A pool of yellow light shines on a group of women huddled in the corner of the outdoor basketball court. Their raw fingers plaster duct tape onto mangled roller skates and elbow pads. It’s an evening cold enough to see breath, as the women tie up the last frayed laces on their skates.
These are the members of the Duke City Derby league, a community of women who love roller derby so much they not only fund the league out of their own pockets, but also set up their own court for bouts and practice outdoors in January.
The game objective is simple: assist one of your team members, the jammer, in maneuvering around the oval track as many times as possible. Players accomplish this by shoulder-shoving, jamming their rear ends into other players, and barreling into other players at full speed – almost everything goes except for fist-fighting. UNM student Kaitlin “Led Zyppin” Leddy, a jammer for the Ho-Bots (one of three Albuquerque teams), said the sport is action-packed and physical.
“Hockey and pinball are the two sports that make up this one, and the jammer is the pinball,” Leddy said. “It’s pure speed and you’re hitting people so hard. Girls are yelling and you’re wearing silly outfits. It’s fast-paced and angry.”
Leddy, a double major in chemistry and biology, said other sports don’t give players the opportunity to truly let out their aggression the way roller derby does.
“You can be ferocious in this sport, and you won’t stand out at all,” she said. “Nobody’s going to turn their head if you scream or nail someone in the face.”
Even at a routine practice, the women grunt as they propel themselves forward, backward and sideways, their multicolored skating wheels gliding over free-throw and three-point lines at the Heights Community Center just south of campus. The leader, UNM student Shantel Riley, shouts “drunken sailor”, and the players perform a wobbly footwork pattern, moving in and out of the sparse patches of light.
Ho-Bot blocker Sierra “Jean Splice” Netz said the Duke City Derby league of about 50 players is both diverse and closely connected.
“I would say that our whole league is about 30 percent lesbians, but we have people from all walks of life – mothers, teachers, scientists, artists,” she said. “We have a variety of body types, too. A lot of our players are these big girls that play blockers, and they’ll just knock you on your ass.”
Leddy said the most difficult part of the sport is learning to roller skate, and the rest is fairly intuitive. But she said at first it can be challenging for players to adjust to all of the physical contact involved.
“When you block someone, you back your booty up into them really sexually … you’re rubbing your junk on somebody else,” she said. “It’s hard to understand that sometimes: that a girl is going to be rubbing her sweaty crotch all over you.”
Practice is relaxed and friendly, as players routinely skate out of the action to tighten the trucks on their skates with a multi-sized “elephant” wrench, or re-apply some duct tape.
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Leddy said while roller derby is a ferocious sport, women from all teams in Albuquerque generally maintain friendly relationships off the court.
“Sometimes you’ll just wipe someone out, and then you get up, and you’re like ‘Oh sh**, we carpool. I’m sorry,’” she said. “‘We’re really close friends and I just broke your leg.’ But it’s more of an afterthought.”
Riley said league members pay for their own equipment, membership dues and travel expenses if they join a travel team. They practice outdoors year-round because they can’t afford an indoor practice space, she said, and they receive minor funding from their bouts held in the Convention Center.
Riley said players have to prepare the Convention Center court for bouts by marking the lines with tape, as well as mopping the floor with a sugar-and-water mixture to give it more grip. Crowds have reached up to 1100 people, from kids to senior citizens, and Riley said players typically wear fishnets and booty shorts to bouts.
Leddy said she once saw one player pull down another player’s pants on accident. The pants-less player mooned the crowd for at least a quarter of a turn as she tried to complete the block with her pants down. No matter what, Leddy said it’s always entertaining.
“I’ve seen old people in sweater vests come before, and I’m like, ‘Who told you about this?’” Leddy said. “I don’t know what they see when they come to a game, but I’m sure it’s a melting pot of Albuquerque’s extremes.”
