By day they are the model of modest respectability, with jobs ranging from nurse, civil servant and IT consultant to journalist. By night they change into racy outfits: short skirts, fishnet tights, skimpy tops, knee pads, gum shields and roller blades.
These women lead double lives, taking on feisty personas and even adopting their own unique ‘derby’ names to compete. Their sport? Rollerderby – an aggressive all-female contact sport originally played in Depression-era America – and it is going through a major revival.
I went along to a training session in Bermondsey, East London, and spoke to four of the London Rollergirls (London’s rollerderby league of around 60 skaters) – Dot Slash, Metallikat, Daisy Dioxin and Hula-Gunn – to find out why it is growing so rapidly in popularity.
The sport is played by two all-girl teams skating counter-clockwise on a flat track in a series of ‘jams’. Both teams have five players who wear protective gear and roller skates and they will usually be made up of four ‘blockers’ and one ‘jammer’.
‘Blockers’ lead the pack on the referee’s first signal, and the ‘jammers’ go on a second signal. To get points the ‘jammer’ has to skate through the opposing team’s pack and lap them. ‘Blockers’ have to stop the opposing ‘jammer’ from passing by getting in their way or taking them down with a big shove of the hips. They also defend their own ‘jammer’ who they can assist by pulling or pushing them through the pack.
Rollergirls are taken off for one minute if they commit four ‘minors’ or a ‘major’ rule breach – such as using elbows, forearms or hands, tripping, false starts or ‘insubordination’ (that is back-chat to you and me).
Whilst this is an all-girl sport, the first person I was introduced to was a man. ‘This is Big Cat Merv’, said one of two girls who had shown me into the sports hall after I spotted them outside with helmets attached to their rucksacks. From inside the venue I could hear a droning buzz of skidding wheels, thuds and clunks as skates knocked and kneepads crashed to the floor. It was a little alarming and anyone of a delicate disposition might be put off from the start.
Big Cat Merv, or Dave, as he would be known to non-derby friends and colleagues, is the friendly announcer for London Rollergirls’ competitions, called ‘bouts’. He explained that whilst the teams are all-female, the referees (of which there are ‘ideally seven’) are usually men, and friends and partners both male and female tend to get involved in the running of the sport.
As I sat at the side of the City of London Academy sports hall with Big Cat Merv watching practice ‘jams’ I couldn’t help being amused by the technicalities of the game. ‘Helmet panties’ are put over helmets to indicate the type of player, so a ‘helmet panty’ with a star signifies a ‘jammer’. A ‘jammerless jam’ is when both ‘jammers’ have been sent off for foul play.
But it became clear that there is a lot more to rollerderby than girls with tattoos and fishnet tights going round in circles pushing each-other over. The rollergirls are training three times a week in preparation for their next battle and in July they had their first European tournament.
Daisy Dioxin (real name Nicky Walden), a 31-year old environmental consultant told me: ‘We are working hard to tell the UK about rollerderby and raise its profile because it should be recognized as a serious sport. We have already had sell-out bouts [reaching full capacity of 600, with tickets on sale at £8-10].’
The London Rollergirls’ league has three permanent teams: Steam Rollers (‘steam powered Victorian inventors from an alternative universe’), Suffra Jets (‘rocket powered feminists from the future’), and the UltraViolent Femmes (‘vicious female droogs causing mayhem on the streets of London’).
Competition between them is fierce but friendly, and the girls I spoke to were keen to stress the benefits of competing in an all-female sport.
Daisy Dioxin told me: ‘It is a fantastic release from a stressful day job. It is also great to play a sport with so many likeminded women. Before I took up rollerderby I had no idea how much of a support network it would provide. The rollergirls are like an extended family of sisters.’
Many of the girls find rollerderby a fun alternative to going to the gym to get fit. Dot Slash (real name TJ), used to be figure skater when she was younger, but many of the rollergirls could not skate and did not play sports before they got involved. The 30 year-old IT consultant told me: ‘Rollerderby is very healthy and doesn’t feel like a chore. You can burn 400 calories in just an hour of rollerderby’.
And as for hurting themselves? The girls seem distinctly unbothered. Daisy Dioxin admitted she was intimidated at first: ‘It was quite scary seeing everyone else whizzing around looking confident,’ she told me. But Metallikat (real name Catherine Ord), a 35-year old civil servant said: ‘You don’t often get hurt, and once you have a go at it everyone is really welcoming’.
Hula-Gunn (real name Tamar Hicks – pictured), a 29 year-old rollergirl who works in the music industry told me the rollergirls’ outfits are entirely practical: ‘We wear what we feel comfortable in, just like tennis players wear skirts and vest tops’, and believes people don’t realise how hard they train. Her advice to those thinking of getting involved is: ‘Just give it a try. Come to a bout first to see what it is like and then come and join us!’
Picture credit Suzy del Campo and Colin Evans.
Interested in trying rollerderby?
London Rollergirls:
http://www.londonrollergirls.com/rollerderby
London Rockin Rollers:
http://www.londonrockinrollers.co.uk/
Lincolnshire Bombers:
http://www.myspace.com/lincolnshirebombers
Rebellion Rollergirls (Bedfordshire):
http://www.rebellionrollergirls.co.uk/
Birmingham Blitz Derby Dames:
http://www.blitzdames.com/
Tags: all-female, empowerment, exercise, hobbies, roller derby, sport, Vicki Owen, work-life balance
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