Purple Tinted Glasses

Roller Derby makes national coverage this past week on ESPN’s Sport Center, only to be heckled… as always… and probably with good reason. One of our refs (soon to be skater, Flat Track Fever blogger) posted a link to the video only to have some reader get all worked up in a tizzy.

In his rambling comment he (she?) asks us to “TALK ABOUT THE DAMN SPORT. ‘What it takes to have explosive NRG for 2 minutes’, ‘Skills behind being a top ranked Lead Jammer’, ‘Plays’, ‘Team Strategies’, etc. Educate your interviewer. This piece of crap was done by…yes…another Roller Girl….”

“I am a fan of ‘Inception Style’, ‘WWF Style’, and the ‘New Grass Roots Revival Style’. What I hate is Roller Girl Names, Pillow Fights, A&E Roller Girl, and the hypocrisy of certain roller girls (’We dress sexy, but F you for gawking at us’).and that is IN YO FACE!”

There’s a lot of emotions that come to mind, the first one being “HOLY CRAP we’re on ESPN! Cool!”

I am also one of the first ones to roll my eyes at the pillow fights and staged brawls. As a member of the Big Easy Rollergirls, I can gladly say that that stuff is bull shit. We play by the latest version of the WFTDA standard rules and treat roller derby as a legitimate sport. We eliminated “play fighting” in our first season and call for immediate ejection in the case of any real fight breaking out. There are no jammer races — unless you’re talking about the race to be the first through the pack. Pillow fights… are retarded.

I wear the hot pants and fish nets and I don’t care if anyone gawks at me or throws a cat call to Beatrix sKiddo. We don’t get paid for this. Fact of the matter is that roller derby is not a professional sport. We do it for fun, for therapy, because it’s cheaper than a gym membership or whatever other reason you want to throw out there. My alter ego at this point has become a nick name.

I’ll be happy to talk about what it took to get there and how we still practice up to 4 days a week, 2 hours at a time. I throw in running for endurance cross training and during our off season, I’m getting back on the bike for longer rides in addition to park skating outdoors. I also try to schedule at least one personal strength training session per month to update routines and target problem areas like shin splints and lower back aches. Oh, and after two years of this stuff… I’m finally starting to have knee problems, but that’s not going to stop me from doing it.