As the girls circled, the commentator’s mid-ranged drone echoed across the track, his words impossible to decipher from the near-hysterical screams of derby-girls melding with the referee’s periodic whistles. At times, the girls’ voices take on an almost religious, speaking-in-tongues-type fervor; the shrillness piercing fans’ ears with the fury and energy of the Almighty Himself.
Sometimes they pound their skates on the ground in a show of solidarity. Sometimes they fall to the ground. Other times a girl will skate off the track crying; one even sobbed for several minutes while laying on her back and covering her face as the emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, rushed to her side, the silenced crowd looking on in horror.
This is roller derby. Although players say it’s no more dangerous than other sports, it is by no means for the faint of heart.
This particular ‘bout,’ as they say in derby-speak, featured Lansing’s Cap City Wild Childs, a junior team with players ages ranging from 8 to 17, and the Mitten Mavens. Skaters on the Mitten Mavens range from age 21 to 47. The crowd is just as diverse, a mix of tattooed and smoking vixen biker chicks with the stray hipster or two and the feel of a family reunion.
One Mitten Maven team member broke a bone three years ago, but that’s the most recent serious injury, said team treasurer Mary McCord, an MSU alumna with a bachelor’s degree in history. Helmets, mouth guards and other pads usually keep the women safe.
Team president Ali Jahr, who graduated from MSU in May with a bachelors in social work, said the makeup of a derby team can be surprising — some of the women don’t seem like they’d be interested in aggressive sports, but she said that creates a “be-yourself sort of environment.”
“You’re not expected to be anyone else,” said Jahr, known by her teammates as Jahrmageddon.“You talk about things like having wives, or wearing a jammer pantie — those things (might) sound very foreign and very obnoxious to you, but they’re part of daily life for us.”
A ‘wife’ is a player’s best friend on the team. Jammer panties are what they wear on their heads — their helmets.
Outside of the arcade room Jahr and McCord were sitting in, the wood-paneled basketball-court-turned-derby-track shook with the reverberations, as nearly a dozen girls skated with what must have been a look of blood-lust in their eyes. It was impossible to make out anything the commentators were saying over the screaming and cheering.
Sean Hiatt, who coaches both the Wild Childs and the Mitten Mavens, is the director of data services for an IT company. By night, he’s the guy who trains the girls twice a week for two hours.
“It’s a really huge thing,” Hiatt said. “Especially the junior team. It just makes a huge difference in their life. We have girls that would be at home playing video games coming out and doing exercise.”
Perhaps even more important, though, is the community. For that, you have to see it to believe it; or at least listen to the screaming at the end of a bout.
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