Roller derby dreams come true
One of the fastest growing women’s sports, roller derby has its own World Cup. Two players from the Swamp City Roller Rats have made the New Zealand world cup team and Richard Mays went along to meet them.
Roller derby is no game for the fainthearted. It’s hard, fast, physical and strategic. A linked phalanx of helmeted, padded-up players moving at speed and in formation on the counter-clockwise oval track in Palmerston North’s Central Energy Trust Arena 3 is a formidable sight.
And that’s before the argybargy starts.
Player-coaches for Palmerston North’s Swamp City Roller Rats, Justine Saunders and Jody Hare, are old hands at this form of gladiatorial combat.
Both women have been selected for the Aotearoa Roller Derby (Team New Zealand) 20-player squad for the third roller derby World Cup tournament in Manchester, England, at the beginning of February 2018.
One hundred players from around the country, and from Kiwis playing in Melbourne’s Victoria Roller Derby League and in the Manchester league, put their hands up for selection. The numbers were cut to 50, then to 32, and, finally, to 20.
Saunders, who plays under the nom-de-guerre Just Ass, explained what happens during an hour-long flat-track bout.
‘‘It’s a fast-paced game and a lot happens all at once.’’
On a track roughly the dimensions of a basketball court, two rolling teams with four blockers and a scoring jammer each try and out-muscle and outmanouvre one another so the jammers can get past as many players as possible during a twominute ‘‘jam’’.
Jammers charge, wrestle, wiggle, jink, jump and jive to get through the press of players so they can pass and score.
Blockers tackle and disrupt opposing players by using their butts, hips, shoulders, wholebody shunts or by linking up in multiple-player blocks to form a rolling wall.
Any use of a player’s arms to elbow, punch, grab, hold or shove, among other misdemeanours, earns 30 seconds in the penalty box.
To keep track of the free-flowing action, the bout is patrolled by seven skating referees, with a dozen off-track match officials keeping tabs on other aspects of the game.
In 2014, Saunders cocaptained the Kiwi team to the World Cup quarter finals in Dallas, Texas where they were bounced out by Australia. This time, she’s the national team’s assistant coach.
‘‘I think we’re ranked about fifth in the world, though there is some debate about that,’’ Saunders said.
Thirty countries contested the cup in 2014. Next year, there will be 40.
The former personal trainer, netball and division-one soccer player, with a teaching diploma and sports science degree, joined the second Swamp City 12-week ‘‘freshmeat’’ intake in 2010 so she could learn to skate. Freshmeat is roller derby lingo for newbies and Saunders made rapid progress.
‘‘I learned the strategies really quickly and by 2011, I was head coach.’’
That year, she also made the wider New Zealand training squad for the first World Cup in Canada.
‘‘I like derby because it’s physically challenging and requires a lot of agility on roller skates, while taking hits from all directions.’’
It’s something Saunders said older women can excel at. The oldest member of Team Aotearoa is 45. ‘‘It’s a strength and
power sport and the longer you play the sharper you get.’’ In 2016, Saunders was instrumental in organising a nationwide top 10 competition. Last Saturday, a good-sized crowd turned out to watch the first top 10 home game of this season, with the Rats up against highly rated Dead End Derby from Christchurch. Among the Christchurch alter egos were Cinderwreckher, Serious Crash Unit, and Iona Shotgun. Even the refs sport aliases – Quad Father, Atomic Hamster, Rainbow Renegade and Mystr Fox. For the uninitiated, the scoring process can be perplexing. While the Christchurch team racked up the points, the home side couldn’t seem to get on the board, and went down 228 – 24. ‘‘It takes a bit of practice to watch roller derby,’’ Saunders said. Her move into a national coaching role has provided team mate Hare with the opportunity to take on more with the Rats. In her fifth season since graduating from freshmeat, Hare – aka Madd Honour – is now a head coach of the team. Hare initially joined Swamp City because she had just arrived in town, wanted to try something ‘‘a little bit out there’’ and get to know people. ‘‘I graduated freshmeat in 2012 and have been addicted ever since. They’re my second family.’’
Hare has a sporting background, having been involved in netball, rugby, touch, hockey, roller hockey and swimming.
‘‘Roller derby is crazy. I love it. It’s the most strategic game I’ve ever played. I’m very passionate about it. It’s like a drug.’’
This year was her first try out for Team Aotearoa.
‘‘I thought it was time to take it to the next level.’’
Not only did she make the playing squad, but is one of the callers for the specially written team haka.
‘‘To make the team is a great honour and to lead the haka is another.’’
Hare has a supportive family, but said 9-year-old son Ty Rece is her No 1 fan.
‘‘He even watches roller derby on You Tube. And that’s another reason I train, to show my kids that if you want something you have to work for it.’’
When Saunders went to the 2014 World Cup, she was accompanied by fellow Rats Renee Brown, a Team Aotearoa member, and Danelle Mercer, who went along as a non-playing spectator.
Mercer had been unable to try out for the national team after knee surgery following a skiing mishap.
This year she made the wider Aotearoa training squad of 32, and will still be going to the World Cup, though once again as a spectator.
‘‘Getting to the trials was really exciting. It was cool to get in with [Saunders and Hare] – we’re all pretty close,’’ Mercer said.
One of Swamp City’s ‘‘freshmeat’’ coaches, Mercer joined the team at the same time as Saunders.
‘‘I’ve been on the coaching committee and freshmeat with Jody,’’ she said.
As a young teen, Mercer had been an artistic skater, but took up roller derby after seeing the 2009 Drew Barrymore movie Whip It, about a young woman who finds her mojo with a roller derby team.
‘‘I thought it was more my thing than artistic.’’
When Mercer joined Swamp City in 2010, she was a 16-year-old and too young to play in the league, hence her playing name Underage Rage. She turned 18 in time to take part in the team’s first bout in 2011.
Now at 24, Mercer is one of the ‘‘old ladies’’ of the team.
‘‘It’s an amazing sport for fitness – you get to meet so many people and to travel.’’
A member of the wider Team Aotearoa training squad providing in-house opposition, Mercer is also ready for action if anyone gets injured or has to pull out.
‘‘I’m a jammer and a blocker and for the trials I had to choose one position. I chose jamming, but
over the past six months I’ve got more into blocking.’’
Two jammers from Dead End Derby got the nod for the national team, and even the untrained eye can see the Christchurch players are a class act, feinting, skipping and barging their way through or around the Swamp City blocks, and keeping their score ticking over like a taxi meter.
Mercer, a digital marketer at Toyota New Zealand, had also officiated some bouts.
‘‘I’ve reffed a couple of games and it’s pretty tricky. They [the referees] still miss a lot even though they try their best.’’
The sport is in the process of evolving out of its ‘‘alt’’ or ‘‘grunge’’ stage to mainstream, ditching the fishnets, hot pants and war paint for active sports gear. Players surnames now appeared on playing outfits as an alternative to the traditional punbased gallows humour battlehandles.
In April this year, Team Aotearoa also called in Massey University’s Dr Farah Palmer, triple Women’s World Cupwinning Black Ferns rugby captain, to talk to the players during their selection process that took place in Palmerston North.
Saunders said Palmer, along with Palmerston North-based Rio Olympics sports psychologist Dr Gary Hermansson, offered valuable insights into developing a team culture, which included rebranding Team New Zealand (‘‘After all, we already have one of those’’) to Team Aotearoa, and building mental fitness.
Swamp City’s next top 10 encounter is against Rotorua’s Sulphur City Steam Rollers on Saturday, August 26, at Arena 3.
‘‘Roller derby is crazy. I love it. It’s the most strategic game I’ve ever played.’’ Jody Hare, aka Madd Honour