The Odd Sport of Roller Derby
Roller derby has to be the oddest sport on the planet. Ten women on two different teams, 5 each, skate around and try to stop a member of the opposite team skating by them. The object of the game is simple, four members of a team are called blockers and one is the jammer. It is the blockers’ job to stop a jammer from the opposing team passing them. It is a full contact sport where anything can be done to stop the jammer passing the blockers. Fights routinely break out between players and the oddest aspect of the sport is the fact that it is predominantly done by women.
It takes a certain type of person to participate in a full contact sport. Most people would rather not subject their bodies to the prospect of serious injury. This brings us to roller derby. This women’s sport is a full contact sport where the objective is to basically beat up your opponents and stop them getting past. It is a little bit like the Asian sport of Kabbadi, the Indian and Pakistani wrestling type game where one team member tries to touch an opposing team member and run back before he is caught. Two teams of five players each compete against each other. The object of roller derby is to skate around a circular rink and four members of a team called blockers try to stop the fifth player called a jammer from passing them. It is an extremely simple game and it is a sport that borders on sports entertainment like professional wrestling. The teams are awarded points for the manner in which they are able to stop the jammer and the jammers get points for being able to pass the blockers.
Roller derby was actually invented in the 1930s in the US, by a man named Leo Saltzer. At that time, roller derby events were more marathon skating contests with the objective to see who could last the longest. From these early marathon skating contests, roller derby was turned into a race format with two teams of five players and a jammer trying to lap the other team’s players. It was the first sport of its kind where women competed alongside men on the skating rink. In the 1940s the first televised roller derby event took place and the sport started to grow in popularity. Over the next 20 years, the sport became extremely popular and at one time hundreds of teams were competing at the same time. The sport started to become more violent and involved full body contact to the delight of fans and spectators. Yet in the 1970s roller derby started to see a severe decline from which it has never really recovered. High gas prices and a very poor economy were blamed for the decline of the sport.
Today roller derby is again becoming popular with numerous teams all across America and has slowly spread around different countries around the world. Today roller derby is a similar game to ice hockey; it has the same sort of violence, the same level of excitement, and the same simple rules. However unlike hockey, roller derby players are unpaid and sometimes they have to pay their own expenses and even pay to keep their teams afloat. There is no governing body for roller derby and the whole sport is self financed and staffed by volunteers. The players usually finance their own teams and the games and the contests are staffed by fans who volunteer for the job. Even though it has become a very popular sport over the years, it still does not have a solid structure and is not formalised as other sports are in America and around the world. It really needs a governing body to take control of the whole sport and unify it into a proper format.
The women who take part in roller derby are a special breed of skaters. Learning to skate competitively is hard work and a roller derby girl needs a lot of dedication and persistence to succeed at the sport. As the sport is full contact, a roller derby girl has to be willing to put herself at risk of getting injured although the sport is not as brutal as some other full contact sports out there. Even though the sport is not for every woman out there, those that do take part in it say it is a very enjoyable experience and they live for the competitive nature of the sport.
In the future roller derby is all set to grow and become a major sport. All it needs is a proper governing body and a proper format. Then we will all see roller derby girls flying around elbowing each other in the face to try to gain points.
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