I'd never seen roller derby in person, though last year I had seen the movie 'Whip It' and that had piqued my interest. The idea of tough girl athletes playing a game that was physically on par with hockey seemed pretty cool to me. Last saturday I attended the farmer's market here in Urbana and the Twin City Roller Derby girls had a booth to encourage all comers to their match the next day. How could I pass up a cultural experience? I went with some of the other guys at my NEH institute in Champaign for a night on the town. We had heard that there would be a roller derby match at a nearby rink and 5 of us went. Mostly we all had preconceptions of tough girls, with tattoos, beating each other up. Though that did happen a bit it was more fun to watch the sport of the game as well. It took us most of the first half to figure out the scoring, but once we did and once we all had our favorite girls picked out it was a lot more fun because we could cheer for the appropriate people at the appropriate moments. I would have to say the girl I chose, Black Eye Betty, must have been the MVP of the game. I don't know how many points she scored as the jammer for the Damagin' Dames but it must have been at least 40 of the team's 109 total. If you have never seen roller derby I recommend it. I will be going back to see another match at the end of the month. If you would like to know more about the sport, check
this out.
