At a bar with a bunch of friends last night, I briefly bumped into a skater from our local full-contact league. I mentioned that we'd met before and named a few skaters from my league that had been there. "Oh, yeah. They do rec," she said, perhaps a little bit dismissively. Or maybe I only heard it that way.
I'd like to say first that I really like the skaters of FCDG. They do full-contact, kick-ass derby. They're smart. They're hot. I'm planning on celebrating my birthday by taking a crowd out to one of their games, because they usually bout in early October. The following is in no way a critique of FCDG or full-contact derby, because I like both of those things.
I play recreational roller derby. I play low-contact roller derby. And I play it with strong, committed women who are in LOCO because they love the sport. Some of them are moms who prefer to have a lower risk of injury because it's hard to chase after a toddler when you're on crutches. Some don't have the time to commit to the practice requirements that full-contact has for very good reasons. Some are still learning to skate and want to do so in a low-contact environment. Some transition to full-contact leagues when time and intentions permit. Some are out for the athleticism and women-positive environment and beer and just want to scrimmage. Personally, I came to LOCO not knowing how to skate, not sure how I felt about contact, not sure how much time I would be able to commit as a grad student. And, some ten months later, I love LOCO.
I love the women. I love the dudes. I love learning in a supportive environment and knowing these folk are my league-mates first and my team-mates or opposing team members second (except perhaps on the day of the actual bout, but fine). I love LOCO because I love derby.
And that's it, really. Whether you play full-contact, competitive derby or low-contact, recreational derby, you play because you love the sport. There's absolutely no reason for full-contact and low-contact leagues to not get along, to not put asses in seats on each others' bout days, to not support each other because the sport depends on strong leagues and on strong players, not on silly divisiveness.
The question seems to be whether low-contact leagues exist somehow to the detriment of full-contact leagues. Do we steal potential players? Hell no. If a player wants full-contact, she will skate towards it with a happy hip check at the ready. Do we dilute the sport? No, we spread it. We make it even more accessible, we swell the ranks of derby volunteers and players, who in my experience are as jazzed to volunteer at a LOCO game as they are to offer their services up to, say, the fabulous Rollergettes in Toronto. Is low-contact not "real" derby? Purism doesn't help the sport, because otherwise, the following starts happening: flat-track is not "real" derby" because "real" derby is on a banked track. The sport re-started in Texas in 2001 is not "real" derby because "real" derby is the co-ed endurance skating sport started in 1935. This kind of thinking is reductive and it hurts the sport and the people who play it.
Yet despite our best intentions, an awkwardness sometimes remains. Perhaps because derby sometimes feels like an outsider sport, we're leery of other derby players who don't skate with us, who don't pay dues to our league, who we haven't seen in their (or our) skivvies. I do think the split between full-contact players and low-contact players stems from things that aren't really about the health of the sport. And we're better than that - the success of roller derby as a fun, popular sport needs us to be better than that, on all sides.
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