Nov. 23, 2011 - Issue #840: Battle the world

More than a hobby

Local roller derby players will fight for supremacy at the first World Cup

Thirteen teams from around the world will face off in a full-contact battle for international supremacy. December 1 is the start of the World Cup of Roller Derby. The first event of its kind, it marks the evolution of a sport that has gone from the theatrics of television wrestling to a sport practised by thousands of dedicated athletes world wide. It's an evolution that is welcomed by the women who dedicate full-time hours and a professional athletic approach to make the sport happen.
"It isn't a beer league," says Bobbi Barbarich—Beretta Lynch on the Team Canada roster—who was a member of a group of five responsible for the formation of the E-Ville Roller Derby league here in Edmonton in 2007. 

"If you look at the women in Gotham, Rocky Mountain, Texas and Kansas City—some of the top leagues in the States—it's getting the appearance and range of body sizes of football and you can tell these women are super strong," says Barbarich, who is currently the training coordinator for Kootenay and has travelled to Montréal, Toronto and Calgary to practise with the national team.
Barbarich has a wealth of experience in the sport, from starting the E-Ville league and then the West Kootenay Roller Derby league when she moved to Nelson in 2009. She decided to try out for Team Canada when it was announced by Blood & Thunder magazine in Toronto that there would be a World Cup. Women from across the country attended competitive tryouts and upped their already grueling training regime.

"I drove down to Calgary the morning of. There were fitness tests and a skating try-out afterwards; I was most nervous over the fitness part," says Hell'on Keller—Bailie Keller of the E-Ville league—who estimates she spends upwards of 10 hours a week training and at practices. "Out of all the girls they rank you. I was third of the top five from the try-out."

TeeKnee—Faith Pirie—one of Keller's teammates on the national team, estimates she spends 10 – 12 hours a week on derby, and in addition serves on the training committee for the Oil City Roller Girls. "I train on top of being on the track, I crossfit and run and go to the gym," says Pirie.

"The first thing you learn about derby is that it's a lot harder than you thought," says Barbarich, who is currently the training coordinator at the Kootenay Girls Team.

With the increased focus on athleticism since the resurgence of derby in the early 2000s, the competition has only intensified and the upcoming international battle was viewed as inevitable. Ziv Kruger, the media chair for the World Cup, says the idea has been around since the beginning but Blood & Thunder had the organization to get it going first.

"It's the next logical step," says Kruger, who has coached several US derby leagues. "We just had the fifth championship ever in the modern era and now we've got World Cup, which is slated to happen every two years."

Roller derby, in its modern incarnation now exists on nearly every continent with 1000 amateur leagues.

Reinvented in the 2000s by the Texas Rollergirls, derby dropped the extreme theatrics and focused on becoming a sport. The Women's Flat Track Derby Association in the States hosts the Big Five regional tournaments, with the first national tournament held in 2006 in the US, and this past year marked the first time the championships included a Canadian team with Montréal playing in the eastern region.
 

For many skaters the world cup is a sign the sport is beginning to get the respect it deserves, while still maintaining its independence and do-it-yourself nature, which is key to the accessibility of the sport. Leagues are skater run, set up by women interested in full-contact team sports. While most teams follow the rules set out by the WFTDA, there's no pressure to join the association or become WFTDA-sanctioned teams. Currently Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver have become members and have begun participating in the championships. But the flexibility to base the leagues on community needs is key to its accessibility.

"You're in control of what you're doing, you can make the best choices for your people," says Barbarich, "You know what people's skill sets are, what your fans are like, and you can create something that you've all agreed on."

That independence is part of what makes derby so open to women, whether they are athletes or not. It's a flexibility that could be lost if the sport were to be sanctioned by an outfit like the International Olympic Committee, something that almost happened in 2009 when roller sport was considered for the 2016 Olympics.

The addition of roller sport—which would have included a lot of other competitions such as roller speed skating—to the Olympics could have brought a recognition that roller derby has become more than a hobby for most women, and bestowed a respect upon the sport that many have seen as lacking, still viewed through the light of the '60s-era theatrics. But that recognition is happening without IOC approval. With the development of the World Cup, the growth of the WFTDA and the talk of international competitions centered in Europe, Australia and Scandinavia, the sport could grow to develop its own international structures to fit the needs of the women who run it.

That means important aspects of the sport could be built into any future international structures. Despite the potential for a higher level of national competition, skaters don't want to see travel teams cut off from their home leagues. Like the travel teams of leagues, Team Canada members are sharing skills between players across the country, participating in boot camps and scrimmages, and learning from players who have different experiences.
 

Roller derby is one of the few contact sports open to women at all, but is one of the only team sports open to any woman, and in some cities now men—the WTFDA also just approved a transgender policy—with any level of athletic ability. "I was excited to start something that was completely unknown," says Pirie, who just three years ago had very little skating or team sport experience, but who had always had an interest in full-contact sport. "Football is really big in my family, and I'm the only girl," she explains, "but I really wanted to make my family proud for playing a full-contact sport." The World Cup in Toronto will be the first time she'll be playing in front of her family.

The experience is not uncommon. "The woman just elected captain for the all-star team, she was such a bad skater," says Kruger. "She would trip and fall and she was a hazard. I recruited her because she had potential. I didn't know what would happen to her athletically. By about the middle of the season, the stats showed that she was not only the best blocker, but the best jammer. She was the best player within six months of joining the team."

Kruger refers to one of his close friends, who after joining derby and rebuilding lost confidence, left a destructive marriage and started the career she always wanted: "Roller derby helps women know they can accomplish whatever they put their mind to."

"Going in and bodychecking someone is fun," says Barbarich, adding, "getting bodychecked is fun and these are things we haven't been encouraged to enjoy."

"You make up a name because you have the opportunity to reinvent yourself," she continues. "It gives you the opportunity to be someone else—someone you never thought you would become—and to smash against people and do something that hasn't been considered female friendly."

"You just let lose," says Keller. "You don't have to worry about what anyone else thinks and just do your own thing." 

"It's not just national pride, but personal pride: to be the best you can be in your country, and that's what Olympic sports are about," Ziv says,  explaining that derby players who missed the championships in the States because their leagues didn't make it are excited to have the opportunity to play competitively against world-class players. "We don't need an Olympic stamp on this tournament for it to mean the exact same thing."

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