Sacramento Roller Derby teams celebrate a new home as women find power on a roll

Nessa Weiner was 10 when she read “Roller Girl,” about skaters who had fun and were not afraid of falling. It looked like a world she wanted to belong to, so Nessa took up roller derby.

Now 13-year-old Nessa skates in Land Park instead of derby competitions, where she skates as “Slip-N-Slide.” The pandemic paused many aspects of regular life — and for Nessa and others who play for Sacramento’s junior and adult roller derby clubs, that’s meant no games.

Yet the down time comes with an upside. When play reopens, Sacramento Roller Derby will have a $1.5 million new home, courtesy of an anonymous donor. Players hope the donation will put Sacramento on the map for skating tournaments in the fast-growing sport of women’s flat track roller derby.

The tale of how Sacramento’s club went from being on the brink of being homeless to one of the few in the country with its own facility reflects the story of a counter-culture women’s sport that’s defied the odds since the Great Depression.

Sacramento’s top team

Here’s the thing to know about Sacramento Roller Derby: They are good. As in ranked-in-the-top-10-percent-internationally good. With about 120 players at the adult level who compete on six different teams, another 40 junior players who have two teams of their own, there’s a lot of derby crash and bash happening.

Sacramento Roller Derby is the fourth-best club in California and ranked 51st in the world.

But being good in roller derby doesn’t usually translate to money. Most clubs rely on volunteers, ticket sales, dues and cheap rent. Before the pandemic, that model worked for places like Sacramento Roller Derby, where games were often standing room-only in a warehouse about a mile from the State Capitol.

With no play, teams everywhere lost income, said Erica Vanstone, chief executive officer of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the sport’s governing body. Gotham Roller Derby of New York City, third-ranked in the world, moved to a virtual presence last month while they regroup financially, no longer able to afford rent.

Sacramento Roller Derby almost faced the same situation.

‘Derby Angel’

Sacramento’s longtime home was a beloved but run-down building on North C Street with no heating or air conditioning. When the club’s landlord gave them notice they had to go, the pressure was on.

Just before the pandemic struck, the club found a new warehouse around the corner that perfectly fit their needs, said Amanda “LOLz Lemon” Dunham, 31, Sacramento Roller Derby’s executive director.

The club’s expansive new home feels like part garage, part indoor field, with concrete underfoot instead of turf. One recent, warm afternoon, the building was quiet and cool inside while Dunham pointed out where walls were removed and where more construction remains.

“I can’t wait until we can have a house of screaming fans and excited players,” she said.

Time, patience and significant fundraising lie ahead to outfit the building for their vision. Sacramento’s Lionakis architecture firm is overseeing renovations.

But the most pivotal piece – owning the building – is behind them. Funds came from an anonymous fan affectionately referred to as “our Derby Angel.”

“We are really lucky,” said Dunham. “This is a donor who loves what we do for the community. They understand that sports are not just about physical activity, sports also help people change and grow.”

A Place for Every Body

Jackie England-Chadwick, a health care project manager and mother of two, was mesmerized the first time she watched a roller derby game in Sacramento.

“I thought, ‘This looks super cool,’” immediately followed by, “I could never do that,” she said.

Like a number of women on the team, England-Chadwick, 44, essentially dared herself to try derby and found it offered useful skills off the track. She rose from novice to competitive player through the league’s “Derby 101” training program, where anyone can learn to skate and play. She now coaches junior players about resilience.

“I tell them, if you’re not falling, you’re not trying hard enough,” she said.

Derby players talk a lot about the body positivity in their sport, which needs players of different sizes and shapes. Small players (jammers) are needed to sprint and score; larger players (blockers) play offense and defense.

“It’s easy to get pigeonholed in sports based on whether you’re tall enough or small enough, but that’s not a thing in roller derby,” said Judy “Rhodes Warrior” Licciardello, 33, who met her referee husband playing derby. “You figure out how to use your size to your advantage.”

‘Taking up Space’

A crucial part of playing derby is creating tight formations so opponents can’t pass. Doing that on wheels is hard. Cracks open up where opponents can squeeze through and score. The strategy is for skaters to become their full size, expanding to take up space.

It applies in life, too.

“The concept of women having to shrink themselves for other people is pretty commonplace,” said player Michelle “HamCat” Huey, 29, a crisis counselor. “I think women are taught to not make waves. Like they should move out of the way for other people and be a support.

“With roller derby,” Huey said, “we are the ones moving people out of the way. Here are a bunch of women who are unapologetically taking up space and being themselves. It really appealed to me.”

Marissa “Siggy Skulldust” Krull, a 36-year-old nurse and mother of two, put it this way: “I found my power in roller derby. … I realized how strong I actually was.”

Fishnets and Feminism

From the outset, roller derby defied social expectations of femininity.

“It’s always had an edge,” Michella Marino, a historian with a forthcoming book, “Roller Derby: The History of An American Sport,” said in a phone interview.

Derby grew out of co-ed skate-a-thons that offered inexpensive entertainment in the Great Depression. When skaters collided, fans perked up. So promoters wrote new rules for what the crowd apparently wanted to see: a full-contact sport on wheels. Men and women played, but all-women teams dominated.

By the mid-1950s, derby was the third most-watched sport on TV, Marino said. Sold-out “bouts” played venues like Madison Square Garden, and locally, Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium and old Edmonds Field.

By the 1970s, derby faded. Three decades later, a rebirth with a feminist feel unfolded in Austin, Texas, and quickly spread to cities including Sacramento.

Flat Track Reboot

Revamped roller derby had some new fundamentals.

Instead of using a banked track, it was played on flat ground. It also had a campier feel. Pun-filled nicknames abounded, with players bending gender stereotypes by donning “feminine” costumes (think short skirts and fishnets) alongside “tough” game-time war paint.

“You see somebody who’s dressed in a super feminine way go out there and kick some butt,” said Sacramento player England-Chadwick. ‘It’s like, ‘Oh, you think I’m a little girl? Watch me take you out.’”

The game is played with two teams of five. To score, one player per team must skate past opponents. As in football, derby skaters use formations to prevent opposing skaters from advancing and to clear a path for their own teammate to score. (See sidebar on how the game is played).

By 2005, Sacramento debuted Sac City Rollers and Sacred City Derby Girls, which merged in 2018. People who study roller derby (and it turns out there are quite a few) say the merger was prescient. It enabled the resulting Sacramento Roller Derby to pool resources and talent, and better weather the unexpected (a pandemic, for example).

The next challenge will be getting the league’s new facility ready for practices, which Dunham hopes will happen this fall.

Looking to the Future

While she waits for roller derby competitions to begin, Nessa, the seventh-grade junior derby player, is keeping up her chops by skating on streets and in parks.

“Knowing that derby will be there when things open up again is something that’s helped us get through this past year,” said Nessa’s mother, Vicki Weiner. “It’s been a huge sanity-saver.”

As for Nessa, who zigzagged in and out of pylons one recent evening in Land Park on skates, she’s planning for the new facility to be in her future for a long time – after she graduates from junior derby and into adult derby.

“I just didn’t realize you could play a sport where you could knock into people and still be friends,” she said. “It’s a really cool game.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.