Sweet & Sassy Roller Dames Take The Rink

With a name like Aieta Yuhout, it’s got to be good.

By Kristin Torres

Published March 14, 2008

It’s 8:30 on a Wednesday night at Empire Roller Rink. Inside, the COMO Derby Dames are strapping on their wheels in preparation for practice. Some girls talk and some whisper, the loudest noise in the room is that of Velcro pads being adjusted and re-adjusted on elbows and knees.

The silence doesn’t last long.

“Come on out, the rink is fine!” said Adriene Weller, better known by her derby name, Bitchie Valens. “For every minute you waste, God kills a puppy.”

She skates in circles around the rink, spouting rallying cries to fellow women still lagging behind.

Skates secured, the girls jolt onto the rink and line up against a blank, white wall. Suddenly, the wall is transformed into a canvas of neon fishnets, skull bandanas, argyle socks, pirate stockings and ponytails.

The women look like less-poised ballerinas, with the mouth guards and bruises to prove they know their way around a rink.

After a series of warm-ups and exercises, Weller instructs the girls to practice their skating. With that, the girls dash around the rink at their peak speeds, grunt, groan and fall. One girl belches.

This continues for a while. As the girls skate, some link arms, pat each other on the back, exchange high fives and offer encouraging words. The sound of rolling wheels hitting the hardwood rink makes a low, murmuring mumble.

Only Weller herself punctuates the sound now and then, keeping the girls on their feet and at their best.

“Go with the ball of your foot,” she said. “Notice I didn’t say balls. There’s no balls in roller derby.”

From inside the rink, one girl said, “Except for in the middle of the track.” A cluster of referees huddle, inhabiting the middle of the rink. The refs are male, female, tall, short, wearing pants, seemingly not wearing pants, young and old.

Take Dennis Patterson, or Chase Keester as he’s known when he refs. While he won’t reveal his age, he proudly said more than once he’s “the only ref on Medicare.”

Now and then the refs scatter around the track, talking to the girls about bands they missed over the weekend and updating each other about injuries.

The conversations are cut short.

“All right, let’s stop,” Weller said.

The girls brake. And in a sloppily synchronized twist, their screeching wheels turn them around in swiveling unison.

Skirts flail. Mouth guards hang limply attached to helmets. The skaters are now focused on Weller, ready for advice as they catch their breath.

But Weller is no team captain.

“But I’m one of the first members,” she said. “They let me have my myth of power. I’m kind of the emperor with no clothes.”

It’s only right that she should get a little respect.

Weller is a founding member of what is today the COMO Derby Dames, a league partially spawned by a few chance TV viewings and a group of girls willing to revive the full-contact sport in Columbia.

“The first time I saw derby was on an old show called Rollerjam,” Weller said. “I looked at what they were doing and knew I could do it. Unfortunately, I was a bit young at the time and quickly distracted by competitive swimming and punk rock.”

Later, Weller came to Columbia, burned out on competitive swimming and in need of something to do. After watching the A&E series “Rollergirls,” Weller gained both a new inspiration and an excuse to start something different.

“I still needed something to fill that hole,” she said.

So she started campaigning.

“I started going to the public skates at the rink pretty regularly and talking to friends to gauge interest,” she said.

She and a few friends banded together, contacted the owners of Empire Roller Rink and set up shop.

With that, the league officially got its start in January 2006. Its first practice wasn’t exactly the organized, sleek skating experience seen on TV.

“We wore jeans, fell down a lot and basically tried to get our wheels under us,” Weller said. “In other words, we had no idea what we were doing.”

A lot of girls, at first skate, don’t either.

“Most of our girls had very little skating experience before they joined the league,” league member Melissa Stemme said.

Shana Woody didn’t know what she was getting into when she first heard about derby, but she has spent the past month developing skate legs and bonding with the team.

At first, Woody said, “I was like, ‘What the hell is roller derby?’” Woody, a mom, soon found out it had serious benefits. “What mom wouldn’t want a little aggression release?”

The league is home to a host of moms, soon-to-be moms, college students, graduate students and plenty of in-betweens.

“We’re working-class women,” Stemme said. “We welcome anyone who wants to be involved.”

There’s no particular body type they’re after, either.

“The thing that’s cool about derby is that we have a lot of body types and body shapes in our league,” Stemme said. “It doesn’t take a particular body type. What it takes is determination.”

With such a diverse group of women, it’s only natural that there would be a range of different reasons for wanting to strap on a pair of skates and hit the rink — and each other. Weller has a few theories.

“On one hand you have some women, drawn by the ethos of the sport,” Weller said. “The grassroots control, women empowering women.”

Others are drawn to it for the sport itself and the physical exertion — it’s a graceful balancing act on wheels that is guaranteed to get a girl banged up and bruised.

A third group, Weller said, is attracted to the image associated with roller derby: “a tough girl on the rink but a sweetheart outside.”

For Sarah Frei—or Punches Pile-Up, her derby name—the sport is empowering.

“I think roller derby and feminism can go hand and hand,” she said. Frei is adamant about clearing up some misconceptions about the sport she has dedicated six long months to.

“Some people have the ridiculous notion that we’re skating around in bikinis trying to pull each other’s tops down,” Frei said. In reality, “we’re sweating under umpteen pads, yelling through our mouth guards.”

Stemme has her particular take, too.

“We didn’t start this league to make some statement about feminism,” Stemme said. “But there is a subtext to that. There are people who think what we do is awesome. There are people who think what we do sucks.”

Cassie Levett, known in the rink as Aieta Yuhout, wants to see the COMO Derby Dames become a household name.

“Also, naturally, we’d like to become WFTDA certified,” Levett said, referring to the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.

Waller has similar goals.

“Personally, I would love to see the league become accomplished members of the WFTDA and able to successfully bout against our neighbors in Kansas City and St. Louis,” Weller said.

For now, the Dames will continue to bond, and bang each other up a bit, on the track.

“There are days when you don’t want to go to practice, wouldn’t care if you ever saw another pair of fishnets in your life,” Weller said. “But somehow derby draws you back to it. Part of it is that these women are not only my teammates, but some of my best friends.”

Stemme agrees.

“We’re one big happy family.”