Roller derby is a full-contact team sport played on roller skates . It is played on a flat, looping track.
Play.
Two teams of five skaters compete in a roller derby match, called a bout. Each team fields one jammer and four blockers. Jammers score points for their team by skating around the track and passing opponents. Blockers form a pack, blocking the other team’s jammer and clearing a path for their own.
The teams play two 30-minute periods divided into jams. Jammers start each jam behind the pack of blockers, breaking through once play begins. The first jammer to get ahead of the pack becomes the lead jammer. After a jammer passes all the other players once, the jammer earns a point for each subsequent (following) player passed. Jams last two minutes. The lead jammer can also end a jam early, signalling by tapping the hands on the hips multiple times.
Players wear safety equipment, including elbow pads, helmets, kneepads, mouth guards, and wrist guards. Jammers wear a special covering on their helmets marked with a star. A blocker designated as the pivot wears a stripe on the helmet. The current jammer can pass the star to the pivot. The pivot then becomes the new jammer and can go on to score points.
Games are officiated by three to seven referees, who also wear skates. Other officials not on skates keep track of time, penalties, and the score. Players can be sent to the penalty box for such violations as leaving the track, striking an opponent with the elbow, or striking opponents in vulnerable (easily hurt) parts of the body, including the back, the head and neck, and the legs below mid-thigh.
History.
The term roller derby first referred to roller skate races in the 1920’s. The first roller derby exhibition premiered in 1935 in Chicago. It was organized by Leo Seltzer, an American event promoter. He had two-person teams—each made up of one man and one woman—skate 57,000 laps on a flat track. The race distance was billed as that of the United States from coast to coast—about 2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers).
Seltzer transformed roller derby in 1937 with the help of the American sportswriter Damon Runyon. Seltzer and Runyon introduced the element of full-body contact and the rules of the game. Games were played on a banked track and included an element of theatricality (staged spectacle). The sport became popular when it was televised from the 1960’s until the mid-1970’s. Later promoters tried and failed to revive the sport by introducing storylines and gimmicks similar to those used in professional wrestling .
A group of women in Austin, Texas, reinvented roller derby in 2001 as an all-female sport. They moved the game to a flat track, and formed a league called the Texas Rollergirls. Flat track roller derby grew rapidly in popularity, in part because it could be played anywhere a track could be marked out, rather than requiring a special, banked course. The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), originally called the United Leagues Coalition, was established in 2004. The WFTDA includes flat track roller derby leagues in many countries.
Today, many roller derby teams remain all female. Some teams are all male or include both sexes. No matter the makeup of the team, all play by the same rules on the same courts. Most players skate under a “skate name,” or nickname. Skate names reflect the player’s creativity. They are often humorous, involving play on words, and suggest images of confidence and strength. The game thus retains some of its spectacle, though it has developed into a serious athletic sport.
