The Blue Sweater Blog: Derbytown

Last weekend I took in some derby.

Roller derby is a decades-old combination of sport and spectacle that has been resurfacing in the last decade. Participants in the event I attended were just little girls, aged about 10-17, and my God. They are already far tougher than I will ever be.

I saw her kill a puppy.

For the event we headed up to exotic North Edmonton—where we don’t need trash cans, we’ve got bushes! The track is in a small arena on an old army garrison. It smelled like feet.

That may be due to all the roller skates or just a carryover from army days, but it took awhile to get used to. Our seats were in the front row, right on the track—it’s called “suicide row,” due to the number of times spectators there are victims of plays gone awry on the track.

Exhibit A.

The rules of roller derby are complex, but for those who are unfamiliar with it, it involves two teams of girls—the “pack”—skating around an oval track on roller skates. Each team has a “jammer,” who skates around trying to overtake the pack. Every time she laps the pack, the jammer earns a point for her team.

But that description eliminates the real point of the sport: the bruising. This is where the “spectacle” portion of the event comes into play: girls in fishnets and fake eyelashes doing whatever they can to edge each other off the track.

A lot of newbies were participating in the first game of the evening—ten-year-olds who could barely stay upright—so there was little real action. The second game featured older and more experienced players, so the claws came out a little more. As I understand it, the adult league can lead to such injuries as broken legs and dislocated shoulders, so I’m hoping to take my camera to one of those matches sometime to get a few shots of these graceful swans flying into the sidelines.

Not that I’m pro-violence or anything, but I bet these are some of the toughest gals around. I didn’t see a single tear all night, even among the tiniest, most novice players—and there were a few nasty spills.

The team that gets concussed together, stays together.

Initially I wasn’t sure about how I felt seeing little girls dressed up in fishnets and short shorts and whaling on each other. But after watching the games, and watching the teams interact with each other, I’ve decided the whole movement in its modern incarnation is about liberation. It’s much more “take that” than “look at me.”

It was a great way to spend a Saturday night—even if my hair smelled like moldy socks till the next day. And roller derby can spawn a great point of discussion over beers with your friends afterward: what would your derby name be? Each player adopts a derby name and persona (to distance oneself from the violence? I’m sure studies have been done on this) suggesting the kind of discomfort they’re able to inflict on other players. “Banana Bomb” and “Kat-astrophe” were examples, along with the more explicit “Miss Pain.”

“Piston” was the idea that immediately came to mind for myself, but I feel that with some thought I could do better than that. Mitch suggested “Whore-phine,” like “morphine”—something you’ll need after a match—but maybe it could be made a little more menacing—consider “WhoreFiend.” The possibilities!

I took my camera and spent the evening trying to get a sweet action shot with a jammer in the foreground and the slightly out-of-focus pack in the background. As you can see, I was not successful, but you know, practice, whatever. Check out my quasi-successes below!