Ditching heels for wheels
Feb 23 2010 By Babette Decker, The Journal
Babette Decker meets a group of women who are battling it out on roller skates.
ADRENALIN is pumping high, girls are lining up in their roller skates, the crowd is going crazy. A whistle blows and everyone goes into a frenzy. The players start skating and whiz around the oval track while their teammates watch and cheer.
This is what a group of girls from Newcastle are training hard for – their first roller derby bout.
One of the newest games on the UK’s sporting scene, the Newcastle team, or Newcastle Roller Girls (NRG), have caught the bug that’s already bitten many others in America and across Britain.
Now Hollywood has got in on the act. The new Drew Barrymore film, Whip It, focuses on odd-ball Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) who is trying to escape her small-town life when she comes across a roller derby team in Austin, Texas, which transforms her life.
Released in the UK on April 7, it will undoubtedly create unprecedented interest in this unique sport.
Roller derby originates from America and was first mentioned as far back as 1922 when the Chicago Tribune used the term to describe flat-track roller skating races.
It grew into a popular spectator sport and even featured in dedicated TV shows but, in the mid 70s, it had a sudden dip in popularity.
In 2001 roller derby was resurrected by a group of feisty Austin women who started the Texas Rollergirls ‘league’, as individual teams are called.
The UK’s first team were the London Rollergirls, set up in 2006. Other cities soon followed and now there are more than 24 established leagues with names like Birmingham Blitz Dames, Lincolnshire Bombers and Bedford Bandits.
In early 2008, NRG joined the ranks, following its closest rival on North East turf – the Middlesbrough Milk Rollers (MMR).
The sport is predominantly played by women, though there are a few all-men teams too and referees generally are mostly male.
The UK teams all play on oval-shaped flat tracks. Each team has five players on the track at any one time – the pivot, or captain, three blockers and the jammer, who is the point scorer.
The aim of each team is to get its jammer past the opposing team. With each player successfully negotiated, a point is scored.
The blockers will try everything to stop them by doing anything within the rules, blocking and body checking are allowed, but repeatedly hitting somebody in the back, for example, will land you in the sin bin.
All this happens at a fast pace, in up to two-minute intervals, or jams, with a bout lasting an hour.
It is a hard-hitting, full-contact sport, but it has become more refined since its conception, where pretty much everything was allowed. Now, roller derby teams play to set rules, a unified law book, adhered to around the world.
Skaters wear plenty of protection, including knee and elbow pads, wrist guards, helmets and mouth guards – all there to try to protect from anything more serious than the inevitable bruises and squashed limbs.
Needless to say though, injuries do happen but above all it’s all about having fun.
Share
