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COMMENTARY
Gem City Rollergirls are way more than a team; they're 'a sisterhood'
Roller derby team hits the rink at 7:30 tonight for a bout at the Nutter Center.
Friday, July 20, 2007
She works fulltime at a local doctor's office. She's a single mom, has three young children and, on this night, was running just a little late.
Most of her teammates were out there loosening up beneath those big pink and gold moons of light that hang above the old wooden rink at Skateworld of Kettering.
Gem City Rollergirls (from left) Brandi Hutchinson, Jo Groth, Debbie Wright, Emily Frantz and Cassie Thorpe wait to be called in by the coach during practice at Skateworld of Kettering.She tossed her duffel to one side, plopped down on a seat in the shadowy wings and stripped off her top, revealing a red bra and a whole lot of woman before she pulled on her blue practice shirt, added some elbow pads and laced up her skates.
And with that Amber Brown, 34-year-old Riverside mom, became Fonda La Boom, the popular enforcer and one of the delightful cornerstones of the Gem City Rollergirls.
The transformation is best described by her children.
"They tell their teachers, the kids in school, the people at day care, 'Mom's a roller derby chick. Her name's Fonda La Boom and she breaks noses,' " Brown said with an a self-conscious chuckle, then an accepting shrug. "Yeah, that's what they say."
There's not a more colorful, more unlikely, more committed team in this town than the Rollergirls.
"We've got nurses, teachers, college students, factory workers, people in the military, stay-at-home moms, single women, you name it. We run the whole rainbow," said Anne Warren, a Korean-born Beavercreek mother of two who does government contracting work by day and skates as Seoul Sister at night.
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.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2156 or tarchdeacon@DaytonDailyNews.com.
