Block and roll: Roller Derby, the ‘sport for misfits,’ finds a home in the Valley
The floor of Interskate 91 South is often filled with young skaters teetering around the track, but the athletes on it now are sure on their skates, focused and ready to battle. Two jammers sit poised, their bodies coiled in anticipation; in front of them, two bunches of blockers gaze at them intently, trying to determine the best strategy for locking them down. For a second, there’s quiet. Then a sharp whistle slices through it and the two skaters explode forward, trying to duck and weave between a mass of bodies to escape the pack and rack up points for their team. Their teammates and fans yell and cheer from the sidelines, their voices echoing around the rink, but skater Lilith of the Valley (government name: Lisa Andras) doesn’t hear any of it.
“Derby is the one place where my mind is quiet,” Lilith said. “No matter what I do, the voices are going — but when I’m on that track, it’s the one place where I’m totally focused.”
Put together the campiness of drag, the athleticism of gymnastics, and the intensity and physicality of rugby, and you’ve maybe scratched the surface of what a typical roller derby bout is. Depending on the spectator, derby can look like a chaotic mess or a carefully choreographed dance — and that can change at any second of a bout.
“(The) general vibe of roller derby is sort of like a mix of red rover, rugby, and burlesque on skates,” Peter Pandemonium (government name: Alex Kapitan), one of the more experienced skaters for Pioneer Valley Roller Derby, said. “It feels like roller derby is often the sport for misfits, and that’s one of the things I love about it.”
The Pioneer Valley is home to two roller derby leagues: Western Mass Roller Derby, based in Wilbraham at Interskate 91, and Pioneer Valley Roller Derby, which plays at two rinks: the Fitzpatrick Ice Rink in Holyoke during the summer months, and the Greenfield YMCA during the winter.
But for both of those leagues, things haven’t been easy the last few years. An already niche sport that sometimes struggles with attendance was hit extra hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut both squads down temporarily.
As skaters filed in to the lobby of Interskate 91, whispers rippled through the team about COVID-19 — what was going to happen? The board huddled up for an impromptu meeting — but before they could come to a decision themselves, the manager of Interskate 91 walked over and made it for them. “‘We’ve got to shut it down,’” Lammy Through (government name: Myra Lam) remembered him saying, and that was it.
It was similar for PVRD, which was thriving with five teams at the time — a women’s A team, a women’s B team, a men’s team, an all/no gender team, and a team of officials. They hosted five double headers a year running April through September. “And that’s not what it looks like anymore,” Pan said. “It was really depressing, it was really hard not to play our sport.”
Attendance plummeted — with no practice or bouts to attend, some skaters retired, some moved back home, and some simply didn’t return. For the skaters who stayed, weekly practices were replaced with online workouts, over Zoom or livestreamed on Facebook. Some players took to the bike trails to skate, and eventually informal outdoor practices took shape. WMRD found a new parking lot in West Springfield that they promptly took over, bringing family members and kids to skate and bike while socially distancing.
Gradually, the leagues began to rebuild. Rolling recruitment helped both squads fill in the gaps, but things looked different for everyone. PVRD now barely had enough people for one team, and more crucially had lost their practice space, a warehouse in Florence, during the initial shutdown.
“Finding a new practice space was one of the biggest barriers for us, and that’s true for a lot of other roller derby leagues around the country. A lot of people lost their space, and with the price of commercial real estate around here, rental space is just completely out of our league now,” Pan said. “So if (anyone) has access to gyms that might be able to rent to us, that is something that we’re actively looking for.”
Recruitment started in more earnest in 2023, and gradually both teams have built up a more solid base of 30 or more members (including volunteers, off-skate officials, etc.). The pandemic also gave them time to revisit some things: PVRD has moved away from a more traditional board structure of governance to a more horizontal governance structure with more of its membership involved, for example. In part, that’s for sustainability — having just a few people holding responsibility for a league wasn’t going to last long-term — and it also aligns with the league’s long-term mission.
“Being part of this intentional, very queer, very trans, horizontal governance structure where we’re all just sharing and taking responsibility for creating the community that we want and need in the world feels so directly like the medicine that we need in the world right now,” Bumblebeast (government name: LB Marger Moore), a skater for PVRD, said.
Nowadays, PVRD is more of a chill recreational league that is getting back to scrimmaging, while WMRD is a slightly more competitive team that regularly scrimmages with other squads. Both leagues are open to new players, regardless of their ability.
Some derby players seem like they were born on skates. As a child, Lammy went to a daycare with a literal roller rink inside of it, spending hours skating around with other kids and building up her skills. Others had never played any sport growing up and found derby almost by accident; still others found it after stepping away from organized sports for years or even decades. Derby isn’t a sport most people grow up playing, so lifelong athlete or not, most newbies enter the sport at a similar place: learning the game.
“It’s a joy to learn a sport where I can feel successful and learn alongside other people,” Galaslaya (government name: Amory Wright) a skater for WMRD, said. “It’s so hard to get an on-ramp into sports (as) someone who didn’t play organized sports when I was young. Having a space where I’m learning alongside other people who don’t consider themselves athletes, necessarily … was really helpful for me.”
Skaters from both WMRD and PVRD were adamant: there is a place for everyone in roller derby. No matter your age, gender, race, weight, or athleticism, there’s a place for you in derby.
And it doesn’t stop at being a player. Both leagues rely heavily on volunteers and both skating and non-skating officials (NSO) to make bouts happen.
“We’ve got straight cis men in our team, we’ve got straight cis women in our team. We’ve got lots of nonbinary and trans people in our team, lots of queer people. There aren’t that many places right now where you can have that kind of community, where you’ve got truly multi-gender, multi-generational … we’ve got everyone from 16-year-olds to 60-plus-year-olds on our team,” Pan said. “The other thing that I love the most about roller derby is that there’s no ideal body type in roller derby. You actually want to have people with a variety of different bodies on your team … Whatever body you have, it’s a roller derby body.”
There’s always room for improvement on the inclusivity front - roller derby is a notoriously white sport, and that remains true in the Valley. Loc’d and Loaded (government name: Shannon Laribo), one of a small handful of Black skaters for WMRD, has found additional teams with other Black skaters.
“What keeps me in roller derby is the community in general and the overall inclusivity, but even more specifically, the borderless/no borders teams that exist within roller derby and that were created as an aspect to ensure that there’s space for people of color and people with certain identities that have experienced acts of racism or microaggressions … within the derby community,” Locs said. “As a Black skater in a predominantly white sport, Black diaspora in particular is a huge inspiration for me, and kind of keeps me going, just the idea of even being in the space of other Black players, playing with other Black players … it’s just really powerful.”
Both leagues hold trans-inclusivity as a core tenant of their values. WMRD follows the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association’s policy on gender, which welcomes women, all trans and nonbinary skaters and any other skaters of a marginalized gender, while PVRD’s current team is an all/no gender team. Bumblebeast, a former high-level athlete and nonbinary person, came to derby after leaving their sport in part because of their gender.
“PVRD as an all/no gender, trans inclusive, trans-led [league], is the only reason that I’m getting to play sports at all right now,” Bumblebeast said. “I really miss my sport … and I don’t live in a world where I can go back.”
Skaters play derby for a wide variety of reasons, but for all of them, it’s a significant part of their lives. Taking that away from people because of one part of their identity seems ludicrous to Lammy.
“We need to conceptualize sports as a human right … I have a pretty privileged life, but I broke my ankle two years ago, and the the precipitous drop in my quality of life at that time … is just so indicative to me personally that anyone who wants access to sport should absolutely, always, unequivocally have access to sport,” Lammy said.
For Gala, a trans woman who grew up not playing organized sports, skating with PVRD has been a delight in large part because of its welcoming of trans skaters.
“It is very uncommon for me to not only be not the only transgender woman playing, but not the only transgender woman on my team. There are a lot of trans femme derby skaters, and that makes a big difference, because I’m not judged,” Gala said. “It feels like I’m less seen for my identity, and more seen for who I am.”
“The idea of being able to create a space where folks can have fun, be in community across those sorts of lines of difference is really powerful right now, particularly as an explicitly trans-affirming team in a political moment where trans athletes are at the center of a lot of the anti-trans movements’ push to really make it illegal to be trans in this country,” Pan said. “So being a trans-affirming sports team is a really big deal in this moment.”
Ultimately, the reasons why everyone initially decided to give roller derby a shot are as varied as the members of the teams themselves. But everyone decided to stay because they love the game, and their teammates, too much to walk away.
“If you fall in love with the game and are able to — sounds cheesy — fall in love with yourself, as a player of the game, I think those are the people who succeed the most in derby,” Gala said.
Every player may measure that success differently. For some, success is trying again, coming back to sports after taking years off and finding a new love for a different game. For others, it’s honing skills over years, or coaching from the sidelines, or pushing past their social anxiety to show up for themselves in a brave and difficult way, and surprising themselves at how much they enjoy their time there. Regardless of why they’re there, western Mass derby-goers have found success the moment they walk into the rink, and they’re hoping to grow even more.
Western Mass Roller Derby’s first home bout of the season will take place at Interskate 91 in Wilbraham on May 25, starting around 6:15 p.m. with doors opening at 5:30 p.m., and their next recruitment night will take place in June. For more information, visit westernmarollerderby.com.
Pioneer Valley Roller Derby will host a Pride Party and Scrimmage as part of Holyoke Pride’s festivities on June 28 at the Fitzpatrick Arena; they’ll host a public skate from 1 to 3 p.m. and an open scrimmage at 3:30 p.m. For more information, visit pioneervalleyrollerderby.com.
Daily Hampshire Gazette
