The Derby City Roller Girls kick off their second season next Saturday February 2, 2008 at their new venue the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center’s West Hall. To get the scoop on roller derby in general and the new season we went straight to the source and Derby City Roller Girl Fae Goodman gave us all the dirt.

What’s your Roller Derby name?
My name’s  MaMalicious (#67).  All roller derby skaters have a derby
name, which is often a pun, a take off on some pop culture icon, or a
local or literary reference.  The hard part is, there’s a centralized
registry for derby names, and each one needs to be original.  With
thousands of skaters, that can be pretty hard.  We’ve actually got two
Mama’s in our league (and many many mothers, probably about 1/3 of the
league).  I’m the mean one!  I’m always amazed by the cleverness of
derby names.  For us, some local favorites are Maul St. Matthews and
Dixie Dieway.


Briefly, describe Roller Derby for someone who has never seen or experienced it
Well, some people describe it as rugby at high speed on roller skates. 
It’s a full contact sport, and we wear only minimal  padding on knees,
wrists, and elbows, plus a helmet and mouthguard.  There are two basic
positions, jammer and blocker.  Four blockers from each team form the
pack.  When the first whistle blows, the pack takes off, followed
shortly by one jammer from each team.  The jammers try to fight their
way through the pack.  After their first pass, each skater passed
legally on the opposing team is a point.  Their own team’s blockers are
trying to assist them through the pack, while the opposing team is
trying to stop them, often by knocking them down and out of the track. 
It can be a little difficult to understand just from a description. The
Gem City Rollergirls have a great animation on youtube that helps, I think. 

The short form description is women skating fast in short skirts and knocking one another down.  With beer.

What attracted you to Roller Derby?
I love the camaraderie of roller derby.  A skater from the New Orleans
league, the Big Easy Rollergirls, described it as “the rock and roll
athletic charitable sorority,” and I think that’s pretty accurate. 
It’s great getting to work as a team with so many amazingly strong and
talented women.  League members do every bit of what it takes to put on
our events, from promotion and getting sponsors to laying out the
track, and it’s a ton of work, but totally worth it.  It takes every
one of us, including our amazing support staff, to put on a bout. 
Also, women don’t get a lot of opportunity in our culture to really be
aggressive and competitive in contact sports.I actually thought the
skating would be easy for me, and the contact part of the game hard,
but that’s turned out to NOT be the case. I love knocking girls down.

Before you joined the Derby City Roller Girls how long had it
been since you’d gone roller skating? If it had been a while was it
like riding a bike, it came back to you pretty quickly?
Well, I just turned 40 (I’m one of the older skaters in the league),
and I don’t think I’d been on roller skates since I was 15 or so, so
that’s 25 years.  I was a competitive  figure skater (ice) when I was a
kid,  so I had skating skills to remember, but I was never that rink
rat teenager that spent every Saturday at the roller rink. I got
involved with the league at its inception, so I was at some of our first
open skates in Indiana, almost two years ago, and it was crazy hard at
first. You know, you look at those little four and five year old kids
at the rink, they’re totally fearless and they bounce!  It took me a
few months to really remember how to be comfortable on my wheels.  Now,
though, I think I could do almost anything on roller skates, except the
splits. Those days are past. 

What’s the most painful/interesting Roller Derby battle scar you’ve seen or have yourself?

Well, it’s a full-contact sport, you know?  I guess two injuries had
the most impact on me, and they were  both to other people.  A year and
a half ago, a bunch of us went to watch our first bout in Knoxville,
and a woman had a compound fracture in the second period.  I can still
remember how shocked and freaked out we all were.  She was screaming
and the paramedics were giving her morphine, then they cleaned the
blood off the track and the game went on.  The second one would have
been our game in October, against the Riverside Rollergirls (Newport,
KY), when my derby wife, Raquel Squelch, broke her leg in 2 places. 
She was such a trooper, and she’s already back on her skates. 

Personally, I’ve been banged up, but nothing that flashy.  I
did have a bad case of runner’s knee most of last season, that kept me
from being at peak performance, but knee injuries are pretty much part
of the sport.  Well, and I was on crutches for a few weeks last fall,
when I had an injured thigh.  And a LOT of bruises.

Derby wife? Is that just a term of affection or  does it mean
something?
Someone
should write a derby to english dictionary, I think!  Yes, it means
something.  Your derby wife is a special friend, often someone who
started skating the same time as you, who has your back and does
special things for you.  It’s kind of a buddy system…so if you break
your leg at the bout, or get really drunk at the afterparty, there’s
someone who’ll make sure you and your gear get home in one piece!  My
derby wife is Raquel Squelch, because we were co-captains of our team
and pals.  She’s a great woman and an amazing tattoo artist.

Describe the best bout you’ve participated in?
It’s always the one we just played.  The bouts are so exciting and fast
paced that they’re almost over before you know what’s happening.   I
always want to be able to go back and play again, the next day.  Well,
maybe in a few days, after I’ve healed up a little.

Right now, though, I’m super excited about our season opener,
Love Hurts.  It’ll be our first game at our new bigger venue (we’re
playing at the fairgrounds this season!), which we’re hoping will be a
lot more accessible for the fans.  We’re playing the Rollergirls of
Southern Indiana, and it should be a really exciting game.
Does the new venue mean there’s more room for spectators or maybe
better views? Is it easier to get to than the old venue?
Yes,
all of the above.  The Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center’s West Hall
has room for up to three thousand fans, with lots of bleachers for good
views or chairs for comfort.  Of course, as always, the most exciting
seats are the ‘suicide seats’ on the floor, next to the track.  Of
course, you do risk getting a skater in your lap.  It’s really easy to
get to, right of I65, with plenty of parking and thanks to popular
request, our new venue offers BEER!
 

How many Roller Derby teams/leagues are around the country? How many teams are in your league?
There’s more than 240, and new leagues form all the time.  In fact,
it’s hard to have an accurate count since the sport is growing so
fast.  Currently, our league has one team and we all compete to be on
the roster for each bout.  Last season, we had two local teams, and a
travel team that was drawn from both, but for this season, we’ve
decided to focus on the strongest possible joint effort while we build
the league and our fan base.  So this season, all of our games will be
against other leagues in our region.

Tickets can also be purchased at any Ticketmaster
outlet, by phone (502-361-3100 or 1-800-487-1212), or at the KEC Ticket
Office, located to the right of Freedom Hall. Advance tix are $10 plus
service fee, or they are $15 at the door the night of the event. Doors
open at 5:30pm and the bout starts at 7pm. Parking is $5.

Photographs courtesy of John Wurth, owner of Hatch Creative