A truly nice bunch of toughies

November 2011

“Black eyes are kind of club badge”: Circle pic starting with me Shan ‘Frost Damage’ Frost, Emma ‘Slay Her Ella’ Hamilton, Tanya ‘Zomboobies’ Martin, Carolyn ‘Clinically Wasted’ Mackenzie and Emma ‘Fly Strike’ Willats. photo: kate sutherland

by Shan Frost

What do you get if you cross rugby with a roller disco? The answer is Roller Derby, a relatively new all-female sport taking the UK by storm.

Of course the Game of Queens is a lot more complicated than that. Add seven referees and 10 score/penalty trackers per game, a rule book you wouldn’t want to drop on your foot and enough tactics to learn to make your ears bleed, and you have something nearer the truth.

Every roller derby match, called a ‘bout’, lasts for one hour, not including a half time. Two teams of five members play each other in the same direction on an oval track. Game play consists of a series of two-minute games (called ‘jams’) in which both teams designate a scoring player (the ‘jammer’) who scores points by lapping members of the opposing team. The teams help their own jammer, while hindering the opposing jammer by blocking their way or hitting them off the track, which is where it starts to get very interesting indeed.

As with any close contact sport, speed and heft are needed in equal measures, and Aberdeen’s own team – called the Northern Fights of the Granite City Roller Girls – are no exception. We have girls that far outweigh a sensible size for wearing short shorts, and girls so small they can be knocked over with a breath of wind. Their ages span from 19 to 42 years, and the team even includes a grandmother.

All the girls choose an alter ego name for use on the track and many paint their faces before a bout, which makes the sport fun and different. But this in no way belittles our rigorous training and our will to win.

Bouts are pretty hard going on the mind and body, so the team meets three times a week to go over tactics, practice hits and improve our endurance. Training premises are not easy to find, but the team has managed to put in nine hours per week over the past summer.

Head of training, Carolyn ‘Clinically Wasted’ Mackenzie, says, “As I never did any training before Roller Derby, it was a gruelling feat to get to the level of fitness I have today, and I could be so much fitter still”.

There is definitely an emphasis on endurance in the team training schedules; fitness gives us an advantage when playing a team that is getting tired in the second half of the game. But occasionally even getting to training is the hard part.

“Sometimes it’s hard to be motivated if I’ve had a hard day at work or the weather is bad,” says Emma ‘Slay Her Ella’ Hamilton, “but I’ve learnt that these are the days I really need to go training, and I always end up feeling better.”

Susan ‘Power Flower’ Chapman agrees, ‘I find roller derby a great way to forget about the working day stresses and strains, letting off steam in a great fun way with a bunch of great people.’

Injuries regularly take their toll on the team. “I’ve broken the same rib twice,” says Emma ‘Fly Strike’ Willats. ‘Once during a bout, and then a few months later at training.”

An injury can affect you not only physically, but also mentally, as the fear of it happening again will remain for some time, as Susan recently found out. She was very nervous returning to the team after tearing the ligaments in her left ankle. This put her on crutches for four weeks and off her skates for eight, which is not easy when you are a senior staff nurse in an orthopaedic rehabilitation unit. But apparently it made her much more sympathetic towards her patients!

Many of the girls have very responsible jobs and so the result is that a large network of talented individuals is now acquainted on a very personal level. The team includes a veterinary auxiliary, a nursery assistant/baker, an artist, an engineer, civil servants, a nuclear medicine technologist, Susan the nurse, and we often joke that if we don’t have an expert in a subject, then no-one does. In what other way would all these different parts of life come together on a Saturday afternoon to hit and thump their sweaty way to another hopeful win?

If you include other halves in the head count of those involved with the Granite City Roller Girls, you attain an enormous selection of potential friends when you join up. My own poor husband is made to tag along to many a bout, fundraiser or just a jolly to raise awareness of the team. Most of the girls say that they are sturdily supported by the love in their lives, despite not getting to see them very often because of the commitment to derby.

“It was actually my boyfriend that pushed me to get a hobby,” Carolyn says. “Little did he know how soon it would eat up all my spare time. He is very supportive of me and often passes on advice after games. All of this being said, he hates the smell of my training kit and sadly doesn’t find bruises and bum scrapes very attractive.”

Claire ‘Ruby Riot’ Simpson also gets the support she needs to be a roller girl. ‘My boyfriend is supportive, he’ll be there yelling for me at every home game, he has my dinner ready for me when I get home from training, he got me new skates for my birthday and helps me through my injuries.’

A couple of boyfriends have actually joined GCRG and become referees so at least they get to spend some quality time with their partners. This can sometimes cause friction on bout days when referees have to do their job and the girls have to do theirs. As soon as the game is over everybody is friends again, even the opposing team, but I think going to the pub definitely helps with that.

Bout day audiences are not only filled with derby girls and their families; friends also abound and pitch in wherever they can. Money needs to be found to enable the bout to go ahead in the first place and the tickets sold do not always cover the eventual outlay. Audiences are getting larger every time through handing out fliers and word of mouth and whole families seem to enjoy the spectacle of a sport mixed in with theatricality.

As Susan says, ‘the little shorts and the fishnets are a men pleaser too! I’ve had a few friends take their children under 10 years of age along to bouts who have loved it. They like to see the skaters falling and it’s even funnier for them if the skater is wearing a skirt when she falls and flashes her knickers. The kids also love the theatrical element to bout days, such as the face painting.’

Wardrobe malfunctions on track seem to be quite common and cause much hilarity. ‘I managed to pull Candy Moho’s shorts clean down at the back during a home game earlier this year’ says Carolyn. A spectacle not normally on the agenda of many a spectator sport…

And our cake stall at the bout is also very popular, with all the cakes made by the roller girls themselves. Any money raised we give to a worthy local charity, so it makes everybody happy. Cakes and roller girls seem to go hand in hand for some reason.

The Northern Fights have already had many successes, notably organising an all Scottish roller derby tournament in the spring of 2010 when we were still a relatively young team. During the tournament we beat the Canon Belles, the Edinburgh second team, which was a major feat, as they were already a much older and better team. We play many teams from all over the UK and travel many miles in order to try our luck against worthy adversaries.

One of GCRG’s biggest claims to success is having two of our players, Carolyn ‘Clinically Wasted’ Mackenzie and Jill ‘Fight Cub’ Stephen accepted for Team Scotland, the team representing Scotland in the first ever Roller Derby World Cup being held this December in Toronto, Canada. And our very own ‘Riot’ sisters, Jill ‘Rock’n Riot’ Simpson and Claire ‘Ruby Riot’ Simpson have been accepted as Team Scotland reserves. To say we are excited and immensely proud of them is something of an understatement.

Plans for the future include many many more bouts covering more of the UK and maybe even Europe. We need to keep expanding the team and every three months take in new girls to try and make it in the world of roller derby. It is amazing to watch ‘newbies’ go from looking like Bambi on ice to someone who can hit you off your skates in just a few months. Which is lucky, as one of our goals next year is to have developed a reserves team, which will not be long now as our new girls are improving so fast.

Jill says, “As for the future, I just want to be the best I can be, always give it my all and see where it takes me”.

I think she pretty much speaks for us all.

If you are over 18, have a bit of gumption, a splash of spirit, a dose of commitment and a sense of humour, come and join us.

Shan ‘Frost Damage’ Frost was born in Berkshire, and after art college went into Interior Design and slowly moved up the country. Made props, costumes and games for a children’s tv programme, Raven, for 9 years. Now lives overlooking the river Deveron near Banff. “I love it here and I’m not moving again!”.

This is an article from the November 2011 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, subscribe to Leopard Magazine.