ROLLER DERBY: Queen City Roller Girls ready for new season

http://www.tonawanda-news.com/sports/local_story_365223312.html?keyword=topstory

By Ed Adamczyk
The Tonawanda News
North Tonawanda, NY — The Queen City Roller Girls, North Tonawanda’s all-female and remarkably competitive sports league in the resurgent world of roller derby, goes back to the hardwood Saturday night, opening its schedule at the Rainbow Skating Rink in North Tonawanda. For the skaters, it marks their fourth season in an organized and nationally sanctioned sport that has steadily gained local interest.

For the 1,000 or so fans who will crowd the place, it’s an opportunity to do some cheering for hometown athletes they know as mothers, neighbors and co-workers.

This is a grassroots phenomenon that has turned mild-mannered dental hygienists, librarians, stay-at-home moms, nurse practitioners and other stripes of employment into athletes — warriors on wheels, if you like — and some of the more brash and comic aspects of the Roller Girls’ approach to marketing do not hide the dedication and camaraderie of the skaters.

It is a four-team league with a travel team of elite competitors named the Lake Effect Fury (in Saturday’s bout, as they call it, the Alley Kats will contest the Devil Dollies), and each skater has a number on her back with a confrontational and vaguely tawdry nickname, a nom-de-skate along the lines of “Maggie De Sade” or “Brawl McCartney.” The league’s Web site features funny and implausible story lines in each player’s biography, and the net effect is not of some foxy skating show but a of a heavy metal showdown between teams of bruised and bruising Amazons.

True, to a point.

“I do this for the adrenaline rush,” said Wendy Thompson (aka “Vanilla Cream”) of North Tonawanda. “After the bout, with ice and Motrin, I feel accomplished.”

“My two sons play football,” added Heather Lance of North Tonawanda. “They see that mom can be tough and knows about team spirit. It’s very positive for them, for all of us. I was a roller figure skater, and this is so much harder than it looks.”

For the record, this sport welcomes all ages, all body types and all levels of skating expertise, although many resemble off-duty ballerinas. “The smaller girls can block, the bigger girls can hit,” Kenmore resident Maria Hollander (aka “Crazy Legs”) said of the strategic action, which involves skaters attempting to pass one another as they skate around a flat oval. “You have to learn how to hit and how to fall. This is high-speed chess on wheels.”

At a practice earlier this week, the Roller Girls waited until a skating party of young and energetic three-footers left the arena, then slowly unloaded bags and suitcases of protective equipment (helmets, “quad-wheeled” skates instead of rollerblades, and significant padding) and took over the floor. It resembled a hockey team at work, and included both experienced athletes and women who had always wanted an opportunity to play a sport.

“I like sports, always did. I did track and soccer in school,” said Tonawanda’s Jessica Akey (aka “Mexicali Bruise”), a Ph.D candidate at UB.

Said Danielle Boudreau of Tonawanda, a claims adjuster in real life but “Casual Sexist” on the oval, “I was never any good at sports. I saw roller derby was in Buffalo and wanted to try it. It’s constantly a learning experience.”

The athletes repeatedly mentioned the empowerment and camaraderie they’ve found in being a roller girl. The QCRL is a communal and independent effort, run by its unpaid skaters; “Crazy Legs,” for example, is the league’s public relations officer. Their charitable endeavors and media appearances are numerous. So are their three- and four-a-week practices.

While the thrill of “hitting people” is frequently mentioned, it is overruled by the intensity, the friendships and the feeling of achievement the sport brings, the sorts of things that men have long appreciated about involvement in sport.

The skaters range in age from 21 to 50, and while there is a heavy Ken-Ton concentration, travel from as far as Niagara Falls and Colden (and two from Canada) for practices and events. The bouts (eight of them on Saturday nights, starting this Saturday and ending in May) bring out a roaring crowd of enthusiastic supporters who tend to be astounded by the passion and power displayed when their mild-mannered colleagues turn into athletic competitors.

While it may be a fringe sport, roller derby is not wrestling; outcomes are not pre-arranged, and these athletes are playing to win. The Queen City Roller Girls are pursuing both high and low goals here, simultaneously offering women the more noble concepts of sport while displaying a cheerfully low-rent image. They are definitely onto something.