HELL ON WHEELS Maine women relish competition, camaraderie of resurgent roller derby

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Oh man. Oh man. They are so cool. I totally want to be a derby girl,” said a magenta-haired female spectator at the first-ever scrimmage of the Maine Roller Derby, held Jan. 14 at Roller World in Topsham. “It’s just, like, so badass.”

“Go Vex! Go Vex!” said another spectator, shaking his fist and hollering at the skaters, who wheeled around the roller rink in deadly formation as the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” played in the background. “Go get ’em! Show ’em who’s boss!”

During the first period of the bout, jammer Vexacious D, aka Diane Kibbin, clad in tight shorts, fishnet stockings and black skates with hot pink laces, darted through the pack of eight blockers – four from each team – to score the first point of the round. She was now lead jammer against the challenging Pioneer Valley Roller Derby of Northhampton, Mass.

The song changed from “Sabotage” to the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl,” and after a few passes, Vexacious put her hands on her hips to call the jam off. The score stood at 10-6, giving Maine a lead that would last throughout the match, with a final victorious score of 115-55.

If you crossed figure skating with tackle football (and a liberal dash of punk rock), it might look something like modern-day roller derby. No longer the kitschy, violent sport that was popular 40 years ago in low-rent arenas, on weekend TV and in bad movies, roller derby has experienced a large resurgence in the past few years – as an independent, do-it-yourself team sport, and a particularly female-friendly one at that.

“I liked the fact that it was aggressive and competitive. You don’t find that for women as much, especially in Maine,” said 34-year-old Desirae Page, who is called Miss Creant on the track.

“I get bored very easily, and never have exercised much. But it’s so much fun that it doesn’t feel like you’re getting a workout – even though a half hour in, you can barely breathe.”

There are more than 200 all-women amateur roller derby teams across the country, with 30 semi-professional teams in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, a national organization that the Maine Roller Derby hopes to join sometime this year. The “flat track” in the name refers to a level skating area, rather than the banked track, which was more common in the derby of the 1950s and ’60s and is rarely used now.

When a derby girl straps on her helmet and pads and the referee starts the bout with a blow of his or her whistle, all the jokey derby names disappear (like Punchy O’Guts, Holy Hellga and Hurt Vonnegut), as do the makeup and the sexy uniforms. For the 24 women on the Maine team, once you hit the floor, it’s just you, your skates and your teammates.

“People get focused on the cool names and uniforms and the idea that the skaters all have different personalities, but that’s just an aspect of fun,” said Maureen Wissman, 29, of Portland, known as Killer Quick when she laces up her skates. “For us, that’s not the focus. It’s just about skating, and working together as a team.”

“I like it for the exercise, and that it’s all DIY. We’re skater-run, and we do all our own promotion and fundraising,” said Terror Byte, the derby name for Melissa Harris, a 26-year-old Portland-based computer programmer.

The women on the team have all developed strong friendships since the league was formed last June. Ads were placed around Portland in newspapers and on bulletin boards, recruiting women 21 and older to help form Maine’s first-ever all-women roller derby league.

“We definitely have become good friends. All of us spent time with each other outside of it,” said Killer Quick. “It’s really become a really amazing group of women. We really enjoy each other.”

They also enjoy the feeling of being independent, and the opportunity to blow off steam and have fun.

“I hit this quarter-life crisis, because I’m [going to] get married soon,” said Terror Byte. “I didn’t want to be one of those women that doesn’t have a hobby or any friends. And I don’t like softball or kickball.”

The sport itself is relatively simple – bouts usually last an hour, and have three 20-minute periods with unlimited “jams” in each. There are two positions that skaters can play: blockers and jammers. During a jam there are four blockers and one jammer on each team, with new skaters rotating in and out as the bout progresses.

The blockers line up in a pack formation, and the jammers line up 20 feet behind them. On the first whistle the pack of blockers take off, and on the second the jammers go. The first jammer to get through, or lap, the pack is the lead jammer. On the second lap around the pack and on any subsequent laps, the jammers can score.

Though the rules aren’t hard, the sport is anything but easy. Many of the women on the team hadn’t put on roller skates since grade school when they signed up to play – let alone attempted to maneuver themselves through a pack of skaters while racing around the rink at 20 mph.

“Before this past May I hadn’t been on skates in about 17 years,” recalled Miss Creant. “I went to a couple local roller rinks just to get back in practice. I was a little shaky, but it comes back. It’s like riding a bike. I remember going screaming down hills and jumping off curbs when I was a kid.”

Roller derby, formerly a co-ed sport, was most popular during the 1950s and into the early 1970s, thanks to the televised matches featuring the legendary San Francisco Bay Bombers, shown on TV stations across the country on Saturday mornings. The Bombers regularly sold out matches, with the record attendance at a derby reaching 28,000 at the Oakland Coliseum in 1970.

After a decline in popularity in the mid-’70s, roller derby languished in obscurity for nearly 25 years. It wasn’t until 2004, when several newly formed all-women roller derby teams across the country came together to form the United Leagues Coalition (which later became WFTDA) that the current revival really caught fire.

Roller derby in its current form differs from the old derby in several ways, the most important being that the violence has been toned down considerably. In the old derby, franchise owners encouraged players to amp up the brutality, because that’s what spectators often paid money to come see, as it is with professional wrestling and, to a lesser degree, ice hockey.

“My parents were pretty upset when I told them [about being a roller girl]. They remember the old roller derby, which was fake and more violent,” said Miss Creant. “You could do whatever you wanted to. You’d see people getting thrown over railings and really getting hurt. Today there are rules, and it’s not fake. We train so we don’t get hurt. We know how to fall.”

It’s the jammers getting through the pack that makes the sport so entertaining to watch – body blocking is allowed, as are “whips” (when a blocker grabs a jammer and “whips” her along). There’s no blatant kicking, punching or shoving allowed, but there are regular crashes and spills, and the occasional trip to the emergency room.

One of the nastiest falls Maine Roller Derby has experienced occurred at the scrimmage, when Pitts of Rage, aka Allyson Pitts, 26, of Portland, careened into the wall of the roller rink and bashed her head against it, briefing knocking her unconscious and giving her a concussion. After an ambulance arrived, the match restarted.

“[Pioneer Valley] proved to have some very hard blockers and she happened to be in a bad spot when she got hit,” said Miss Creant, a few days after the match. “The worst we normally see are some wicked bruises and ‘rink rash,'” referring to the skin burns that occur when a player falls and scrapes against the rink floor.

Derby fans range in age from high school students to retirees, all of whom were in the crowd present at the Maine-Pioneer Valley match. Clusters of bespectacled Portland hipsters took in the bout, as well as derby-girl family members.

“I went to the sneak peek they had a few months back,” said Jim Griffin, a South Portland man who nodded approvingly as the women raced past him, the breeze they kicked up blowing his hair back. “They’re pretty foxy.”

“My daughter is a referee tonight,” said Lewiston resident Debbie Snow, with no small measure of pride, pointing out 21-year-old Desiree, aka Ty Meeup, who wore a short black-and-white striped dress and black stockings under her skates. “Her husband is in the military, so this is how she unwinds. It’s a great group of girls. They’re really supportive. There are a lot of mothers in the group, too, and that surprised me.”

One mom is Lois Blow, aka D.J. Hickey, whose daughter, 10-year-old Zoey, is an official mascot for the team – and a budding derby girl herself.

“It seemed like a pretty fun job,” said Zoey, who goes by the name L’il Blow Pop when she skates around the rink in between periods, getting the crowd going. “I definitely want to be in roller derby when I get older.”