World Domination: Flat Track Roller Derby Takes Over Dallas for the 2014 World Cup

Team USA successfully defended the World Cup it had first won in 2011. (Photography by Joe Mac)

In the early morning of Thursday, December 4^th, 2014, at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, a half-awake group of announcers, volunteers, and staff was groggily standing in line to check in for credentials at the 2014 Blood and Thunder Roller Derby World Cup. Nearby, and snaking all along the interior wall of the cathedral-like mezzanine of the auditorium, were hundreds of fans who’d arrived early to gain entry or pick up last-minute tickets to the event. There was a murmur in the Center, the buzz of half-formed expectations and fully realized anticipation, but it was muted by the early morning hour, by the remnants of jet lag yet to be shaken.

A set of doors at the near-end of the hall sprung open and out walked Team Argentina, unmistakable in their baby-blue and white striped kit, skates in hand, but mostly geared up for warm ups for their early-morning game on Day 1 of the second Roller Derby World Cup.

It took a moment for the groggy mass in the hall to take note of the arrival of the team, but when they did, one part of the sleepy line of fans suddenly erupted: dancing, chanting, singing, flags of Argentina materialized and waved proudly. The singing accompanied the blushing and appreciative team as it entered the World Cup stadium and disappeared from our view.

Yet the singing continued. The dancing continued, and it would do so nearly unabated for the next four days.

It was my first “World Cup Moment” and proved to be just one of a countless number of World Cup Moments that would touch and inspire everyone who gathered in Dallas, Texas, for what would turn out to be—so far anyway—flat track roller derby’s greatest moment, an incredible crowning achievement for a sport only a decade into its very existence.

It’s actually been quite a year for flat track roller derby, a bounce back year in many ways for its leading governing body, the WFTDA, through whom the vast majority of the participants at the event were introduced to the game. The WFTDA Playoffs were an incredible success on the track, including a Division 2 tournament that provided the most parity of any flat track tournament in history, and globally the game had grown far beyond even the thirty teams in attendance in Dallas, evidenced by the donations of gear being collected on site for the emerging league in Beirut and the buzz around the newly formed league in Cairo. And for a potentially defining year in flat track roller derby, the 2014 World Cup proved to be a fitting end.

Team Canada marches during the Parade of Nations at the 2014 Roller Derby World Cup.

No, it was not a highly competitive tournament, though arguably more competitive than some thought it would be, and no the dominance of the United States was not negated, though the Americans were tested more than any thought possible. What it was, was a celebration of the sport, a global coming-out party on a scale that far eclipsed that of the inaugural World Cup in Toronto in 2011. Of course, through the sheer force of evolution, this event was way bigger and way better than that previous one, but that is as it should be, and undoubtedly the next event will be way better than this one (though it is hard to see how it could be any bigger, at least in terms of participation). And along with being a wildly celebratory party, it was also (perhaps most importantly) the largest “swap meet” the sport has ever seen: a sharing of the game, of strategies, of training.

There were some muted grumblings about the one-sided nature of some of the scores, particularly in the round-robin portion of the event where established nations like Australia (515-5 over Italy), Canada (301-23 over Denmark), England (329-50 over Ireland), Finland (312-38 over Mexico), and Sweden (459-0 over Japan) smothered their competition, but it would be hard to argue that anything else was expected in those rounds: Italy did not come into the World Cup thinking it would triumph over Australia, Denmark was probably quite content to score 23 points against Canada, and when Puerto Rican jammer Goomba Toomba managed three points in a 637-3 loss to USA, the room erupted as if they’d just won the very World Cup trophy itself.

It actually isn’t that unprecedented in the history of sport to have initially one-sided international events. For example, in ice hockey’s first forays into international competition at the 1920 and ’24 Olympics, the scores were often absurd (A Canadian amateur team won its three 1924 round robin games by a combined score of 85-0), yet hockey historians universally look back upon those two tournaments as being instrumental in the global growth of the sport; similarly, it’s undeniable that historians will one day look back upon these initial Roller Derby World Cups with the same sort of favour.

And honestly, except for the top four teams (and really just the second- through to fourth-place teams) winning and losing was not necessarily the number one goal. This tournament was about so much more than that.

Even Jerry Seltzer, who has been known to be publicly critical of the flat track game, seemed overwhelmed by the event, and wrote a long glowing piece about it on his blog. It was fitting to see “The Commish” at the tournament, shuffling wide-eyed around the tracks and posing for photos at every turn, always willing to share a thought or a story. Beginning with Transcontinental Roller Derby in the ‘30s and ending with the World Skating League’s RollerJam in the ‘90s, the Seltzer name was roller derby. From patriarch Leo and his brother Oscar through to Leo’s son Jerry and daughter Gloria, the Seltzer named had been the beating heart of the sport for seven decades before the flat track revolution brought the game to a level that transcended any individual name.

And it’s not hard to see why Jerry was so taken by the event. In a 2010 interview at the WFTDA Championships in Chicago (part of which you can see here), Jerry pointed out that “all (Leo) wanted was a legitimate game that could be played at the Olympics.” It never came to pass in Leo’s lifetime, nor even with Jerry at the reigns, yet here it is, not the Olympics exactly, but truly global, and even if growth has slowed somewhat in North American, it is a sport still very much growing on the rest of the planet.

Despite the disparity in some games, competitive growth in the sport was indeed evident. Brazil and Argentina were virtual doormats in 2011 but entered the 2014 event with a certain air of confidence. Winless three years prior, both notched round-robin victories (tight wins over Portugal and Switzerland for Brazil and a dominant performance over Denmark for the Argentinians), before Argentina scored the upset of the event in a very physical 205-143 victory over France in the Round of 16. France had finished 7^th in 2011 and was expected by most to be a lock for a Top 8 finish in Dallas. Similarly, other returning nations like Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand have emerged as leaders of the global game.

Most fans were decked out in national colours all weekend, but Australian fans were particularly noticeable.

And there was shifting at the top too, with England gaining revenge on a Canadian team that had topped them three years before with a hard fought 156-112 win in the semifinals, and then Australia did so as well, taking advantage of a spent Canadian squad with a thoroughly impressive 197-128 victory in the bronze medal matchup. And finally, England shattered all expectations and won over the hearts of the world with a performance for the ages against the Americans, truly winning the silver medal in a 219-105 loss in the gold medal game (no national team had ever held the Americans to such a low total or managed to score so many).

But despite the giddiness of that result (and the 54 points Australia managed against the American juggernaut in the semifinals), lets not kid ourselves too much: USA still represents the best in the world. At the conclusion of the final, England, battered, bruised and exhausted, looked as if they’d truly left it all on the track, while the Americans—still very much bigger, faster, stronger—appeared as if they were ready to play at least another 60 minutes.

There is still no jammer who possesses the blend of speed and strength of Atomatrix or the unflappable composure of Nicole Williams. In the pack, the wily Akers and the bluntly powerful Sexy Sladie continue to be forces, while Smarty Pants remains a marvel, always in the right spot, seemingly teleporting herself around the track, showing an unbelievable intelligence and vision for the game honed through a decade of commitment to the sport.

And to show they too are continuing to grow, this Team USA has also advanced, and has been slowly taken over by a new generation of skaters from jammers Vanessa Sites’ and Scald Eagle’s combination of strength and agility, to the on-track leadership of Penelope Nederlander and Shaina Serelson. Serelson herself—in her heart-on-her-sleeve intensity—harkens back to that first generation of USA skaters as well, now representing the fiery core of the national team once occupied by the sisters DeRanged and Psycho Babble, although Serelson represents an evolution of even those fine skaters, sporting a discipline that allows her to better focus that intensity into controlled, well-calculated aggression.

So even if the bar does not quite seem as high as it once was, it is still the Americans who are setting it.

On so many levels the 2014 Roller Derby World Cup was an absolute success, but interestingly, the greatest harbinger of the sport may have come in an exhibition game. On Sunday, right before the bronze and gold medal games, the Junior Roller Derby Association held an all-star game. It was a stunning bout, a shockingly well-skated game, a display of talent by teenagers who will, in time, change the sport in ways unimaginable.

From the women who trekked from every corner of six continents of the globe, to the boys and girls who left fans with jaws agape in the JRDA all-star game, perhaps the most heartening conclusion to be taken from this World Cup is that the game of roller derby—right now already healthier than it has ever been—is in unbelievably good hands.

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***For full results and links to specific team websites, visit the official World Cup website.  You can also find all the results and stats (where available) on flattrackstats.com.

***Photos courtesy of Joe Mac. Visit his blog here.

The Long Road To Nashville: How the Rideau Valley Vixens Became Canada’s First Representative at the WFTDA Championship Tournament

The Rideau Valley Vixens get lead jammer during their 224-139 semi-final win against Gold Coast at the 2014 WFTDA Division 2 playoffs. (Photo by Joe Mac)

It’s March 2013, at The Bunker in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the Rideau Valley Vixens are playing the hosts, Toronto’s CN Power, in the final game of the annual Quad City Chaos tournament. This is the fifth game between the two teams in three years, in what would have been a burgeoning rivalry had the games not all been so one-sided: Toronto had won all previous meetings by an average differential of 126 points.

There is under four minutes left on the clock and though Toronto has not run away with it as they have in previous bouts, they are up by 19 points and have led for the vast majority of the game. The Vixens have stuck with a very tight jammer rotation all weekend, barely veering from it, but suddenly Coach Adam Tasanko taps his blocker Jessica Kuehl on the helmet and hands her the star. A versatile skater, she has not jammed all game, rarely ever for the Vixens at this point, but it hardly seems to matter when the whistle blows. Lock down defense, physical jamming, 20 points and 90 seconds later and the Vixens have the lead. On another Coach’s hunch, a second blocker, Sister Disaster, is then sent out with the star to close out the game. She picks up lead and the Vixens hold on to win by 13 in what at the time would be characterized as the biggest upset in Canadian roller derby history.

While that win did not directly lead to the Vixens’ place in the 2014 WFTDA Division 2 Championship game (they didn’t even make the D2 playoffs in 2013), it was a definite and noticeable turning point. From that moment on, the team—from its long-serving and well-respected coach to its core of veteran and well-respected blockers—began to carry itself with a little more confidence, even a hint of swagger. An attitude well-earned, as it’s been a long road for the Vixens; full of obstacles and potholes, peaks and valleys, including its fair share of strife and heartbreak. But then, isn’t that what champions are made of?

In The Beginning

Roller derby is a pretty big deal in Ottawa. Despite its relatively small size (just under a million people), outside of Greater Toronto and British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, there is no region in the nation that has more active roller derby players than Canada’s capital. Spread out over three senior women’s leagues, a men’s team and a burgeoning junior program, during the spring and summer months, it’s easy to catch roller derby every weekend in the city. And while having multiple leagues is not generally conducive to on-track success (for every distinct roller derby league in a city there is probably at least one melodramatic email chain and a string of broken hearts to go with it), the Vixens have (eventually) made it work.

Roller derby in Ottawa began in late 2007, and the roots of the Vixens can be traced all the way back to a meeting at the Babylon, a hard-to-define nightclub/dive bar on Bank St. It was there that the first meeting of Ottawa Roller Derby (ORD) took place. Founded by Kelly McAlear (AKA: Honey Bee), within months the league had a team, the Bytown Blackhearts, and had struck up an integral friendship with Montreal Roller Derby, who at the time was the closest league to Ottawa.

By April 2008, the team was set to debut at the Montreal’s inaugural Beast of the East, a tournament featuring the fifteen house league teams in Ontario and Quebec at the time and filled out by Queen City’s Devil Dollies out of Buffalo. Now seen as a seminal event in the development of roller derby in the country, it would be baptism by fire for the Blackhearts who were drawn to face off against one of the co-hosts, Montreal’s La Racaille, in the opener. They would lose 65-29, but for a roster that contained many of the key early league stalwarts, including current Vixens members Hannah Murphy, Sister Disaster and Drunky Brewster, it sparked in them a lifelong love of the sport.

The Blackhearts had more success later that summer at the Virgin Suicides Brawl, a Toronto-based tournament hosted by the Greater Toronto Area Rollergirls and designed to feature new teams and inexperienced skaters (that has since been rebranded as the Fresh and the Furious). Advancing to the final, Ottawa squared off against Hammer City’s Death Row Dames and after a tense last jam, appeared to have won the tournament, only to have the win stricken down after a recounting of the scores. They lost by a single point.

Both of these early performances proved to be incredibly important team-building trips for the young team, and provided essential foundational development for the skaters. However, despite the on-track success, behind the scenes, things were tense at Ottawa Roller Derby. The early days of new roller derby leagues, existing as they do in a sport that especially in 2008 lacked consistent and reliable organizational precedents, can be tumultuous at times and there were rifts forming in the new league. Citing disagreements in organization (single-owner business vs. non profit) and competitive direction, in the fall of 2008, the Bytown Blackhearts walked away from Ottawa Roller Derby and established itself as an independent, not-for-profit roller derby team.

Roller Derby Returns to Ottawa

In a 2010 interview, Jerry Seltzer told the story of roller derby’s first foray into Ottawa in 1961. Only two years removed from taking over the reigns of roller derby from his father Leo, Jerry ventured north of the border in the winter of that year. He joked that it was on that trip that the first ever flat track game was played when the truck carrying the banked track froze in Sudbury and didn’t make it to Ottawa in time.

On January 31st, 2009, the first modern game of women’s flat track roller derby would be played in Ottawa, a full 48 years after the sport had first passed through the city. On that day, in front of a sold-out crowd, the newly independent Blackhearts would host Montreal’s very strong B-travel team, Les Sexpos, with a roster featuring some of the key figures in the eventual founding and development of Rideau Valley: DDT, Soul Rekker, Blackout Susan, Scotch Minx and Screaming Meanie Massacre all helped round out the roster that would lose that first game, 108-65. It proved a valuable learning experience, and when the team travelled to Vermont to play Green Mountain the following week, they won narrowly 136-131.

As winter 2009 played out and the Blackhearts were preparing to return to Montreal for the second annual Beast of the East tournament, further strain and disagreements with ORD forced the Blackhearts to abandon their name. However, they were able to keep the logo and, undaunted, pushed forward. Within weeks a new league was born, the Rideau Valley Roller Girls, featuring the old Blackhearts logo: a roller girl with one hand on a cocked hip and the other thrusting a still-beating heart into the air—and its first team was named: The Slaughter Daughters.

Entering the Beast of the East in 2009, most eyes were on Montreal and Hammer City, the two leagues that had dominated the earliest days of Canadian Roller Derby, but three years in, the Canadian roller derby landscape had changed considerably at this point and the tournament also featured hopeful and up-and-coming leagues from Tri-City (Kitchener-Waterloo) and London, Ontario.

While ORD’s new team Capital Carnage would get eliminated early, the Slaughter Daughters would go on to be the breakout team of the tournament, trouncing Tri-City’s Venus Fly Tramps and Forest City’s Thames Fatales before taking Montreal’s heavily favoured (and eventual finalists) Les Contrabanditas to the limit in a three-point quarterfinal loss.

It would be a launching point for the new league and within months they’d named a second house league team (the Riot Squad) and began talks to form a distinct travel team, one that could play against the newly formed travel teams in Hammer City, Montreal and Toronto.

The Vixens Come out to Play

It was snowing heavily in Toronto on February 27th, 2010, but nonetheless, ToRD’s venue at the time, The Hangar, was packed for the team’s first game of the new season. Toronto’s CN Power was preparing for a big year, and to kick things off, they were facing the newest team on Canada’s competitive travel team circuit: The Rideau Valley Vixens. The Vixens were overwhelmed on that night against their big sisters from Toronto, getting beaten 199-49; nonetheless, the game represented a new era for roller derby in Ottawa and momentum would only build from there, even while yet another league, Capital City Derby Dolls, formed in the city.

For virtually the next two years the Vixens would slog it out primarily on the road, and between one-sided losses to vastly more experienced Canadian travel teams, they would gain hard-earned road victories against WFTDA B-teams and smaller US leagues like Ithaca, Central New York, and Morristown. It was a tough, hard road that every aspiring WFTDA team goes through early on. While some never make it out, many eventually learn to thrive on the adversity and the travel. The Vixens persevered.

In June 2012, two years after the team’s debut, the Vixens would play their first WFTDA-sanctioned game on the road against Central New York. It would be a narrow loss–9 points–but would typify some of the consistency problems that the team would have in its early days in the Association (they had defeated CNY only a year before). For example, the Vixens would crush Buffalo’s Queen City by 89 points, only to turn around and lose by virtually the same score to the same team five months later. Or the 2013 upset win over CN Power would be followed by a smothering loss to the less talented New Hampshire Roller Derby.

In all, the Vixens would play thirteen games in 2013, going 7-6 for the season (6-6 in sanctioned Play) finishing 68th in the WFTDA and just outside of the Division 2 playoffs. But there was undeniably a new, single-minded competitive focus on the team and in the league, starting with the desire for many of the skaters to begin playing under their real names (at least at the WFTDA level) and the formation of a B-level travel team (the Sirens) that would become a key breeding ground for future Vixens. Similarly, in the 2013 off-season a new home team would be formed (The Prime Sinisters) and all three rosters would be shaken up to help create parity at the house league level in hopes of raising the league’s competitive level as a whole.

The Vixens began the 2014 season with a pre-season, non-sanctioned game against Alliston, Ontario’s, Misfit Militia, largely considered Canada’s top non-WFTDA team, and they’d win the scrappy affair, kicking off a five-game WFTDA winning streak that would see them solidify their Division 2 Playoff spot. They’d end up 7-1 on the season (6-1 in sanctioned play to improve 21 spots in the ranking to 47th) with only a late-season upset loss to Calgary spoiling their perfect record—but the loss provided a healthy late-season shot in the arm to refocus them for the playoffs.

The team was drawn to play in the Kitchener-Waterloo D-2 tournament, and in August became the first Canadian team to play a WFTDA playoff game on home soil. And they did not disappoint.

In one of the closest playoff tournaments in the WFTDA’s history, the Rideau Valley Vixens would be the outliers, dominating their quarterfinal and semifinal games (the 89 and 105 point differentials were the two largest of the tournament—only two other games all weekend had differentials higher than 50). When they squared off against Bear City Roller Derby’s Berlin Bombshells in the final, they would be part of history as one half of the first ever all-international WFTDA tournament final. It would, of course, go down as one of the great tournament finals in history as well, when the Vixens were able to hold on to a narrow lead in a frantic and thrilling last jam, getting outscored 20-18, but holding on for the three-point win and a berth in the Division 2 final against the legendary Detroit Derby Girls.

To Nashville and Beyond!

In 2014 the Rideau Valley Roller Girls have emerged from a potentially fractious Ottawa flat track scene to become one of the nation’s most competitive and successful leagues.

They currently have five skaters on Team Ontario (Murphy, Bottema, Margaret Choke, Soul Rekker and Sister Disaster—not to mention that Brennan, H.P. Lovecrash, and Melanie Austin are alternates); also, Soul Rekker and Murphy have both been on the national squad since 2011. In 2014, the league had its first house league regular season and championship (won by the Prime Sinisters), while its B-team continued to develop and extended its travel to outside of Canada (into Ohio and New York State). This all coming off of the Slaughter Daughters’ three-year run as the top house league team in the Canadian derbyverse, a run that included three straight appearances in the Beast of the East final, two of which they won. And now, of course, they have qualified for the WFTDA D2 championship game.

This Vixen’s roster is one that is built to win, and built to win now. They play a short bench relying on a few carefully crafted lines, and stick to tight jammer rotations. For example, in their playoff tournament, the team travelled with only 12 skaters, three who exclusively jammed. Of the nine remaining, seven of them played between 46% and 60% of the total jams in the tournament: basically two lines in an on-off rotation. Aside from a few star passes, their three primary jammers (Soul Rekker, Shania Pain, and Melanie Austin[Tatious]) jammed all but one of the team’s total jams on the weekend. All three of the jammers had strong weekends with Rekker scoring 345 points (second at the tournament) on 6.5 points per jam and a 66% lead percentage (both of which were tops on the weekend). Shania Pain finished fifth in scoring and recorded a 56% lead percentage. AustinTatious also cracked 50% (51.3%) and averaged a solid 42 points per game.

The roster is a strong mix of homegrown talent and well-integrated transfers. Four members of the charter (Murphy, Sister Disaster, Soul Rekker, and Da Big Block) remain from the Vixen’s very first game in Toronto in 2010, while another, Drunky Brewster, has become the bench manager. The team also features other homegrown talent in blockers (including Margaret Choke, Jane Rudolph, and Bottema) and jammers (AustinTatious). But some transfers are key as well. It’s been a few years since Brennan joined the league from Gainesville, Florida, while BlackeyE seems to have finally found a perfect fit after stints in Kingston and Toronto. Perhaps the biggest addition of the season has been jammer Shania Pain. Originally having learned her derby in the Yukon, Pain just completed her first season with the Vixens despite the challenge of studying in Saint John, New Brunswick, for the vast majority of the year. Although she missed a few games this season, she was incredibly impactful when present.

In Nashville on Sunday, November 1, 2014, the Rideau Valley Vixens will make history when they face off against Detroit for the D2 championship: it will be the first time that an international team will compete for a WFTDA title. Detroit will pose the biggest challenge that the team will have faced this season.

On a post on the Rideau Valley Roller Girls website after the tournament win in Kitchener-Waterloo, Coach Adam cited the biggest strength of the team as being their mental game, which has grown noticeably over the past few seasons: “I am beyond impressed with the mental fortitude and focus the team displayed,” he said. “We upped our mental game ten-fold and avoided every possible meltdown on the bench and on the track.”

It is true that there is something different about this Vixens team. You can see it in the focus of their gazes. It is the look of a team that has confidence in themselves and each other. It is the look of a team that is unified in its single-minded determination to win.

It has been a long, challenging road for the Rideau Valley Roller Girls and their Vixens, and even though it’s just one stop of many on a road that will continue long after this season, this particular one in Nashville has all the feel of being a bigger stop than most.

**Read the Nerd’s recap of Rideau Valley’s Division 2 tournament win here.