Adelaide Roller Derby celebrates 10 years of hard-hitting fun at Wayville’s Adelaide Showground
A DECADE ago, a motley crew of sporting misfits gathered at the Parks Recreation Centre, laced up their rollerskates and stepped onto the hardwood floor. Today they are a force to be reckoned with.
A DECADE ago, a motley crew of sporting misfits gathered at the Parks Recreation Centre, laced up their rollerskates and stepped onto the hardwood floor.
The dozen or so women were part of history – it was Adelaide’s first venture into the rough-and-tumble world of roller derby.
But there was a problem.
“None of us could really skate,” laughs Georgina Pearce, who was there that first night in Angle Park.
“We were terrible.”
In the years since those chaotic early days, the motley crew has grown, the skating skills refined and a league – Adelaide Roller Derby (ADRD) – created and firmly established among the city’s kaleidoscopic sporting landscape.
As the now-home of ADRD – Wayville’s Adelaide Showground – prepares to host the pointy end of the league’s 10th season, the Eastern Courier Messenger chatted with players about the all-female sport’s formative years in SA.
The roots of roller derby can be traced to the early 2000s in Austin, Texas, when the popular US pastime of roller skating was adapted into a full-contact sport.
The games – or bouts – involve two teams of five skaters, including a designated “jammer”, who scores points by lapping members of the opposing team as they scoot around an oval-shaped rink.
The role of the other players – the “pack” – is to block the opposition “jammer” while simultaneously shielding their own.
Confused?
You are not alone, says Pearce.
“It started here when a girl from Austin came over to Adelaide and she was advertising at this roller disco I was at,” the 37-year-old recalls.
“She held this information night and tried to explain the rules.
“After a while someone put their hand up and was like ‘umm, like, what is the actual sport – what are we doing?’.”
By the end of 2007, ADRD was formed with enough players to hold regular matches, including interstate bouts against Victoria.
Pearce says players came from all walks of life, but many, like her, had never played team sports before they laced up the skates.
“A lot of people say that roller derby saved their soul,” says Pearce, a mother-of-two who works as a youth officer at Playford Council.
“You can be a librarian or a stay-at-home mum, but when you hit the derby track you can be as brutal as you want to be.
“For many people, it is their happy place.”
As interest grew, the league added teams and spawned new competitions in Gawler and Mt Barker.
It also started hosting tournaments for junior skaters to hone their skills before stepping up to the big leagues.
Tayla Wilkinson saw her first bout as an nine-year-old at Adelaide Showground and was immediately “obsessed”.
“I’ve tried lots of sports but I would only do a one or two-year stint – I have never left roller derby,” says Wilkinson, now 19.
“There are lots of people that are super-insecure at my age but, in this sport, it does not matter if you are big or small, you can excel no matter what.”
Wilkinson, who is studying nursing, sits on one of the league’s committees, as is required in the entirely player-run competition.
Roller derby has no governing body, per se, and there are no coaches, administrators or corporate sponsors.
It is one of the sport’s many quirks, another being the players’ nicknames.
Each skater chooses their own moniker to which they became almost exclusively known – on and off the rink.
Wilkinson is “QT”, because she is “a pretty sweet person”, while Pearce is known as “Violent-Krumble”.
Pearce says derby names are so entrenched that she does not know the real names of some of her nearest and dearest.
“We played in Victoria once and one of our players went to hospital and when we visited we realised we didn’t actually know her name,” laughs Pearce.
On Sunday, the league’s four teams – Pearce’s Road Train Rollers, Wilkinson’s Mile Die Club, the Wild Hearses and Salty Dolls – will do battle in the last minor round matches before the grand final on August 5.
A month later, the league’s 100-plus players, along with supporters, will gather at the Grand Lodge of Freemasons on North Tce for ADRD’s 10th anniversary celebrations.
The gala ball will offer a moment to reflect on those hectic first nights at Angle Park, and to ponder what the future might hold for the sport in SA.
“The sport is really growing and I hope that one day it will be like football, where different neighbourhoods have their own teams,” Pearce says.
Adelaide Roller Derby’s grand final is from 4pm on Saturday, August 5, at Adelaide Showground.
Tickets from $14 at adrd.oztix.com.au