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Daughters and roller derby
Published 7:48am Tuesday, March 2, 2010Just mentioning the term “roller derby” brings visions of banked circle tracks and roller skaters punching, tackling, and otherwise causing extreme mayhem to one another as they proceeded through some complicated game of trying to win.
So when I found out that one of my daughters had joined the Babe City Rollers team and with them was about to make a skating debut in Bemidji this past weekend, I knew I had to race up there and check it out.
“Dad, I’m having so much fun skating.” So she said this past week, full of enthousiasm and energy.
“But,” I said, “I just watched ‘Whip It,’ and aren’t you afraid of someone punching your lights out?”
“No,” she calmly replied, “that’s just in the movies.” Uh huh.
Then what about the mandatory rule that EMTs must attend these events? Then, I thought about the size of the likely female who wanted to do this derby thing. Somehow, I didn’t see that girl as small and meek. My daughter is pretty slender.
So there I was, Saturday night in Bemidji at the first local flat track (they don’t do the tilted oval stuff much any more) derby contest.
The teams attending were: The Babe City Rollers from Bemidji, the Harbor City Roller Dames from Duluth, the North Star Roller Girls (mean and practiced) from the Twin Cities, and the Fargo-Moorhead Derby Girls. There was a lot of dark eye shadow.
And beef. Some of these ladies hadn’t seen the light side of two hundred pounds in several days. But some of them were pretty small, too, not much past a hundred pounds. Quite a variety of sizes.
The track itself is outlined by red tape on the gym floor, with maybe fifty-foot straight-aways, then the oval turns at each end. Flat track is designed to keep the overall velocity down, and hence the mayhem. Took a lot of the viewer fun out.
I looked at the program. Their names are truly a hoot. Micky Dismantle. Ida Kilder, Roxy Solid, Patho Jen, Red Malicious (being an apple grower, I really liked that one). Other names I’ve heard of are Cleosplatra, and Ivana Bityou.
There’s a lot of showmanship in this stuff, but I’m sure these are nice Lutheran girls.
Then the teams took the floor, and began practice blocking one another, and grabbing a teammate skating behind them and whipping them forward, kind of like cracking the whip used to be played. They hold their elbows out in a threatening manner, and wait for someone to come into range so they can deliver body blows.
When the two teams are out there, it looks like about twenty of them milling around, tripping, dragging others down, and in general being quite entertaining. One skated out carrying a baseball bat, but I found out later she was just kidding. I found that out when she showed that she could block an opposing player into the next county, and really didn’t need that bat at all.
There are a couple of blockers on each team, and a couple more that lead and lag the pack, and one more called the jammer who comes from behind with a jammer from the other team, and their job is to get through the pack first, although both must get through the pack in order to score any points.
They then skate like the dickens around and began to come up on the pack—who are all elbowing and blocking each other like crazy, falling down, skidding off the track, trying to catch back up, you name it. Bedlam on skates.
Points are scored by how many of the opposing players the jammer can pass, before the two-minute time period expires. Both jammers can score, but only the lead jammer can call the whole thing off. Unlike the movies, skaters cannot trip, or shove, or otherwise mangle opposing team members. Unusually enough, they can do this to their own team members, in order to further their positioning.
Everyone gets into position, the jammers paired back twenty feet or so, and the whistle blows. Medusa, a compactly assembled young lady, is one of the jammers, and shows herself to be completely fearless and extremely well balanced, and proceeds enthousiastically to maneuver herself into the gaggle of girls ahead of her. They mill to the right, mill to the left, fall down, try to block her.
Her team blocks a couple out onto the gym floor, where they roll around and try to get back onto their skates. (They’re pretty top heavy, and somewhat like turtles upside down.)
She fakes out another one, tricks her into thinking she’s going to pass on the right, but at the last minute, darts around the other side, and she’s through the pack, she’s the lead jammer, and away she tears to get around the track to the back of the pack, at which point she tries to get through them again.
Theres a lot of falling down, and a lot of domino-like secondary falling down. They never fall alone. Well, they’re ladies. Everyone gets in on the fun. A lot of getting back up, sometimes pretty slowly. A couple of whips, some pretty good blocks, and before you know it, Medusa has scored.
I like the way if one falls down, she takes several with her. So did the crowd. And my daughter? Well, one of the opposing heavyweights did nearly block her into the next county.
But that heavyweight better look out.
Next time, mom is going to bring the baseball bat.
