Monterey Herald
November 29, 2008
By Laith Agha
Real names are checked at the door. When the girls lace up their roller skates, they go by their derby names, monikers that fuse femininity and toughness. Kendra Cooley becomes Pippi Hard Socking. Virginia Lorber turns into Heather Headlockleer. Jessica Leanne Perry answers to Salt Ann Battery.
These are the Santa Cruz Rollergirls, and they gearing up to show their sass this March in the Monterey Bay area's first roller derby league.
"I don't care what the girl looks like," said league founder Robin Hoff, aka Robin Yo Life. "On roller skates she looks hot."
This is not the same theatrical roller derby that captivated television audiences in previous decades. That version, with its sloped track, was more akin to pro wrestling, marked by neck-wrenching clotheslines and girls flying over railings that surround the track.
Present-day derby — which has exploded from two leagues in 2003 to more than 100 nationwide — has no rails, the oval track is flat and a code of conduct applies.
What does carry over, however, is a propensity for bumping and bruising.
Breaking between drills during a recent practice, the Santa Cruz Rollergirls gathered in the center of the oval track for a breather. Before coach spoke, they chugged Gatorade and laughed about the collisions that had a few reaching for ice packs.
"I stopped worrying about who I was hitting and just started hitting people," said Kelly Williamson, 22, aka Blonde Claude Van Damme.
"I noticed," said Maria Tointon, aka Kicken Red Vixen, who was on the receiving end of a Van Damme blow.
Both chuckled. Most people probably wouldn't find humor in body checks and flailing elbows directed at them, but that is exactly what draws these women to roller derby.
Williamson, captain of the Rollergirls, "grew up at the rollerskating rink," she said, but not until last year when she watched a bout up north in the Bay Area Derby (B.A.D.) Girls league did she aspire to be a derby girl.
"I was waiting for it to come to Santa Cruz," she said. "It's been everything I thought it would be."
There is no typical Rollergirl. Ages on the Santa Cruz roster range from 18 to 43. Professions include: doctor, lawyer, bartender, hairdresser.
But there are some common threads, such as tattoos. According to the team's fact sheet, 327 of them adorn the bodies of the 70 active players, reserve players and volunteers.
They are also athletes who say they enjoy — even crave — the violence inherent in the sport. If born boys, they probably would have been football players. As it is, they use roller derby as an opportunity to celebrate their femininity while asserting strength.
"It's a full-contact sport," said Evie Smith, aka Raven Von Kaos, "so it's a good way to get out aggression. You have to be tough and you get to wear fishnet stockings."
Roller derby is a rarity among team sports — the game is played without a ball (or puck).
Players from the two teams of five skate in two side-by-side, single-file lines. Players within a line alternate between opponents, like basketball players lining along the key during free throws.
The trailers of each line are the jammers. They earn a point for each opponent they pass — if a jammer makes it through the pack, she earns four points. She then skates as fast as she can away from the front of the pack to catch up with the back of the pack to try to pass through the gauntlet again and
earn more points.
A jammer's passage through the pack is similar to a running back in football finding his way through the pile of offensive and defensive linemen. A team's other four members act as both sides of the line, trying to clear a path for their jammer while trying to blockade the opposing jammer. The two front skaters have the extra responsibility of setting the pace of the pack.
Periods last for two minutes, after which the pack is reset to begin another two-minute period. Bouts consist of two 30-minute halves.
The Santa Cruz league was founded in the spring, bringing the sport to the Monterey Bay for the first time. The last seven months have been spent getting the Rollergirls ready for the season set to begin in March.
League organizers are shooting for two or three teams in the inaugural season, Hoff said.
A league has not been launched in Monterey County, though Hoff said she has been contacted by a Monterey woman who was interested in starting one.
Hoff, a two-time most valuable player of the Rat City Rollergirls league in Seattle, where she played before moving to Santa Cruz to be with her boyfriend, is only coaching right now. The 35-year old said she will eventually rejoin the player ranks,but is holding herself back until she is confident theother players are ready for competition. Though they are all athletes, none of them have any derby experience.
"I want these girls to be at the level I'm at or higher before I can justify playing," she said. "It's not my time. It's their time." Hoff foresees the Santa Cruz girls getting there soon.
"We have the talent," she said.
Other leagues are already expecting them to be tough opponents. At a recent exhibition tournament in Ventura — Santa Cruz's first competition — the Roller Girls arrived sometime after their reputation.
"We already had a reputation of being bad ass," Hoff said. "The community talks."