It’s Tuesday night at the Gotham Girls’ practice space in Bushwick, and the trademark attributes of the championship women’s roller-derby team are on full display: the spirited camaraderie, the marriage of controlled aggression and graceful athleticism, the playfully aggro monikers like Harm’s Way and Crow Magnum.
“Tank! Filthy! Maulin’!” is the roll call as the coach directs players to line up for a speed drill.
What’s not in evidence are any actual Gotham Girls — or, for the most part, any women at all. This is the New York Shock Exchange, the city’s first and only men’s roller-derby outfit.
If you didn’t realize men played roller derby — a frenetic, bruising game skated on a circular track — you’re in good company. Although women’s teams such as the Gotham Girls, which is 9-years-old, have drawn buzz and enthusiastic fan bases over the past decade, the men’s teams that have grown up in their shadow remain more obscure.
“It’s the fringe of a fringe sport,” says Peter Eide, a k a Ladies’ Knight, 41, who’s skated with the Shock Exchange for three years. That’s starting to change, though, he says: “People are slowly understanding that we exist and that men’s derby is a real sport.”
And the number of men strapping on skates is booming. When the Shock Exchange played its first match in 2007, it was one of only three teams in existence. Today the Men’s Roller Derby Association counts 31 member teams (typically called leagues, as they comprise various sub-teams) in the US, from Baltimore’s Harm City Homicide to the Green Bay Smackers. Teams have also sprung up in Europe, Australia, Canada and Mexico.
“There’s been this huge, expansive growth,” says Shock Exchange captain Jonathan Rockey, 30. “What started as a few guys getting together and starting teams is becoming a worldwide phenomenon.”
Nobody has done more to make that happen than Rockey, a lanky middle-school science teacher with a cheerful intensity, who started the Shock Exchange back in 2006, while working as a coach and referee for the Gotham Girls. A Chicago-area native who, as a teen, had competed in the obscure sport of artistic roller skating, Rockey was excited to see women’s derby emerge and offered his services to the team. When he learned there was a men’s team in Massachusetts and saw a video of them scrimmaging, “It was go time,” he says.
He spread the word through women’s-derby channels, recruited online and tapped friends. And five months later, the New York Shock Exchange played the first men’s roller-derby match in modern history, defeating the Pioneer Valley (Mass.) Dirty Dozen 109-51.
Things grew quickly. By 2010 there were 11 member leagues in the newly founded MRDA, and the first playoffs were held in Maryland, with the Shock Exchange emerging as champs.
Some 35 players now skate for the league, which comprises both an A team, the Shock Exchange, and a B team, the Dow Jones Average. For games they travel a circuit reaching north to the Mohawk Valley and south to Baltimore, though they’ve also competed in the Midwest, Northwest, Texas and Canada.
While men’s derby is blossoming, the road hasn’t been without bumps. One initial obstacle was being taken seriously playing a “women’s sport” — “We’ve had to deal with perceptions,” as Eide puts it.
Another was antipathy on the part of some female skaters who weren’t thrilled at the idea of men muscling onto their turf.
“I’m sure some women have a problem with it,” says Gotham Girls vice president Natily Blair, a k a Ginger Snap. But she’s quick to say that she and many others welcome the guys and calls it good for the sport. (Her own husband once played for the Shock Exchange, and quite a few current players have wives or girlfriends who play for the Gotham Girls.)
Another challenge has been fielding players, which is partly a matter of getting the word out that men’s derby exists.
“Recruiting takes a ton of our energy,” says Eide.
To that end, the Shock Exchange held its first open tryout in January, at which Rockey and coach John Wyatt (a k a Abe Drinkin), a 33-year-old who works for a software company, led a group of aspiring players through various maneuvers — blocking, hip-checking, the T-stop, the “turnaround toe stop.”
It takes three to six months for a newbie to get up to speed, though having experience with sports such as hockey, wrestling or rugby can give you a leg up. Plenty of recruits have never skated before.
“I was shocked when I realized how bad my skating was,” says Roland Ballaster, a k a Roly Ramone, a Fort Greene resident who joined up after being “mesmerized” by a Gotham Girls game. “You think, ‘I’ll never be able to do this,’ but everyone’s extremely supportive.”
For Will “Willverine” Quinnell, a longtime hockey player, the skating came fairly easy, but he still figures it was six months before he felt confident playing the hard-charging game. “It just feels like chaos at first,” he says.
While they may be little known on their home turf, with two US championships the Shock Exchange are something of a powerhouse in men’s derby circles. When a group traveled to England in November, invited by a few nascent teams there to scrimmage and offer workshops, “They treated us like superstars,” says Quinnell. “It was almost weird.”
International renown aside, the league remains a strictly DIY operation, and many players have dual roles: Eide is the team’s marketer, Wyatt coaches, Quinnell has done fund-raising.
One ongoing headache is finding a steady venue for hometown matches. Previously the team has hosted games on Long Island, in Yonkers and at the Abe Stark rink in Coney Island, where they hope to play in the coming year.
The players’ average age is about 30, and quite a few work in arts-related fields (Eide is an artist, Ballaster works in film and TV production, Quinnell is a sound engineer). But “it’s all over the place — from blue-collar to white-collar, 19-year-old kids to guys in their 40s and 50s,” says recent recruit Thomas Rudary, a k a Tank Lloyd Wright, himself 31 and an architect.
One common thread, says Ballaster, is a sensibility that’s “a little left of center,” and Quinnell concurs: “One thing that brings everyone together is that we didn’t quite fit in to other arenas,” he says. “Growing up I was always an athlete, but I didn’t have that jock mentality. With this, we all get each other.”
The camaraderie is a big draw, players say unanimously. The conditioning is another plus — though in addition to the chance to get knocked into shape there’s also the chance to get knocked around.
“It’s not a skate to the oldies kind of thing,” says Ballaster, and fractures and broken collarbones aren’t unheard of.
But it’s a price worth paying, says Eide, who notes that the intensity of the play ought to quiet anyone who sees the guys as dilettantes dabbling in a woman’s game.
“The level of competition is totally insane,” he says.
The NY Shock Exchange play their season opener against the Montreal Mont Royals on April 6, at the Police Athletic League in Yonkers.
Don’t know a jammer from a jam sandwich? For the uninitiated, roller derby works like this:
Each team has five skaters in play, four blockers and a jammer, who wears a star on his helmet. There are two 30-minute periods, broken up into two-minute “jams.” These are essentially races between the two jammers, who attempt to pass the other team’s blockers, loop them on the track and then pass them again; after the first loop they score a point for each blocker they pass.
While there’s plenty of contact, it’s no free-for-all — tripping, grabbing, elbow-swinging, hitting from behind and any number of other actions will land the transgressor in the penalty box.