Rulers of the Rink!
Dominion Derby Girls captain Thunderlips (above, center) fires up her women during the team’s season opener Sunday evening. The event raised roughly $250 for the American Heart Association. Photos by Jason Norman
With their co-captain The Ruffian (right) leading the way, from left, Becka Tha Wrecka, Photon Pixie, and Duchess America prepare to head into battle.
They may be professional career ladies. They may be students. A few are quite adept in the work of engineering - the domestic sort, that would be (i.e., moms and housewives).
But when they step through the doors of the Haygood Recreation Center, a few things get left behind.
For one, their names - for a few hours a week, they've got new ones. Their jobs - there's just one objective here, and it's got nothing to do with paychecks or health benefits; actually, it's more like a potential health detriment.
Still, they have plenty more than enough to go around. Things like teamwork, camaraderie... and the chance to knock someone around, and not even get in trouble for it.
They are the Dominion Derby Girls - and you don't want to run into one in the middle of a rink.
It's opening night for Hampton Roads' main women on wheels, and it's just about time to straps on the kneepads, adjust the helmets, and dish out a little derby discipline. There's a familiar foe tonight, as Poe's Punishers have made a trek down from Richmond; the Dominion squad has faced them several times over the past few years.
Like every athletic squad, the Dominion team has its own warmup technique. It's just quite a bit different from those with the luxury of wearing cleats and playing on dirt.
It's tough for them to run in place - can't lift the skate too far off the ground without risking injury within or without. But they do it anyway, and no one falls.
Spinning around a small circle surrounded by about 10 other women, half of whom will be trying to knock them into the middle of next month, it's important to know how to fall without hurting too much. Passing out the weight among the knees and backside helps to minimize the pain, and get skaters right back on four wheels.
Finally, it's over, and the visitors get their turn to work out.
"I want you stretching!" The Ruffian bellows at her teammates. "I do not want you looking at them!" She's a captain - they listen.
"It's an awesome sport," says the co-captain, one of the longest-tenured members. "There aren't a lot of extreme contact female sports out there. It really attracts a wide range of people, in our skaters and out audience." She's right about that; the standing room-only crowd is jammed with visitors from every thinkable walk of society.
A few members of the squad have their own special reasons for seeing the season finally start. T-Rex, one of the team's main "jammers" (vocab lesson coming!), is one of a few Derby gals who took time off last season to have a child.
"I had a snake named Rex," the excitable lass explains of her name, "and someone said something about T-Rex, and told me I should make that my derby name. A couple of months later, I did." Commemorated it with a huge tattoo of her reptilian namesake on her upper arm, she even did.
By the way, a jammer is the skater that starts behind the crowd, and tries to skate through the blockers that are trying to keep her back. For each one she manages to slip past, her team gets a point.
Some balance their time between positions - the all-too-aptly named Pippy Longstalker, for example, takes one of the most innocent figures of child literacy and makes her sound... sort of demonic.
"I'm fast, and I have long legs," says Pippy, whose "other" name is Lisa or Lana, something along those lines, "so I will hunt any girl down that gets past me and stalk her until she's scared to pass. I wanted a sport that could pull together my athletic history, and roller derby was it." After playing softball in college, she embarked on a new career in veterinary nursing.
"(As a nurse) you always inevitably have a nasty dog or nasty cat that wants to eat you, and you have to be nice to them," she explains. "But you don't have to be nice to derby girls."
Even the officials get in on the moniker merriment: Dr. Psycho, Roger That, and The Deuce are here to watch over the action. Leading the way is the lady in charge - Terra Incognita, who almost become a participant.
"I never competed," Terra says. "I started off as 'fresh meat,' but I was in law enforcement, and I had to take a step back. It was a huge time commitment." The charming title "fresh meat" refers to women at the start of their derby careers.
Now a deputy sheriff, Incognita's not sure whether it's tougher to enforce the laws or the derby rules.
"I think I have an easier time working in law enforcement!" she laughs.
It's just about game time, and the stretching's almost over. Some even appear to be praying (is there a Higher Being of the Roller Derby? Wouldn't find that one in a Bible or Quran). Terra, doing double duty, belts out the national anthem, and it's time to skate - and block, and jam, and maybe even score.
Pippy lines up with a Punisher behind her teammates on the circle. The first whistle blows, and the group in front of her gets rolling.
Then another sound sounds, and she's off.
The blockers don't have a chance; right away, she grabs the arm of a teammate, who whips her around the circle. The contest is less than a minute old, and Dominion's already up 4-1.
About to make her second go-round (and hopefully go-through), Pippy laps behind the pack. In front of her, teammate Rub-Her Ducky (yes, that's the correct spelling here) spins out and crashes two opponents out of bounds -- apparently, roller derby's the only sport with faster scoring than basketball. Slapping her hips in exultation, Pippy pumps her fists as the crowd ovates like crazy.
Two opponents head to the penalty box (actually, it's just a bench on the sidelines), and Ruffian takes Pippy's place, upping the lead to 22-9. But suddenly, Punisher captain Paris Kills stars weaving her way through the Derby defense, and gets her team to within 23-17.
There's a break in the action (one of few of the night - things simply do not slow down during this sport), and T-Rex heads to the jammer line.
"Bring it on," she mentally telepaths to the defense, "because I'm getting through!" Then her thoughts come true - making her way around, through, and even over the defense, she finishes her run by grabbing a teammate's shorts and launching herself forward. The teammate falls, but T-Rex doesn't stop, not until Dominion's got a 34-20 advantage.
T-Rex and Pippy take turns tormenting the Punisher defense until the half ends with them ahead, 83-32.
"It's exhilarating!" Pippy says of jamming. "I take their momentum and use it to get past them. Then you hear the crowd cheering, and it just gives you that much more enthusiasm."
No lead's every truly safe in roller derby (jammers can score as much as 30 points per round, as the announcer declares several times during the night), so T-Rex is right back to work in the second half. She makes it through the group on the first round OK, but on the second, a taller opponent nearly knocks her out of the circle. Absorbing the blow, she keeps skating, and makes it through again, as teammate Thunderlips (obviously quite the Rocky III fan!) whips her past the blockers.
Ruffian's fellow co-captain, Thunderlips does her own jamming seconds later, passing through the group without taking so much as a hard breath from anyone.
Named both because of her community college studies of astronomy and physics and her love of the fantastic fiction, Photon Pixie's patrolling the center like the bull from the Looney Tunes cartoons. Her wide hips becoming crazed battering rams, she takes out one Punisher after another, either those with the audacity to try to stop her jammers, or those that dare to protect their own.
Eventually, she heads to the penalty bench, but the message has been sent: "When there's scoring around here, we'll do it."
The intensity here is absolutely off the charts; time and again, accidental or otherwise, the girls keep crashing into each other, and skidding across the floor. But right away, everyone's back up and going at high speed. Reminiscent of the fact that no one ever gets hurt in bench-clearing baseball fights, these girls might have trouble sitting at the breakfast table tomorrow, but no one's feeling anything right now.
Because of them, however, someone they may never meet might feel a great deal better soon; the event raised about $250 for the American Heart Association.
As the event winds down, a new jammer tries to score for Dominion, and isn't having much success. A Punisher roars toward her, nearly firing her out of bounds. The girl hangs on for dear life, but she's losing the momentum battle.
Then Becka Tha Wrecka lives up to her nickname, arriving to whack the opponent away, leaving the jammer to score.
"When you knock someone out of the way so your jammer can get by, that's what I love," Becka says. "I'm not a really aggressive person, but I do this for my team." T-Rex finishes out the jamming, and the Derby girls have started out their season perfectly, taking a 181-63 victory.
Suddenly, everything appears forgotten. The hip-checks, pushing, shoving, elbows... everything's in the past. The teams high-five several times, cheer each other and the audience, and show the respect that comes from the fiercest of competition.
Just as with any other group working toward a common but unusual and even painful goal (boxers, pro wrestlers, ultimate fighters), these women have their own special reverence.
They just don't have to show it during the game.
