Windy City Rollers: 2024 Home Season
Roller derby is such a team sport that both teams play offense and defense at the same time for the entire game.
The sport began in 1935, debuting at the Chicago Coliseum as the first Transcontinental Roller Derby with a series of flat-out races between two people, often a man vs a woman, on roller skates. In 1935, that woman was Ivy King (more about her in a moment). Roller derby remains essentially a race between two skaters, called jammers, but with four blockers on each team to stop the opposing jammer from passing through the pack while opening space for their own jammer to pass through the pack. Once they make their initial pass through the pack the jammers begin scoring a point for each opposing team’s blocker they pass.
A game is divided into two 30-minute periods, consisting of 2-minute jams, in which the first jammer to pass all the way through the pack is designated lead jammer with the privilege of calling off the jam before the two minutes are up; the advantage being that the lead jammer can stop the jam after scoring points; ideally, before the opposing jammer has gotten out of the pack and scored any. Meanwhile, there are rules and penalties for violating them — typically, thirty seconds in the penalty box. And while this is genuine athletic competition, and not your father’s roller derby of scripted fights and serialized pro-wrestling…
