I updated the “My Work” page with a link to the article I wrote about New Jersey-based roller derby, in case you’re interested in checking it out.
If there is a sport I was healthy and badass enough to participate in, it would be roller derby.
I spent a year or so traveling to games all over New Jersey and Pennsylvania (the pictures taken above come from a tournament held in PA). And what I saw were players working together to come up with strategies and score points. They were athletes; either starting out as “fresh meat” or seasoned veterans of the sport. And like any sport, there were rivalries and in-fighting, players splitting off to form new teams, gossip. But I never once got the impression that these people (they were women, men, transgender) didn’t take the sport seriously. Any professional wrestling-type vibe is fading away, fast. There is discussion of making it an Olympic sport – at least on an exhibition level.
And there’s this:
Those are kids, they play co-ed, and they are awesome.
