Junior Lily Eusebio began participating in roller derby in 2010 and had to stop in 2012. While in roller derby her roller name was Cookie CutHer.

She got involved in roller derby after a friend of her mother’s tried out for the Minnesota RollerGirls and made the Garda Belts. Her family then began to attend her bouts, which are essentially meets or games for roller derby.

While there are opportunities for youth to participate in the sport, there is also a thriving community of adult roller derby terms in Minneapolis. On Saturday, November 15, four teams that are part of the Minnesota RollerGirls, a roller derby league, participated in a bout. The bout was between The Garda Belts and the Rockits for half the time and the Dagger Dolls and Bombshells for the other half.

This was the beginning of the league’s championship for the golden roller skate

The bout was quite the spectacle and included four half hour bouts, a half time show featuring the band American Scarecrows, league memorabilia, and a few spills and penalties.

Roller derby is a very unique sport for many reasons, but two stand out. It’s a full contact racing sport on roller skates and attracts a large varying pool of both players and fans.

Amanda Temple, or “Surly Bird” of the Rockits, commented that along with the stereotypical short haired, lesbians with tattoos there is also “the suburban soccer moms and the super nerdy LARPing girl and the shy, quiet type as well as every other kind of person you could imagine.”

“All our league members are unpaid; skaters are amateur, non-professionals; officials are volunteers who are not paid for their services, as are our volunteers. Without any of these parties, we could not produce the quality of performance to which we’ve been accustomed,” said Maria Becker, or Madra, co captain for the Rockits, in an interview via email.

Roller derby is a sport played by two teams made up of 14 players, all of which are on roller skates. Each team assigns someone the role of the “jammer”, indicated as such by a star on their helmet. The jammer is the only scoring player for that team during a two minute jam. The four other players on the track during the jam are called blockers.

The jam begins with the blockers on the pivot line and the jammers on the jammer line, which is 30 feet behind the pivot line. When a whistle blows, both the jammers and the blockers begin rushing around the track.

A pack is formed by blockers from both teams. Within the pack, blockers do their best to prevent the opposing team’s jammer from getting through all of their team’s blockers before their own jammer can. Whichever jammer makes it past all of the opposing team’s blockers becomes the “lead jammer”.

At this moment in the bout, points are accumulated by the jammers whenever they pass a blocker from the opposing team. For a much less complicated explanation of roller derby rules, I suggest watching Whip It, a movie about a teenage girl who becomes involved in roller derby.

According to Becker, like the 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon, “There are like 7 degrees of roller derby; everyone knows a person who plays derby, or knows someone who knows someone who knows derby skaters. It’s becoming more familiar across culture, gender, race, age – it’s everywhere.”

When she was involved in roller derby, Eusebio’s parents were hesitant about their daughter’s participation. “They kind of didn’t like it because of how beat up I would get…it was kind of scary for them just because of the stories they heard from adult people and like ‘yeah I shattered my knee and its no big deal’ so they liked it but they also were scared for me.”

As a full contact sport that involves a lot of pushing carried out on roller skates, roller derby has been labeled a notoriously dangerous sport.

“I would say that’s a misnomer. Derby is actually much safer than some sports I’ve played, mainly because we wear padding and practice,” said Becker.

She continued with, “Conversely, I have seen a lot of scary injuries in derby – most of them are freak accidents or occur when skaters are tired or unprepared. It’s very common to see rookie skaters get injured when they’re first starting out.”

According to Eusebio, “If you’re doing everything right and you’re not messing up your knees and not doing anything wrong like twisting or something, I think it’s pretty safe.”

In regards to roller derby safety, freshman Soline Van de Moortele, who is currently participating in roller derby with Twin Cities Junior Roller Derby, said “It’s dangerous in the way that you can break a leg or an ankle, but you can do that in all sports and it is a contact sport.”

Regardless of whether or not roller derby is a dangerous sport, Temple pointed out that “we all know the risks of playing a sport, and hope it doesn’t happen, and know that a broken ankle, concussion, or other injury is always a possibility.”

Along with the more obvious risk that has earned roller derby it’s label as a dangerous sport, Temple attributed some of the concern to the fact that roller derby is a sport dominated by women. “Women often get asked about their concern for safety playing sports when men rarely do.”

Along with Temple, Van de Moortele also attributes the copious amounts of public concern to the players gender, “it is a contact sport but I think people say [roller derby is dangerous] because it’s a sport for girls and you don’t see a lot of ‘violent’ sports for girls.”

Regardless of whether or not it’s violent or why it’s considered so, there was one thing in particular that all four of the people interviewed stressed, which can be summed up by Temple, “Overall, derby is a bunch of bad a** people playing a bad a** sport while trying to further roller derby in the sporting world, all while maintaining balance with the rest of their lives.”