New Hampshire’s teams lace up for roller derby season
Game time at JFK Coliseum means something different in the spring and summertime than in the winter months. Spectators still flock to the stadium seats, but they also set up lawn chairs down on the concrete of the melted ice rink.
Officials in referee jerseys with names like “Tugboat,” “Doomsday Llama” and “She-Rantula” press neon pink tape over ropes that make up the flat track. Dozens of women roller skate around in black and pink or white and blue team tank tops. Some have on yoga pants, some have on bright colored skirts, all wear heavy-duty helmets and pads.
Music blasts through loudspeakers as fans, friends and family hold up homemade signs and scream their favorite player’s name.
With the first whistle on April 29, the roller derby season has officially started for New Hampshire Roller Derby’s travel teams.
NHRD was the first flat track roller derby organization in the Granite State. Its first season was 15 years ago. The sport has gained popularity throughout the country and locally. New Hampshire has four leagues, with varying numbers of teams. NHRD has two travel teams, three home teams and one recreational team.
Jena McClary, derby name Pixie Bruiser, has been a part of NHRD since 2008. She skates for the All Stars, the highest-ranked travel team, and for the home team Nightmares on Elm Street.
“It’s taken over my whole life,” McClary said. In addition to running the team’s public relations, she met her husband through the sport, and now he coaches the All Stars, and their kids also have played and worked as officiants as well.
McClary said it’s the best way to exercise, in her opinion, and also a great way to relieve stress.
“For me, it’s an outlet,” McClary said. “It’s an outlet I enjoy and the main thing that keeps me going is the challenge of it.”
Between the first whistle and the last introduction by the emcee, the skaters on New Hampshire Roller Derby’s A and B travel teams take a brief second to set up for the first jam of the night.
McClary and three other skaters stand in formation. She and two other blockers make a triangle, with the pivot standing close by. A few feet away, the first jammer of the night, Terror Nova, crouches down behind her line, waiting for the whistle.
When it sounds, it’s a race between Nova and Maine Roller Derby’s jammer to see who will control the match. Despite pushing and bobbing and weaving, the MRD jammer breaks out of the pack first. While Nova lost lead jammer this time, the friendly bout was only just beginning.
Roller derby is a sport that takes time, and someone who plays explaining it, to understand. It can be complex and confusing, especially if you’re learning in the middle of a game, where the seven officiants are keeping track of points and penalties, coaches and teammates are shouting suggestions, fans are cheering and skates are squealing on concrete while bodies are slamming into each other.
That being said, once the rules are laid out, it becomes easy to get wrapped up in the energy.
“It’s a combination of rugby and NASCAR,” said Raven Makenzie “Smackenzie Phillips” Ladao. “Many people refer to it as like the non-sporty sport. If you don’t fit in in other sports, this is your sport.”
Ladao said the easiest way to learn the game is to watch it. She has played all three of the positions on a roller derby team: jammer, pivot and blocker. She’s favoring the blocker position the most these days.
Ladao is a long-time veteran of roller derby. She’s played in several different states, as well as in Japan, which she represented in the 2018 World Championship in Manchester, England. Now she coaches NHRD’s junior league, which her kids either play in or officiate for.
NHRD will have a sign that says, “Ask me about roller derby” with an arrow pointed down to the person holding it. Ladao was the sign-bearer at the bout against Maine.
“Many people ask, ‘Where’s the ball?’ There is no ball in the sport,” Ladao said. She pointed out the two players with helmet covers on. “The person with the star on is essentially the ball, because that’s the only person on the track who can score the points.”
She explained that they are called jammers, and they have to start behind all the other players. Once the jammers make it past everyone on the track, one will be named the lead jammer and she’ll have the power to end the match early.
Jammers have to make it through the blockers. The blockers have to stay within 10 feet of each other, and try to keep the other team’s jammer from passing. It sounds easy enough, until you learn that they can’t use their forearms to block or hold onto the opposite team, as well as a plethora of other body parts they can’t make contact with.
The only form of punishment is a penalty, basically a time-out where the player has to sit in the penalty box for 30 seconds. The box has three chairs, one for a jammer, two for everyone else. There are plenty of different penalties that derby players can commit. Even coaches can be subject to penalties, and the team’s captain would have to sit it for the coach if that was the case.
“So the most basic penalty is a track cut,” Ladao explained. “That’s where someone hits you out of the track and you have to come in behind them. They can run back … but if you’re not paying attention and you jump back on the track before them that’s going-out-of-bounds penalty. So like going out of bounds, you have to come back in behind the person who bumped you out.”
Penalties are usually sat for 30 seconds; 20 of them the player has to be seated, the last 10 they can stand up and get ready to rejoin the game. Ladao said she’s never seen it happen before, but an entire team could be penalized at the same time, between two standing members and three seated ones.
Penalties are designed to keep players safe. The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the governing body for women’s roller derby around the world, is constantly updating its rules to make sure that players are safe.
Having clear rules makes it possible for NHRD to have players of all ages, shapes and sizes, said Emily “Blitzy Borden” Chebook, who was the captain at the bout and skates for All Stars as well as the home team Granite Skate Troopers.
“I think there’s a place for almost anybody, whether it’s on the track or not,” Chebook said. “With skating, you can be tall and wide, you can be short and lanky. It doesn’t really matter.”
Chebook has a unique history with NHRD. She saw her first derby bout at NHRD when she was in elementary school and immediately fell in love. She had wanted to play but she said there were no youth leagues back then.
She did a training session with NHRD before realizing she couldn’t commit the time to the sport. When she and her husband moved to the Midwest, she found a community because of roller derby.
“Some of the people I’ve met through derby are the sweetest teddy bears,” Chebook said.
Rachel “Jagged Little Kill” Smith, a new member of NHRD, who plays for the B travel team, The Cherry Bombs, and Nightmare on Elm Street, said that a lot of people have misconceptions about the people who play roller derby.
“I think when you roll derby, you kind of have an idea of the kind of person that plays,” Smith said. “You have a stereotype of, ‘Oh, you play derby, you must have piercings and face tattoos or live an “alternative lifestyle.”’ And we do have those people, but we have moms and nurses and accountants and grandparents.”
Smith said that the derby of the 1970s is not the derby of today, that it’s not just a bunch of women trying to hurt each other. Smith actually joined NHRD only five months ago after completing the training camp that started in September. She said that everyone on the team has been like having a second family.
“It is a little nerve-wracking to walk into this big group of people who are very close-knit,” Smith said. “We see each other two or three times a week in practice. A lot of people hang out socially outside of those times, and everybody is going to welcome you with open arms. It has been a completely incredible, welcoming community.”
Despite the players’ off-track personalities, their on-track personas were fiercely fighting to get ahead against MRD. Early in the bout, NHRD’s hard work paid off and they scored ahead in the leaderboard, and kept the pressure on for the rest of the bout. By the time the game had ended, they had won by close to 150 points.
After the game, the teams congratulated each other with high fives and cheers, as each group took a victory lap. It was as if they hadn’t spent the last hour tripping, pushing, shoving and body-checking each other.
Both teams amassed, standing and waiting for an announcer to say who won the most valuable jammer and blocker for each of the teams while the officiants counted up the final scores. Both sides cheered when the players were called forward, not caring about the rivalry they had just shared.
“People in derby are way nicer than we appear when we play,” Smith said. “We like to put on a good show for the audience. You know, be a little bit showboaty. But when it comes down to it … we’re normal people who just like to get together and sweat and push around our friends a little bit and then give each other high fives before we go home.”
Roller derby organizations and upcoming games
Granite Skate Roller Derby
Everett Arena, 15 Loudon Road, Concord, granitestaterollerderby.org
When: June 10, July 15, times to be determined.
Monadnock Roller Derby
Lee Clement Arena, 38 Grove St., Henniker, monadnockrollerderby.com
When: Saturday, Aug. 12, time to be determined.
Price: Online pre-orders are $10
New Hampshire Roller Derby
JFK Coliseum, 303 Beech St., Manchester, nhrollerderby.com
When: Saturdays, May 20, June 24, and Aug. 5, all at 4:30 p.m.
Price: $12 adults, free for children 12 and younger, veterans and NHRD veterans
How to join: Email the league at join@nhrollerderby.com for adult players. Youth skaters can sign up for the current session at nhjuniorrollerderby.com.
How to play
Rules come from the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, wftda.com:
The game of Flat Track Roller Derby is played on a flat oval track. Games are divided into two 30-minute periods. Within each period there are play sessions called jams, which last up to two minutes. There are 30 seconds between jams.
During a jam, each team has up to five skaters on the track. Four of these skaters are called blockers (together, the blockers are called the pack) and one is called a jammer. The jammer wears a helmet cover with a star on it. One of the blockers wears a helmet cover with a stripe; they are called the pivot and can be an alternate for the jammer.
The two jammers start each jam behind the pack and score a point for every opposing blocker they lap, each lap. Before they can start scoring, they must get through the first pack and skate around the track before they can score points on opposing blockers.
Roller derby is a full-contact sport but skaters cannot use their heads, elbows, forearms, hands, knees, lower legs or feet to make contact with opponents. It is illegal to attack a player’s head, back, knee, lower leg or feet.
Play that is unsafe or illegal may result in a skater being penalized. Penalties are served by sitting in the penalty box for 30 seconds of jam time.
The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.
Derby lingo
All terms and definitions come from the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, wftda.com:
Apex jump – when a jammer jumps out of bounds but lands back in bounds to break away from the pack.
Bank track – the traditional roller derby track from the 1970s. The track is sloped inward. Only a few are used in the United States.
Blocker – one of the three positions in a derby game. Their job is to block the other team’s jammer and help their own jammer accelerate through the jam.
Bout – the name for a roller derby game.
Falling small – the ability to keep arms and legs contained when falling to avoid further injuries.
Flat track – the more common style of derby track. This one is made by taping rope down on a hard surface, indoors or outdoors.
Jam – a round of the bout. Can last up to 2 minutes, but can also be called off by the lead jammer.
Jammer – the player who scores points for the team; they wear a star helmet cover.
Lead Jammer – the jammer to break through first; they have the ability to call off the round by tapping their hips four times.
Pack – blockers and pivot must form one by being within 10 feet of each other.
Pass/earned pass – how points are tallied. A jammer can score up to four points each time they lap the other team.
Pivot – a blocker that can receive the star helmet cover and become the new jammer if needed. They wear a striped helmet cover.
Power jam – only one team’s jammer is on the track.
Star pass – where the jammer passes the star helmet cover to the pivot. If the jammer was the lead jammer at the time, they forfeit that position and the full two-minute round is played.
Track – an oval-shaped loop that derby is played on.
Safety gear
This is the gear that NHRD requires each of its players use.
• “Quad” style roller skates (inline skates are not allowed) — There are places that specialize in selling roller derby equipment, like Bruised Boutique (522 Amherst St., Nashua). Wear the skates that fit best, because improperly fitting skates can hold a player back and increase risk of injury.
• Dual certified helmet — Because while there isn’t a helmet that can prevent concussions, good helmets can help minimize injury.
• Mouth guard — The brand SISU is one that is easy to breathe through and allows the wearer to communicate with teammates.
• Hard protective shell/insert elbow pads — They should have a snug, comfortable fit, because elbow pads often last longer than other protective gear.
• Hard protective shell/insert knee pads— Get ones that are cushioned for function over fashion, because skaters land most of their falls on their knees.
• Hard protective shell/insert wrist guards — They should provide good palm and stable wrist protection, because hand and wrist injuries are fairly common due to players’ catching themselves.
Featured photo: Nicole “Punky” Mavrogeorge Wehry makes plans to evade Maine Roller Derby’s blockers as she skates into the fray. Photo by Todd Grzywacz.
