Knock ’n’ roll

With names such as Boldy Knocks, Beck Stabba, Violet No Regard, Lieutenant Slam, Betty Aim Fire and Bullet Brains, you had better be nice to these girls.

Unless, of course, you find yourself on a roller derby track with them; then you just might want to skate for your life.

“You get to hit other women really hard with your body. That’s always fun,” says Erin “Bullet” Brains. (Yes, Brains really is her legal surname.) The 31-year-old has been a member of the Emerald City Roller Girls since the inception of the Eugene-based league in 2006. She now works in public relations for the league, along with her husband, James Brains.

The league began its sixth season with two bouts on Jan. 5 at the Lane Events Center, and the second bouts of the season are this Saturday.

It began as a craigslist call — by a local knitting group called Stitch’n Bitch, of all things — more than six years ago for local women interested in the burgeoning sport of amateur roller derby to appear at Skate World in Springfield. And it’s blossomed into a league with about 100 competitors on three adult teams, a “Fresh Meat” team of beginners and a Junior Gems team of about 60 girls ages 10 to 18.

“Average everyday women have turned nothing into an internationally governed sport,” says Kylie Belachaikovsky, 36, aka Agent Orange of Eugene’s Andromedolls roller derby team.

Lacing up her skates for a Wednesday night practice at the Willamalane Center for Sports and Recreation in Springfield, she says that roller derby is “the fastest growing sport in the world right now.”

Well, that’s up for debate. But since women’s roller derby, a professional sport between the 1930s and 1970s, was resurrected as an amateur sport in Texas a little more than a decade ago, leagues have sprouted worldwide.

The Emerald City Roller Girls are part of the Austin, Texas-based Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, which includes 172 full-member leagues and 94 apprentice leagues, mostly in the United States but also as far away as Helsinki and Berlin.

There are four other full-member WFTDA leagues in Oregon: the Rose City Rollers in Portland; the Sick Town Derby Dames in Corvallis; the Cherry City Derby Girls in Salem; and the Lava City Roller Dolls in Bend.

Although the Wikipedia entry on “roller derby” says there are more than 1,400 leagues worldwide today, a more accurate number might be the one supplied in a 2009 New York Times Magazine piece that said “more than 15,000 skaters compete in more than 300 flat-track leagues.”

While professional roller derby skaters competed on banked tracks, flat-track roller derby is much less expensive as it simply involves laying down a rolled-up track.

A diverse group

The Emerald City Roller Girls range in age from 18 to early 50s. They are teachers and pharmacy technicians, mental health counselors and moms by day, and fishnet-wearing, tattoo-flaring flat-track bruisers by night.

“It was something completely new, and it was something in line with my values as a modern woman,” says Natalie York, aka the Killin’ Sicilian, co-captain of Eugene’s Church of Sk8in team, of why she tried out for derby five years ago. “And I liked the fact that it was a pretty diverse group of women involved.”

York is a 2008 University of Oregon graduate and a mental health counselor at ShelterCare in Eugene.

On a recent Saturday night, she and her black-and-red-clad teammates zip around the track at the Lane Events Center, trying to stay with the Break Neck Betties of the Rose City Rollers league in Portland. It is clear that the Betties have the superior squad, despite the ear-piercing screams of about 1,200 fans in attendance, most of them rooting for the Eugene contingent.

The Betties scorch the Church of Sk8in 307 to 92, before two Eugene teams, the Andromedolls and the Fast Track Furies, square off in the second bout.

Roller derby is played five-on-five on an oval track. One skater on each team is designated as a “jammer,” who tries to lap as many opposing skaters as possible, picking up a point for each pass as her four teammates (blockers) simultaneously help clear a path for her and try to keep the other team’s jammer from passing them.

And, yes, it does get a little rough out there. Roller derby is clearly not a sport for the faint of heart.

“It just allows you to take out aggression in a healthy manner, which is not something women are usually accustomed to,” says Tara Gilbert, aka Alluya R. Doomed. She is an associate research technician at EGI in Eugene, a research equipment and medical device company in the UO’s Riverfront Research Park. Gilbert skated for the Andromedolls, the four-time reigning league champions, the past four years and is serving as a coach this year.

“Couldn’t wait to get back”

During the season-opening bout, Church of Sk8in player Erica Larragoitiy goes down hard as she fights for position on a turn against a Break Neck Betties’ player. Larragoitiy, aka Bomb um Erica, is slow to get up as EMTs on stand-by rush in. As they are trained to do, all of the skaters take a knee as Larragoitiy is attended to.

“The wear and tear, particularly on the knee joints, is pretty profound,” says Belachaikovsky, who works at Greenhill Humane Society as a dog trainer, among other duties. “I love the sport with my entire heart,” she adds.

Victoria Sale, 25, a Savon Pharmacy technician known as Psychotic Rage when she puts on her Church of Sk8in uniform, says she has seen pre-bout vomiting because of nervousness, concussions, players carried off on stretchers with their heads immobilized and “gruesome broken legs” in her two years of roller derby.

Jenn French, aka Jenesis O’Sin of the Flat Track Furies, knows all about the latter.

“My foot was hanging at a wrong angle,” the 27-year-old French says, remembering her broken left ankle that occurred in a May 2011 bout in Bremerton, Wash. French collided with an opponent, and the wheel on one of her skates caught on the track boundary rope. She heard the “snap,” she says.

“I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, but I definitely was on the ground yelling,” French recalls.

The injury required reconstructive surgery, and after sitting out last year French now skates with “plates and pins” in her ankle. But it never occurred to her not to attempt a comeback.

“I really just couldn’t wait to get back,” she says. “It never really even crossed my mind not to come back.”

Creating a bond

Proving themselves tough girls and getting an adrenaline rush from the challenge and competition of a true “contact sport” is just part of the draw, most of these women say.

The bond they create with one another, and the empowerment they feel and how that flows into their daily lives, is perhaps the biggest incentive, they say.

And, as amateurs, they obviously don’t make a dime doing it. In fact, they pay $35 in monthly dues that mostly goes toward rental fees to practice and compete at Willamalane and the Lane Events Center, says Erin Brains, who still skates on the league’s all-star travel team, the Skatesaphrenics. They also raise funds for uniforms and travel expenses, she says.

“We want to keep being effective as far as training people and keeping the league going,” Brains says. “We just want to keep growing the sport.”

As a nonprofit organization, the Emerald City Roller Girls put a big emphasis on giving back to the community, she says. This season, the league is donating a portion of its proceeds to Womenspace, the local agency that provides shelter and a range of help for those fleeing abusive partners. Womenspace recently had to shutter its walk-in advocacy service at its crisis and support center because of declining funding.

“You’re working with a bunch of independent, strong, talented women,” says Sophie Navarro, who skated in the league under the name Sopherocious for three years as a member of the Fresh Meat squad, despite standing only 4-foot-9, but was never drafted by one of the league’s three competitive teams. “They put it out here on the track,” says Navarro, as she watches the opening bouts in a competition last month. “They’re dedicated. A lot of these women are moms, doctors and nurses.”

Navarro, an administrative assistant in the UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts and an aspiring cartoonist, is still a big supporter of the league. During the Church of Sk8in bout against the Break Neck Betties, Navarro sits with other fans along the side of the track, in the “Crash Zone” that comes with the disclaimer “Sit at Your Own Risk.”

Navarro is screaming for her roommate, Jenny Helms, aka Jenny Jetstream, a jammer for the Church of Sk8in.

“Go, Jenny! I love you!” Navarro hollers, as she jumps up and down with a “Go Jenny!” sign.

“I love the first bout of the season,” Navarro says. “It’s so exciting.”

Behind Navarro in the stands are two women with blinking red devil horns on their heads.

One of them is Ginger Thramer, whose 23-year-old daughter Melanie Thramer is Lieutenant Slam on the Church of Sk8in.

“I was a little nervous,” Ginger Thramer says of the moment when her daughter, a Willamette High School graduate, told her she was trying out for roller derby. “But I’m going to support her in whatever she wants to do.”