Long Beach Roller Derby getting ready for first bout
LONG BEACH – With names like Ida Capitate, Sweet’n Low Blow and Blanche Deathereaux, it’s definitely not your grandma’s roller derby.
Take a peek through the chain-link fence at the hockey rink in El Dorado Park on Tuesday and you’ll see a whirlwind of wheels, elbow pads and helmets. The women are there four nights a week, some braving bruises, broken fingers and twisted ankles.
It’s Long Beach’s very own roller derby league.
“The girls are really coming along,” said coach and co-founder Michelle Steilin, aka Estro Jen. “And they’re tough.”
The Long Beach league, now more than 100 women strong, is part of a nationwide revival of the venerable sport – there are records of it dating back to first half of the last century – that started in Austin, Texas, around 2001. From the Boston Derby Dames to the Kansas City Roller Warriors, there are now hundreds of amateur leagues across the country.
The new generation is an all-female grassroots effort with punk rock and feminist influences. Many leagues play up the entertainment by wearing sexy uniforms, like mini skirts and fishnet stockings. They adopt fierce-sounding
aliases, like “Militia Etheridge” or “Sandra Day O’Clobber.”
But there’s also a strong emphasis on roller derby as a sport. The women are athletes and they practice hard, Steilin said.
“Our main focus is training the girls to be excellent skaters,” said Steilin, 27, who formerly skated with the Los Angeles Derby Dolls.
While teams have sprouted in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego over the years, Long Beach never had its own league, until last August.
What
stared as a handful of skaters has now morphed into a league of about 120 with three teams – the Terminal Island Tootsies, Fourth Street Retro Rollers and Bixby Rollerettes. The news spread mostly by word-of-mouth.
After practicing since last summer, they officially began their season this month and the teams expect to have their first bout, or match, by the end of March. They’re still looking for a venue, but they hope to have the bout on a flat, outdoor track built near Berth 55 by the port.
The three teams will play each other this year, but they hope to start playing teams from other cities by next season.
“We’d eventually like to have a kick-ass travel team,” Steilin said.
Roller derby was defined in 1935 when Chicago promoter Leo Seltzer came up with the idea of a skating spectacle to compete with the nation’s dance marathon craze. The sport began as an endurance test, but promoters soon took note of the crowd reaction whenever the skaters crashed. It evolved into a full-contact sport that grew in popularity over the decades.
But by the 1970s, the sport had turned into a campy spectacle on wheels and popularity dwindled. The wheels are now rolling again, fueled by fierce female competitors.
How does the sport work?
Two teams of five players each begin skating on a circuit track. The teams are divided into a jammer, three blockers and a pivot. Offense and defense are played simultaneously.
Pivots and blockers from both teams form a single pack. It’s the jammer’s job to score points by attempting to break through the pack and lap around as many times as possible. Pivot/blockers attempt to assist their team’s jammer through the pack while simultaneously blocking the opposing jammer. Players may block using body parts above the mid-thigh, excluding the elbows, forearms and hands.
The game is high-speed and high-contact, with usually a few crashes and an occasion fight. It’s not for the timid, as many roller derby girls will tell you.
“You can’t play without getting bruised,” said Long Beach resident Julie Frazier, aka Rocket Juel.
But the derby girls say the pain is worth the thrill of the sport and the feeling of camaraderie. Frazier, a 33-year-old teacher in the Inglewood Unified School District, said she joined roller derby last year as a way to take her mind of a difficult separation. She said she immediately had more than a dozen new friends.
The women come from different walks of life, from mothers and nurses to waitresses and students, but they bond over their love of skating.
“It’s like a cult,” said Sophia Gomez, aka Scarlet Shredder. “It’s a place where you can work out your aggression.”
On a recent Tuesday night, Gomez was sitting on the sidelines watching longingly as more than 40 women scooted across the track, practicing backwards skating. Tuesday is weekly league practice night, which invites all skill levels.
The 35-year-old tour guide for Catalina Express said she broke her ankle the first day back after a Christmas vacation.
Gomez is far from discouraged.
“I’ll be out there as soon as I heal,” she said.
kelly.puente@presstelegram.com, (562) 499-1305