings her teammates sport, common appendages for modern rollergirls. A number of her colleagues are 25 years old and older, and many of them single mothers, hairdressers, students, daycare workers or artists.
The Montreal league has made significant strides since starting up four months ago. Kwasny says that most of the women on the team hadn’t skated since they were little girls, or didn’t know how to skate at all. Though their focus over the past few months has been on skating, the team now hits the Laval Récréathèque twice weekly to practice jumping, dodging and even skating backwards.
“It’s really something for all strong, independent, open-minded, kick-ass girls who want to stay in shape, show some sportsmanship and look cute while doing it,” says Montreal rollergirl and local band promoter Daly “Lil’ Homewrecker” Hernandez.
