Other Sport / roller derby
Bumps, bruises and shitloads of glitter
The story goes that the inventor of roller derby, sports promoter Leo Seltzer, thought it up after reading a magazine article which suggested 93 per cent of children in America skated.
As he later told the New York Times, he thought: “Anything you’re good at as a kid, you’ll stick with it if there’s an outlet.”
Almost 100 years later and roller derby is still going strong.
is needed now More than ever
Worldwide, there are more than 1000 roller derby leagues, with 92 officially recognised teams in the UK with women’s, men’s and mixed-gender teams. From July 3 to 6 next year, the fourth Roller Derby World Cup will take place.
Let’s Jam! – photo: Paul Jones Photography
At least 50 countries are expected to participate, including England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
There is even talk of roller derby one day becoming an Olympic sport.
In roller derby there are two types of players: blockers and jammers.
In any given match (called a “bout”) there will be ten players on the track: eight blockers (four from each team) and two jammers (one from each team).
In small, two-minute sets called jams, jammers try to skate around blockers from the competing team. For every blocker they lap, they earn a point. Blockers are allowed to use force to stop a jammer from getting away.
If I get up I might fall back down again – photo: Seun Matiluko
Inevitably, falls and injuries are quite common in the sport. Elsie Luke, a jammer who skates with the London Batter C Power team, has recently set up a padded shorts company called Joyfall to help players ease some of the pain.
When I travelled down to Withywood in October to join the Bristol Roller Derby (BRD) team for training, I immediately made friends with Mike who was sitting out because of an ACL injury. “I can’t play for nine months, but it could be worse,” he told me on the sidelines.
Others I met on the day were working off a back injury, a bruised coccyx and a sprained knee.
But as I sat with Mike and watched player after player violently fall during the non-stop three-hour session, I was struck by how happy those players looked when they hit the deck.
Carla Denyer is a fan – photo: Bristol Roller Derby
It was not uncommon for a fall to be met with applause and a cheery “well done” from the rest of the group. For this team, joy comes first.
The players come in all shapes and sizes – Mike emphasised that anyone of any body type can play roller derby as the game allows players to “lean into their strengths” – and range in age from late teens to mid-50s.
They count among their ranks a graphic designer, a brewer and an aerospace engineer who is currently contracted by the Ministry of Defence.
There are a disproportionate number of nurses and carers and at least one-third of the team identifies as queer, explaining why Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer has labelled roller derby “the gayest of all the sports”.
Most of the players are women. Indeed, worldwide, most roller derby players are and have always been women.
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Sport founder Seltzer once said proudly that if a woman has “got resentments against her father, her husband, kids or the grocery man, she can get rid of them at the roller derby”.
Part of the fun of roller derby are the nicknames. As Mike – ‘Mike Drop’- told me: “In most sports people just have their last names on their jersey but roller derby has a lot more personality. You get to choose a name for yourself or your team will choose one for you.”
On the afternoon I spent with BRD, I spotted Malcolm Hex, Battered Sausage, Cousin Hit, Nita Nitro and Pandemonium among others.
Nita Nitro told me that in the early days (BRD was founded in 2010, a founding player – Chick Dastardly – recently passed away) it was fairly common for teammates to only know each other by nicknames.
She said: “It was like, you know everyone via their skate names and then you try and find them on Facebook and then you go, ‘oh no I don’t know your real name’.”
Brizzee and Black Thorn are headed to the World Cup – photo: Seun Matiluko
Roller derby is a thoroughly inclusive sport as one player, Wheely Queer, emphasised to me towards the end of practice.
They said: “Everyone (here) is very focussed on the fact that it’s a hobby. It has to be fun, or why do it? It’s super inclusive for trans people as well. All language used in roller derby should be gender neutral, so you don’t have to join a community of people and come out or anything like that.”
Nita Nitro found BRD through a friend while others followed colleagues and crushes to the team. One player, AmBruiseYa, found it through Google: “The best thing about Bristol is that you can type anything in the search engine and find it here.”
The BRD A team is ranked 36th in Europe, and both the A and B team regularly play bouts against others across the country.
On game days, players typically cover their faces with, in the words of AmBruiseYa, “shitloads of glitter”.
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Two Bristol players, Brizzee and Black Thorn, have been selected to play for Wales and Ireland respectively in the upcoming Roller Derby World cup.
Black Thorn first got involved with roller derby around 2011 while Brizzee, after first dabbling in taekwondo and ultimate frisbee, settled on the sport a decade ago.
Neither regrets it and are very keen for more players to join the Bristol team.
Blackthorn said: “If you’re new to Bristol and looking for friends, get involved. You will make friends for life.”
Bristol Roller Derby holds new skater training sessions every Monday for just £5. Follow bristolrollerderby on Instagram for more information.
Main photo: Seun Matiluko
Read next:
- We’re on a roll with Bristol Roller Derby
- Temple Meads becomes Temple Maul ahead of World Cup
- Rovers fans unite for ‘cherished tradition’
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