Roller derby attracts participants from all walks of life
Written by Denise Martins
A new culture is emerging right in our own backyard. Women from all walks of life are engaging in a full-contact sport that’s both competitive and dangerous.
“There’s a bit of a glamour about it. You get to dress up and act tough,” said Jessica Buchanan, a second-year zoology student at the University of Guelph that embraced roller derby after watching Drew Barrymore’s Whip It, a movie about a young girl’s journey to becoming a roller derby master, starring Juno’s Ellen Page.
“I thought I would try and find a team just to watch and I didn’t realize that there’d be a team so close to Guelph,” she added. “Their ‘fresh meat-n-greet’ was only a couple of weeks away so I decided to go check it out. That’s when I decided to join the team.”
The Tri-City Rollergirls invites girls from Kitchener-Waterloo and the surrounding area to put on roller skates and kick some butt. The Tri-City Rollergirls are a roller derby league with three teams: two local teams (Vicious Dishes and Venus Fly Tramps) and, because chasing after friends in roller skates is not satisfactory enough for these thrill-seeking women, one travel team (Thunder).
Although roller derby has been around for almost 80 years, only in the past couple of years has it reemerged and turned into the empowering phenomenon it is today.
It has now become a way for women to fight against the status quo under which women have historically been expected to fall under and create something new and original.
“It’s just not part of the mainstream which I think is also one of the things that draws a lot of people to it,” Buchanan said.
Buchanan, like many other girls, joined the Tri-City Rollergirls in search of adventure and individuality. What she didn’t know was that she was also enlisting to be part of a world of unity.
“I don’t think I realized how much strategy is needed and how important team cohesiveness and communication is to playing a good game,” she said. “That’s something the coaches and captain are always emphasizing.”
According to Suzy Slam, vice-president of the Tri-City Rollergirls, it’s all kinds of girls who enlist in the dangerous sports.
“We have such a variety,” said Slam. “We have a lot of professional women, many women with varying university degrees.
“We have teachers, engineers, stay-at-home moms, social workers, anything and everything. It just covers the whole sort of gamut of women.”
Empowerment, a sense of unity, and the chance to nail someone to the floor? It’s not surprising that this phenomenon has been growing so rapidly.
At this rate, young girls may soon begin to abandon their tea sets and invest their piggy-bank savings on a pair of roller skates and protective gear.