Colorful
characters
The women come in all sizes, from Fonda
down
to Linda Hedberg, the 4-foot-11, 102-pound yoga instructor
and mother of two known as Polly Rocket.
Some have piercings — 25-year-old Katie
Piehl, a West Carrollton medical dispatcher and University
of Dayton grad student has 15 earrings, a tongue stud and
belly-button hardware — and some, like Shan Seitz,
aka Killian Destroy, spend much of their time at their
kids' ballgames.
Some have tattoos. Mandi Mayhem has a smiling
choo-choo train ridden by three little boys chugging up
her left bicep and into the long black hair that falls
onto her shoulder.
In real life she's Amanda Brenner, who does
in-home therapy with young autistic boys. She told her
brother, who owns New Breed Tattoo, to "put something on
there that relates to boys."
But if you think the flamboyant names are
just frivolous icing on everyday cake, consider what happened
when Fonda hit the rink.
As the team — practicing for tonight's
7:30 p.m. Nutter Center match ("bouts," they call them)
with the Fort Wayne Derby Girls — was working on
jams and breakaways, Jo Groth, a 26-year-old Centerville
massage therapist and yoga instructor, threaded her way
through the pack trying to score points.
Groth is known as Ruthless Rampage — "it's
so awful, my middle name is Ruth and the only way I'd like
it is if I turned it into a derby name" — and has
embraced the sport and the women it attracts:
"It's a good way to meet a lot of girls not
worried about breaking a nail or messing up their hair.
I'd never get to meet this group in any other type setting.
It's for girls who like to play rough."
Her thoughts were put to the test when she
got in range of Fonda, who, with one forearm shiver, melted
her into the track.
As the pack moved on, Ruthless pulled herself
upright and, skating after her teammates, soon found herself
in Fonda's gunsights again — this time getting another
kiss of the wood.
"When she gets you," Groth said later with
an easy laugh and a fresh bruise, "it's like being hit
by a herd of Mack trucks.
"But really, I've fared better than a lot
of the girls in practice and in bouts. I think it's the
yoga. I'm better at falling. I know my own body ... Except
for that one time.
"One girl hit me low, another high and I
went spinning through the air. I remember thinking, 'There's
the concession stand (at one end of the rink), the door
(at the other) and there's the concession stand again.
Then "boom!' It took a few seconds to come to."
And that, said Voodoo Storm — whom
French and Spanish students at Fairmont High know as 36-year-old
Mrs. (Audra) Samanas — hits on a misconception many
have about the modern-day derby:
"A lot of people remember the old roller
derby that was on TV back in the '60s and '70s. It kind
of paralleled wrestling. It was staged and run by promoters
and very theatrical.
"We're theatrical because we think it's hilariously
funny to go out there in fishnets and fake eyelashes and
batter people for fun. But it's very much real. Absolutely
nothing is staged."
Seoul Sister agreed: "It's not just a bunch
of girls in skirts wrestling around. We train hard and
the contact is real, the falls are real, the fights are
real and the blood is real."
You got that idea halfway through practice
when three Rollergirls — Poisonous Butterfly with
an ice pack on her knee, Farmersville's Toma Johnson (Toma
Hawk) dealing with shin splints and Fonda herself lying
on a massage table as Belmont chiropractor Dr. Scott Pedicord
worked on her back — were on the sidelines.
"We call our bruises derby medals," Seoul
Sister said. "We look at them as badges of honor."
National revival
That's not saying that roller derby women
of old — stars like Ann Calvello, Toughie Brasuhn
and Blonde Bomber Joanie Weston — weren't beaten
and bruised. But it was a different game then. Most notably,
the track was banked instead of flat like today.
The sport was conceived in 1935 by Chicago
ad man Leo Seltzer with help from New York sportswriter
Damon Runyon. It boomed with the advent of television and
by the late 1960s — with the famed Bay Area Bombers
and a rival all-star team touring the country — it
packed places like Madison Square Garden and St. Louis'
Kiel Auditorium. In 1969, the tour stopped in 48 cities,
including four times at Hara Arena.
The sport was immortalized in a Jim Croce
song and a Raquel Welch film — "Kansas City Bomber" — but
by the mid-'70s, it disappeared from TV.
Today there's been a revival. A couple of
years ago, the A&E channel ran a reality show, "Rollergirls," chronicling
a team from Austin, Texas. There now are close to 200 women's
teams — most, like Dayton's, are grass-roots operations — and
there's another song, this one by Uncle Leon and the Alibis
that includes this refrain:
"Give me a girl with some bruises on her
butt and that killer look in her eye.
"She's the hottest little deal on eight wheels,
burnin' like a babe outta hell.
"Jammin' and a blockin' and a little skull
knockin', it's enough to make a grown man yell."
Yet, while some things may seem the same,
much is different, said Mandi Mayhem:
"There are no promoters. It's DIY — do
it yourself. We're a group of girls working out together
four days a week. We promote the bouts, everything. We're
not famous. We don't get paid. In fact, we pay to play."
And, said Voodoo: "Any money we do make we've
donated. We made a big donation to Women's Line at the
end of last year."
Close-knit team
Although the Rollergirls are in their second
season, Emily Frantz, a 25-year-old medical assistant at
Hamilton's Bever Community Health Center, has been with
them just two months. Still, she understands:
"It's not just a team. I'd compare it more
to a sorority. We're a sisterhood."
Martina Makrides, who works for Voss Village
Cadillac when she's not Harlot Johannson, said being a
Rollergirl has lots of benefits: "It's a great workout.
It's been good for my health and it's built my confidence.
I feel good about myself afterward."
Killian Destroy said that confidence has "helped
me in everything I do. I've ended up a better worker, a
better parent. I've just fallen in love with all of this."
Same with the Butterfly Piehl: "I figured
I'd be horrible and end up just going home. But now it's
like I'm addicted. The best thing is the camaraderie and
having a whole team that has my back in every area of my
life."
That was never more evident, said coach Tom
Hicks, than when a drunken guy started harassing one of
the Rollergirls in a Dayton club one night not long ago:
"The girl he was harassing got away and went
back to the table with three of her teammates, He followed,
tried grabbing her and she threw a drink in his face. And
then ... well ... one of the other girls sucker-punched
him.
"Of course when I heard the story it was
eight girls jumped him. And now it's like a fishing tale — it's
the whole team jumped him. But the thing is, they stuck
together and handled it themselves."
Like Uncle Leon said, they're enough "to
make a grown man yell."
In pain. |
