Derby teams converge on Wasilla for state tourney

WASILLA — With players like “Punkie BruiseHer” and “McPhearsome,” local roller derby teams are ready to put their fiercest faces forward this weekend.

“We’ve been working on some stuff all season and I feel like it’s really coming together,” said Mandy Hope (also known as “Assault and Pepper”) of the Mat-Su’s Boom Town Derby Dames.

The Derby Dames are one of nine teams participating in the “United We Roll” 2016 Alaska Statewide Roller Derby Tournament at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center in Wasilla this Friday and Saturday, April 22-23. Along with two Mat-Su squads, teams participating in this year’s tournament include Far North Pole, the Juneau Rollergirls, the Sitka Sound Slayers, the Petersburg Ragnarok Rollers, the SouthEast Sirens, Anchorage’s Orange Crush (Rage City) and the Fairbanks Rollergirls. The Rage City Rollergirls are the defending champions.

Last year the Derby Dames took their first go at the state tournament, placing fourth. With a team full of returning roller girls and a bit of “fresh meat” (as the more seasoned players call the rookies), Derby Dame Jennifer Cruz (“Athena Latina”) said she’s expecting the team to do better this year.

“We’ve had a pretty solid core group of girls,” since last year, Cruz said.

Even at the beginning of last season, most Boom Town players “weren’t super new” to roller derby, Cruz said. Not having to teach many rookies the basics of how to play the game this year, she said, has allowed the team to focus on being just that — a team.

“We were able to actually work on (how to play) together,” she said.

That said, Hope and Cruz are looking forward to some new players in the future, thanks to a recent rule change. Whereas local young skaters have always been able to participate in junior roller derby up to age 18, it used to be that they couldn’t join the adult team until they turned 21.

“All of a sudden they get to 18 and there’s nothing. They would be offered, ‘Oh, you can take an official position or you can ref, but you can’t be a skater,” Cruz said. “That transition period was really hard on the younger generations.”

The team lowered the minimum age requirement two years ago, allowing skaters 18 and older to participate on the adult teams.

The Denali Destroyer Dolls — the first team established in the Mat-Su Valley — also has a minimum age requirement of 18.

Destroyer Doll Erika “Dolla Billz” Bills said her team’s junior program has a lot of young players that the adults will be looking to recruit in the next couple of years.

“I can’t wait to see the jrs play — we have worked very hard with them!” Bills wrote in an email.

Though the juniors will only be playing an exhibition game and, if they choose, participate in junior skating training on Sunday after the tournament, the Dolls are still grooming some players with just a year or two of experience.

Coming off a 2-7 record this season, coach Justin Crowther said the Dolls face a big challenge in the state tournament, but he remains optimistic.

“DDD has, as a team, grown leaps and bounds. Every game that we have played in has been a fight till the very last jam. The team has not given up and continues to get better every game,” Crowther wrote in an email.

Crowther said his tournament goals for the Dolls are to “win as many games as possible and be highly competitive in every game.”

The tournament runs from 12:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 22 and 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 23 at the Menard Center, with adult and junior skater training offered on Sunday, April 24 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Admission for the tournament is $15 for adult spectators, $5 for child spectators ages 7-17 and can be purchased at the door.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.