For area roller derby girls, it's knock 'n' roll

EVERETT -- Once they were all sugar and spice, but then they grew up and became Jet City Rollergirls.

And these days, sweetness is not their thing.

Yes, there are hair ribbons and some makeup, and most wear fancy stockings, but the game-night gentility pretty much ends right there. Because this is roller derby, meaning there's sure to be some bone-jarrin', head-bangin', shoulder-slammin' mayhem.

And along the way they'll clobber a few gender stereotypes, too. Like the one that suggests females don't enjoy contact sports.

Oh, really? For a Saturday night event at Edmonds Community College, some 60 women showed up, all of them itching for a little rough and tumble.

Why? Well, why not?

"What other sports can you crash into people?" asked 34-year-old Tryssa Neumann of Everett.

"And still look cute," chimed in Jamie Taylor, 29, also of Everett.

You really need to see this to believe it. And those who do come to watch -- family and friends, mostly, but also wannabes and even the simply curious -- seem to love it. Saturday night's event in the Edmonds CC gym was sold out weeks in advance.

The Rollergirls, who are in their first full season, include women of all sizes, backgrounds, athletic abilities, personalities and occupations. The age range is from 21 up to a few in their late 40s.

"It's an amazing melting pot of all different types of women," said Taylor, a paralegal by day. "We're all different types of people, but we have that common love of derby."

The league has four teams -- Pink Pistols, Hula Honeys, Camaro Harem and Carn Evil -- but they participate in a joint practice once a week. There is also a league travel team comprised of top players from the four squads, and that team is headed to Spokane next month for an event.

There is, obviously, a theatrical side to all this. Every athlete competes using a roller derby alias, so you have to watch out for Ivana Hercha, Anna Mosity, Audrey Headburn, Minnie Pearl Harbor and Beelzababe. Also, some women embellish their uniforms -- please, don't call them costumes -- with little frills. Others apply a bevy of paint-on tattoos.

But when the game begins, it's strictly sport.

"The show aspect of roller derby is just part of the fun," said 31-year-old Thea Starr of Woodinville, the league founder who competes as Nova Payne. "It adds a little showmanship to what we do and sets us apart from intramural softball."

But the game itself "is 100 percent real," she said. "That's all real blood out there on the flat track."

While roller derby is not the National Football League, it's certainly more violent than, say, rec-league soccer. Bruises become badges of honor -- some players are asked to sign the black-and-blue marks they inflict -- but more serious injuries are also common.

Neumann, a planner at an aerospace machine shop who competes as Trixxxie's Trash'n Em, has broken a finger, needed surgery in one knee and has torn meniscus in the other. Taylor, a roller derby speedster known as Precious N Metal, has a plate and six screws in her ankle. And 29-year-old Kirstin Mueller of Everett, a physical therapist who dons skates and becomes Molly Python, tore her posterior cruciate ligament last fall.

"There are a few girls who, when they hit you, you feel your whole skeleton shake," said Starr, an accountant turned seamstress and a mother of four. "So you are putting yourself in danger, and it takes a special person to want to do it. But it's so much fun to play the game. It's a sport that makes everybody keep coming back for more."

A big reason for that, she admitted, is the contact.

"It's kind of therapeutic in a way, and I think that's a common thread with a lot of the girls," Starr said. "There's a weird little animal instinct we all have. We just want to hit. And this is kind of civilized hitting, in a way."

"When I was out with my knee, I was actually depressed," said Neumann, who has twin 7-year-old daughters. "This is that much fun. And then the crowds come and see you, and you hear them rooting for you."

"I put in my 40 hours a week at the hospital," agreed Mueller, the physical therapist. "But this is what really gets me pumped up. I mean, I love my job, but if I could just do this I'd be so happy."

"I work in an office," said Taylor, the paralegal, "and derby is an opportunity for me to express that part of myself that I don't get to do in my everyday life. It's an outlet for this part of my personality to come out."

There is also a bond of friendship, even among players from rival teams.

"There's nothing like a group of women getting together and sweating and bleeding and beating the crap out of each other, and then hugging afterward," Taylor said. "When you go through pain together … a different kind of thing happens than when you're just playing softball.

"There's a camaraderie," she said. "And a big part of derby is sisterhood. It's by women, for women."