Fast skating femmes, fishnets, and Fisti Cuffs

So now that Shaone Morrisonn has re-signed, winning a colossal raise in salary as a result of Thursday’s arbitration, that event likely concludes any personnel news for the Washington Capitals for at least the next couple of weeks (until a minor move to address the Caps’ slight salary cap overage can be made).

With this dearth of compelling hockey content to digest and discuss these days, this fan sought out one very active summer sport to recapture that exhilaration felt watching swift skating, fierce competition, and violent collisions. On Saturday night, in the basement basketball gym of Hunter College in Manhattan, I took in a furious showdown between the visiting Bronx Gridlock (1-0) and the Manhattan Mayhem (0-1) of Gotham Girls Roller Derby. Exhilaration recaptured.

The Gridlock's Brigitte Barhot works the crowd during the pre-game skate

Yes, you may recall the A&E reality show Rollergirls that ran for a single season in early 2006. I’d not witnessed roller derby live before, and expected to see mini-skirts, garter belts, and other lingerie worn in full view, heavy eyeliner, expressive tattoos, ruby-red lipstick, and some high-speed collisions between these vampy, trampy ladies.

I happily, and lustfully, report seeing all of these things and, better still, an impressive display of fast skating, highly-coordinated team play, and athleticism to help fill the hockey void. These ladies can skate.

My experience of watching attractive females engaged in ferocious competition, and all that this Saturday night scene evoked, must have been similar to many a female hockey fan’s — ahem — multi-faceted stimulation watching men in action on the ice.

Yes, there are rules

The GGRD is a local league accredited by a national governing body, the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, that promulgates rules and oversees the leagues within the fold.

To simplify the rules: the game, called a “bout,” goes down on a flat oval skate track. Four skaters from each team (a pivot and three blockers) line up at a stripe. At the whistle, the pivots and blockers take off around the track. A few seconds later, two “jammers,” one from each team, lined up 20 feet behind the pack on another stripe, chase after them, and a “jam” begins.

And go!

A jammer must weave and bounce and push her away through the pack once, lap the pack, and then move through them again to score points — one point for each opponent passed on the second and each subsequent go-arounds.

A jam lasts up to two minutes. Jammers switch off from jam to jam (as do other positions, kind of like a shift change), and have stars on their helmets for easy ID.

The first jammer to burst through the pack once becomes the lead jammer. The lead jammer can call off the jam at any time, generally to preserve the point disparity between the points she scores and the points that her opponent jammer scores.

There’s a grocery list of penalties that can send a player to the penalty box, and her team short-handed. You’re generally only allowed to hit someone with your upper body and arms, excluding elbows and forearms. But, like hockey, some of these infractions go undetected. The punishment comes in retaliation later. The referees seemed to do a decent job, on this night, of patrolling the track and maintaining the flow of the game. Mostly “letting ‘em play,” as we hockey fans like to say.

The entire bout lasts 60 minutes (two 30 min. halves) of running time.

For the love of the game

Gridlock jammer Beatrix Slaughter sums up nicely what a new spectator’s pre-conceived opinion of roller derby might be, recalling the early days of the recent roller derby revival. “People expected us to be in fishnets, which we sometimes are, hitting one another about the face, and maybe making out afterwards. And that rarely happens.”

Rarely.

Ah, anyway.

“Now, people are understanding the rules, and its a lot more satisfying to play well. And win, obviously.”

All-Star jammer Beatrix Slaughter

What you get now are bruising body and hip-checks, sending skaters sliding off of the track and into the floor row of spectators, vicious picks set by adroit blockers, slick skating by a jammer to slip behind an angry blocker, poised to crunch her, skaters leaping over fallen teammates, elbows to the face, and lots of trash-talking.

And when skaters went down, they bounced up quickly, hungry and determined to rejoin the mêlée.

Some leagues still employ various non-athletic gimmickry to boost perceived entertainment value beyond the competition itself, but the teams of the GGRD stay fairly close to the confines of a team sport bound by predictable, and sensible, rules. Its no wonder then that the GGRD traveling All-Stars team currently enjoys the #2 WFTDA ranking in the country. And did I mention already that many of these vixens of the flat track are bad-ass, and hot, and wear mini-skirts and fishnets?

Beatrix Slaughter looked to me like the Pavel Bure of the GGRD. The lithe Beatrix weaved and slipped through the bruising band of blockers, with ease on most jams, using ninja skating skills while holding the in-bounds line of the track. And failing that, she laid on a rude bump of the hip, or shoulder check, to create room to pass. These untrained eyes would have given her une des trois étoiles for the night.

Both Beatrix and Mayhem jammer and blocker Polly Gone have played hockey, and made a transition to roller derby. It showed in the way they skated through traffic, like a forward criss-crossing with a linemate through the neutral zone.

Beatrix still follows the hockey game, and proclaims “the Habs” as her favorite NHL team, having been introduced to hockey while at McGill. Strangely, she named the arch rival Leafs as a runner up, but she supports all Canadian teams because “its a religion there” and they deserve a winner. Sounds reasonable to me.

In fact, she pretty much expressed love for every NHL team except the Stars, because “its Texas. There is no ice in Texas. They don’t deserve to have a hockey team.” Ouch. I should’ve inquired about the Capitals’ Florida rivals.

Ginger Snap shows off her tools during the pre-game skate

The crowd noise reached a feverish pitch each time the lead jammer fought through the pack during Saturday night’s tilt. Though on a smaller scale, it was like the primal roar of the Verizon Center crowd watching Alex Ovechkin break in alone on a hapless goalie.

In one amazing sequence, a blocker reached behind her, grabbed her jammer’s arms and, with hands joined, swung her teammate forward, in-between and through two opposing blockers, the two of which then crashed into each other. Splendid!

Later in that jam, the same jammer pulled up, just as an opposing blocker was poised to take a run at her. The blocker spilled onto the track without making contact.

Near the end of the bout, a jammer was catapulted forward by her teammate via what appeared to be the elastic waistband of a pair of shorts torn apart in battle.

In the end, the Bronx squad whipped the dames from the Big Apple, 159-79. But while the Gridlock had the bout well in hand even at the half, every jam was hotly contested, crowd howling, through to the final buzzer.

To be fair, the Mayhem had a lot of rookies on the team, and integrating them takes time (as Capitals fans can appreciate).

Breaking into the league, and breaking noses

Rookies (members of the “Meat Packing District”) get drafted by teams after they earn a spot following a league-wide tryout. The selection process has become more competitive, as has the play itself. Several years ago, would-be derby girls would show up for tryouts not having skated before.

“I’d never even skated before my first practice [in 2003],” said Mayhem jammer / blocker Fisti Cuffs. “Other than the local rink where my orthodontist had his yearly party.” Guess its important to know a good orthodontist when you’re lacing ‘em for slammin’ derby action.

Some derby girls, particularly members of the All-Star traveling team, practice up to six times a week (!). While the spectacle of roller derby has a colorful history, the modern, grassroots, all-female game is a young one. As such, practice doesn’t yet involve very specific plays. “You’re often playing both offense and defense” says Fisti Cuffs.

Initially, the fun of roller derby revolved largely around camaraderie.  Now the thrill of victory stirs the drink.  Beatrix Slaughter poignantly noted, “as we’ve become more nationally ranked and become a lot more respected, the games feel like they’re achievements, and its not just spectacle.”

Some of the girls originally hail from original hotbeds of the derby revival. Fisti Cuffs hails from Tucson, and Mayhem blocker Megahurtz, from San Antonio.

(By the way, derby girl names must be unique throughout the WFTDA-affiliated teams. Similarities must be worked out by a “gentlewomen’s agreement.” The names, of course, display both “showmanship” and some desired anonymity.)

Megahurtz was suspended a few seasons ago for a fight in a Texas league that “still had fighting as part of the game. It was a particularly brutal fight, so I was suspended for the following game.” No blood was drawn but “there were some blows to the face, which was not allowed.”

Whew. I wondered if there was a “code” in roller derby. Fisti Cuffs, appropriately, chimed in: “We would use it [fighting] strategically. If the [other team's] jammer was doing really well, then our jammer would start a fight, and she calls off the jam, and you know, that’s it. Like hockey.”

Is there a designated enforcer on the team, I wondered? “Not really anymore,” said Fisti Cuffs, “we’ve tried to move away from that.”

Beatrix Slaughter reported witnessing “an unimpressive ‘last jam’ fight,” one “where [the other team] knows that they’re losing and tries to take someone down with them. It’s frowned upon, although I think that’s what everyone secretly hopes to see.”

Whoa, not me!

The ladies have suffered their share of injuries, and yet keep on skating. Which is impressive, considering that they don’t draw a salary for their efforts. Fisti Cuffs recently played through a whole bout with an ankle injury sustained in the first jam of the bout. She laid down for about a minute, while several rookies looked on, likely wondering what they’d gotten themselves into and also, in Fisti’s estimation, “holy shit, if she’s hurt, we’re screwed.” She’s also suffered a bloody, broken nose (see her smiling, bloodied face in a photo on her profile page).

Beatrix Slaughter separated a shoulder last year and received several “magnificent bruises.”

Megahurtz lists amongst injuries sustained: “broken fingers, fractured coccyx (a/k/a tailbone), torn miniscus, and plenty of other abrasions, contusions, and bruisins.”

Collisions, body checks, and spills, oh my!

Any pre-game rituals for these plucky derby girls?

“We have a team dinner the week of, eat a lot of pasta, and talk trash about the other team” says Megahurtz. They all must trade waterproof make-up tips as well. Before they put the hurt on, that is.

Beatrix needs to make time for “pancakes, and screaming” before a bout.

As for post game, the ladies love them some PBR. “And Coney Island Lager” [note: league sponsor] adds Fisti Cuffs. “They make sure we have plenty to drink after every game.” Beatrix’ll have a sidecar of whiskey with her PBR.

The GGRD hosts a post-bout party at a local bar after each match, so you can put Beatrix’s fightin’ words that she can “drink you under the table” to the test.

As we mentioned, the WFTDA sanctions leagues nationwide. One of these plays in Baltimore at the Du Burns Arena — the Charm City Roller Girls.  Their All-Stars battle a TBA out-of-town opponent on Saturday, August 23. Worth checking out.

The DC Rollergirls 2008 season is over. (That league was just accredited by the WFTDA.) But the traveling All-Star team is still active over the summer.

DC’s All-Stars played against the Steel City Derby Demons All-Stars earlier this year, and dropped their bout to the Pittsburgh bunch by a 156-103 score (like we need another reason to dislike Pittsburgh). But the Dominion Derby Girls crushed Steel City the next month, 150-80. In any event, I’m not too impressed or intimidated by the Pittsburgh traveling horde. Whatever.

Sunday night, the DDG and DC Rollergirls squared off in Virginia Beach.

Now, I see a clear cross-promotion opportunity here between the Washington Capitals and the DC Rollergirls. Who needs a Spirit Squad?!