New Thing #204--Roll With It

Tonight I crossed one of my original Things off my list when I went to a roller derby meet.

The Arch Rival Roller Girls is a flat-track roller derby league that has three teams in St. Louis. This is their third season. Tonight's meet featured the M-80s vs. the Smashinistas.

The doors opened an hour before the meet started. I couldn't believe how many cars were already in the lot when we arrived! However, there were a lot of good seats available--at either end of the track--by time we made our way inside. We ended up in the M-80s section, and sat at a tall table with bar stools in the back. The crowd was a good mixture of young and old, with some families also in attendance.

Since I'd never been to a roller derby meet, I was unfamiliar with everything about the game. However, there was a great explanation of the rules in the program, along with a list of illegal moves and a chart of referee signals.

All of the players had stage names, many of which were horrible puns. My favorites were "Chokehold Chanel (whose number was No 5)", "Riddle Lynn (number 30 mg)" and "Overland Offender (her number was 63114-the zip code for that area)". The Smashinistas uniforms were cammo with pink accents, and the M-80s wore uniforms that were red and black. All the players wore helmets and knee pads. Once the meet started, the players skated so quickly that the uniform was sometimes the only way to tell the teams apart. After a couple of minutes, though, I figured things out and could intelligently root for my team.

The M80s fell behind quickly, but rallied and won the game. They get to play in the league championship in October.