Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Roller Derby: The South Texas Rolleristas

By: Nadia Tamez

Every Sunday at the De Leon Middle School outdoor gym in McAllen, the women of the South Texas Rolleristas spend five hours skating in a blur of elbow pads and wheels.

As the roller derby team glides off to the sidelines of the track for a break, team captain Alba “Hell’n Sinners” Guerra sits in the middle of the rink to stretch.

“Don’t let your muscles cool down,” the 29-year-old says, her voice echoing through the steel frame of the gym. “Just stretch out whatever’s hurting right now.”

Newbie Lory Blanquita is already lying against the cold concrete.

“My ass!” she yells out, earning a round of laughter from the other girls on the team.

By the time practice is over at 7 p.m., the sun has set and the Rolleristas are skating in the dark. After a final set of 100 crunches, the girls made their way to the bleachers, digging through purses for muscle cream and cigarettes.

“We’re not your typical athletes,” Guerra said. “We’re the anti-athletes. A lot of girls light up cigarettes after practice. It’s not very healthy, but if you can stand the burning in your lungs, nobody’s going to tell you not to.”

The roller derby league formed in 2006 and currently boasts two teams, Fall Out Brigade in McAllen and the Tramakazis in Brownsville. Training for the new season in March is in full swing.

“Practice is everything,” Guerra said. “If you can’t hang at practice, you’re not going to be able to hang at a bout.”

But once the girls strap on their skates and the crowd is watching, the drills they dioat practice will be faster, harder, and for real.

“It’s high octane the entire time until that last whistle blows and it stops,” said Vicky “Enya Fayce” Ruiz, who was a founding member and the league’s manager up until last December. “You start off fast, and you end fast.”

Roller derby is played in bouts of 60 minutes, which are divided into three 20-minute periods. Each period is made up of several two-minute jams, during which the rink becomes a blur of bodies, wheels and fishnets in an all out mad dash to score points.

“It’s exhausting and confusing and exhilarating all at the same time because there’s so much going on,” Guerra said. “There’re announcements and music in the background, your team is screaming at you, and the opposing team is trying to confuse you.”

Before a jam, five girls from each team get into the starting position, known as pack formation. One girl from each team is designated as a pivot, and they are positioned at the front of the pack. Behind them are the blockers, three from each team. Two jammers bring up the rear 20 feet behind the rest of the pack.

“It’s intense because you can hit hard, you can go fast, and some of the girls can go up to 30 miles per hour if they really bust their endurance,” Ruiz said.

Once the game is set in motion by the referee’s whistle, each set of blockers try to prevent the opposing jammer from getting past them while fending off opposing blockers to make a clear path for their own jammer. The pivots are the last chance a team has to stop an opposing jammer from making it through the entire pack and skating back around to score more points.

“Everybody is going after each other,” Ruiz said, “so you’re playing both offence and defense at the same time.”

In order for a team to score points, the jammers must maneuver through the pack of girls and break through to the front. Their team is awarded one point for each opposing team member they skate past; four points are possible each time they make it through the pack. An extra point is possible if a jammer is able to make a “grand slam” by skating an entire lap ahead of the opposing jammer.

“You’re basically racing with the other jammer,” Guerra said. “Once you see that many girls coming at you with the intention of putting you on the floor, it’s pretty nerve-racking.”

And it’s when the girls really get into the game that the infamous thrills and spills associated with roller derby happen.

“My proudest moment was when I hit Creep Show (of the Tramakazis) just right, and I knocked her underneath the bleachers,” Ruiz said. “It was a great moment that we did not get on video.”

Vanessa “Miz Formaldehyde” Gomez was able to bring the pain to her rivals without even touching them.

“Two of the girls from the other team were trying to stop me and coral me between them, but I guess I was a little too fast for them,” she said. “They [knocked] each other out.”

The ladies of the Rolleristas know how to receive as well as give. Bruises and scars are collected like medals of honor.

“I checked someone across the floor, so as soon at the jam was done a girl came up to me and was like, ‘That was awesome,’” Guerra said, motioning a high-five.  “And then she drew her hand back in disgust.”

Guerra looked to see her hand covered in blood, which had somehow been cut by her armguard.

“I couldn’t feel it because your adrenaline’s so high that you don’t feel pain,” she said.  “That’s why you see some girls bounce up from a fall that would floor a guy. You don’t think. It’s just, ‘Get up, get up, get up before they run you over or clock you while you’re not looking.’”

But the Rolleristas know how to leave it all on the rink once the bout is over, in large part due to the tradition of creating an alter ego and name.

“It helps in the sense that you can put things away after the game is over,” Guerra said. “Whoever punched you on the rink is not the same person who’s going to buy to a drink later.”

The blood may be real, but the rivalries are all just a part of the fun, said veteran skater Pistol Kitten.

“On the rink, we’re horrible. We’re like, ‘I hate you! I’m going to kick your ass!’” she said. “And then as soon as the games over we’re like, ‘Oh my God, I love you so much!’ At the after party we’re all drunk and talking to each other in our different uniforms and you can just feel the love.”

Kitten is an assistant financial planner in her everyday life but has been gearing up in her derby persona since joining the league in 2006.

“By day, I’m in high heels and a skirt, and then two days a week I get to throw on my leggings and a t-shirt and be tough,” Kitten said. “I’m not a rough-and-tumble kind of girl. I’m a nerd. And then I get out here, and I’m Pistol Kitten.”

Gomez wanted her derby name to reflect her personal style.

“I like dead things and I’m a big zombie movie freak, so it all goes really well together,” Gomez said. “I say that I’m undead I always that I put my enemies body parts in little jars for collection.”

Before the women of derby can have fun and kick ass on the rink, they have to get their asses kicked at practice. In preparation for bout season, each Rollerista must meet official skill standards set by the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.

“There’s a lot of jumping, stopping, falling and getting up,” Guerra said.

Players are expected to have adequate speed, endurance, stopping skills, balance, and be able to take a hit among other things.

“Some girls a naturals and some girls take a little more work,” Kitten said. “And [a new player] may not be ready to bout in the first game, but we’re going to keep working with her. We’re a little pushy because you have to push someone to do their best.”

In addition to building their physical stamina, players have to be comfortable with taking a spill every now and then.

“A lot of girls don’t want to fall, but roller derby’s about falling properly. Some people hang onto the fact that, ‘Oh, I fell. Who saw me? And did my panties show?’” Guerra said.  “That’s why we’re there to scream at you, so that you don’t have time to dwell on the embarrassment. Once you get that out of the way, you start going through drills a lot faster.”

In fact, injuries most commonly occur when players fall improperly or are not wearing the correct protective gear. Ruiz broke her tail bone during a match when she tried to knock down a girl without maintaining proper posture.

“When she hit me, my feet came out from under me, and I landed square on my ass. You could hear it crack,” she said. “You don’t realize how bad busting your tailbone is until you do. You can’t sit, you can’t stand, you can’t move, nothing.”

An accident during one practice sent Kitten to the doctor with a concussion, whiplash and temporary nerve damage.

“I was hauling butt, and I just fell straight down. I hit my chin, the only thing that was not protected,” she said.  “Luckily it did not split open, but I couldn’t skate for a couple weeks. Then I was right back out there. It didn’t even faze me.”

Roller derby requires more than just physical strength, said Claudia “Holy Moose Goddess” Carranza, a member of the Fall Out Brigade who started out as a spectator.

“You’re going to get knocked down, and you have to have that hard interior that says, ‘You know what? I’m going to get back up, and I’m going to keep going,’” she said. “All these other girls are going, ‘Come on, come on, you can do it,’ but if you don’t have it inside, then you’re just going to lay there.”

The support system shared between the women of the Rio Grande Valley’s roller derby league extends far beyond the rink. Ruiz said that they have all be there for each other during weddings, funerals, graduations and life in general.

“A lot of girls who come in, they don’t have a lot of family, they don’t have too many girl friends,” she said. “But they come here and they realize that even though we might not look the same or we may not have the same job, the one thing we have in common is this.”

The closeness that results is inevitable, said Kitten.

“When you skate around with girls and you’re hitting each other and you’ve grabbed the boobs and the butts, it just happens,” she said. These girls are a huge part of my life. You can’t not just love everybody.”

The Rolleristas don’t discriminate against who gets to be a part of their family on wheels and are always on the look out for interested girls.

“We have everything from students, to college professors, to sporty girls, dainty girls, tomboys and everything in between from ages about 18 to 36,” said Guerra, who works as hair stylist and is pegged by most as a girly girl. “It’s such an eclectic mix. I never would have found myself kicking it was a professor from college.”

Together, the team of girls who share a passion for a sport that is one part hockey and one part survival skills do everything from fundraising to recruiting to acquiring insurance and filing mountains of paper work on volunteer basis. They hope they have built something that people will go out and enjoy.

“I don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to watch this because it is so intense,” Ruiz said.  “It’s watching girls getting involved and organizing and getting involved with people that you probably never would have gotten involved with before. I hope everyone gives us a chance and supports these girls because they’re busting ass and they’re really trying to make it down here in the Valley.”