Hits, hurts and harmony

Women join roller derby for many excellent reasons.

By Bill DeYoung

Fast, furious and gloriously loud, roller derby is a spectator sport that rewards careful attention: Blink and you might miss the Jammer whizzing by the Blockers and making the Star Pass to the Pivot. Points get scored, bouts get won, legends get made. Of course, some fans don't care about the rules; they just like to watch women on roller skates whizz around and knock the hell out of each other. That's OK, too. Roller derby means different things to different people. Tricia Wells, the founder of St. Petersburg's four-year-old Deadly Rival league, is a paralegal by day. By night, she's Murder Ride — trainer, skater and den mother to the nearly 60 women who make up her league (they compete in teams of 10). Deadly Rival includes bartenders, hairstylists, professional women and more. There was a doctor on the team a few years ago. It's exercise and it's an adrenaline rush. For some, it's a confifidence builder. Different things to different players. "A lot of us have had hard lives," Murder says. "But not everyone ... Some skaters have money, some don't." At "The Slayground," where they practice and compete on a 101-foot banked oval track, the players are known only by their skater names. They must check their identities — and their emotional baggage — at the door. There's Time Bomb Bettie, Puck Her Up, Nitrox, Bambi's Revenge. Doomsday Adams and Mpyre Wrecker and Slaughter Melon. And, of course, Princess Slay-a. "Some people come because they're just fucked up to begin with," Murder says with a boisterous laugh. "Some people come because they need an outlet. Some come because they've just moved here and they don't have friends, and don't make them easily." Tall or short, thin or chunky, white, black or Latina, when they're together they're all the same. And they look out for each other. For about 10 years, single mother Kat Yanesh (MyzFit) was "in kind of a dark place. I just felt broken, like 'Is this my life? I'm never going to be whole again.' Then my father, in Louisiana, got really sick — that was the straw that broke the camel's back." A friend suggested she try out for Deadly Rival.

"I discovered it was a place to feel whole and broken at the same time. We all kind of have a story. The years of emotionally traumatic things, and the loss, those'll never go away. Derby gave me something to do besides sit and sulk. And when I put the skates on, I was a 7-year-old girl again." She's made at least 59 new friends since she signed up in early 2016. "They're all weird and quirky like me. I just love it, you know?" MyzFit says. "You feel strong. We're getting whacked and beat up on the track, but it never felt so good. Because it was my choice to get up here and get beat up." Women's roller derby has been around since the 1930s. At one point it was an over-the-top, ultra-violent carnival act. And by the turn of the century, it was all but a memory, supplanted by professional wrestling as the country's preferred "sports entertainment." Over the past

20 years, derby — signifificantly less theatrical and more competition-minded — has enjoyed a major revival. Today, there are more than 1,200 amateur leagues around the world. Deadly Rival engages in monthly bouts (known as "jams") with teams from other states. On Aug. 5, they'll split into two teams and play an intra-league game. St. Pete is a preferred destination, and here's why: Nearly all roller derby jams — women's, men's and intra-sex — are played on flflat oval tracks. Thanks to Murder Ride, Deadly Rival has one of only nine banked (raised and sloped) tracks in the United States. "The sound of the athletes rolling on the track alone creates excitement," Murder enthuses. "It's also a much more diffificult game to play, because we have to learn to skate on an elevated incline and stay controlled to hit one another without tripping — tripping is considered a penalty. We also have to learn to slow down at higher speeds more quickly." Murder Ride has created a family, a tribe, a sisterhood. And, in some sense, an Island of Misfifit Toys. "You always hear 'roller derby's empowering to women, blah blah blah' — I think that's 

bullshit, honestly," she says. "It actually breaks you down. You're falling in front of people you don't know. You need to be pretty humble — you're training for something that's really hard — and you need to suck it up. You have to learn how to fifind confifidence where you've never had it, and it helps you develop in every aspect of your life." For 18-year-old rookie Taylor Kimberly, who joined the team last September, Deadly Rival has been a godsend. "I moved from Michigan down to St. Pete, and I didn't know anybody," she explains. "So I looked online to see if there were any groups that I could join ... And I found my girls!" Kimberly had never been on roller skates. Murder and the others taught her; now she's one of the team's most promising newcomers. As was the custom, she chose her own skater name, Wolfenit. Everybody calls her Wolfifie. "This is all about energy, not aggression," Wolfifie says. "We don't want to hurt each other, because we're a family, and we all love each other. But it's all in good fun. We're a family that hits each other." This article edited for length. Read the full version at cltampa.com/arts.