As the chilly air swirls outside on a Sunday afternoon, warm greetings fill the air inside the practice building while the members of the Roller Derby of Central Kentucky (ROCK) catch up before they begin skating.
The team laces up their roller skates, clips on their helmets and puts on arm and knee pads, preparing to go into the rink for their practice.
On the track, this team is used to slamming into each other at full speed, shoving one another to the ground and pushing each other out of the way, but off the track, they are a tight-knit community.
ROCK is a nonprofit adult recreational flat-track roller derby program based in Lexington, Kentucky. It was started in 2006 and currently features two teams, the Rock Stars and the Indie Rockers.
ROCK is a part of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), which is the governing body for women’s roller derby.
The Indie Rockers currently have 30 members and are scheduled to play four games this season, with home games at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.
“We really like to get involved in our community, so one of our big things during the home season, this year we have four games, and at each game at Rupp Arena we will partner with a community nonprofit and fundraise for them,” Cat Zamarron, co-captain of the Indie Rockers, said.
Zamarron, who goes by “Catastrophe” on the track, comes from Michigan and discovered her interest in roller derby after seeing a game from a team in Michigan, according to Zamarron.
Zamarron has been skating since 2007 and heard of ROCK in 2009 and started practicing with them when she was visiting friends, according to Zamarron.
Kyle Albert, whose skating name is “Seeyanver,” has been skating for a year. Right now he is the only male skater on the team. This means he can only participate in practices and scrimmages and not games due to the WFTDA rules.
According to Albert, he discovered ROCK after trying to find a roller derby team in Lexington. Albert has a visual disability which he has to work around when skating by relying on teammates and looking for the team’s color.
“Being a person with a disability myself, I want to prove if there’s something you want to do, whether it be a job or a hobby or a sports team, you can do it and you can’t let your disability define you, and that’s why I really appreciate ROCK because they don’t let that define me,” Albert said.
Joseph Manley is one of the team’s coaches and one of the co-founders of the program. He worked in special education for 20 years, and his desire to help people motivated him to become a coach.
At the beginning of the program, he started as a referee for the team which then led to the path of him refereeing nationally.
“I was definitely distanced, my relationship to the team was much more about those interactions just from official to skater, as compared to like the community and the social interactions that I have as a founder initially or as a coach now,” Manley said.
Manley was an active referee for 14 years until he was injured, but this injury brought him back to ROCK and their community, leading him to take a position as a coach for the indie rockers.
“I tore my ACL and PCL in 2019. It was this local community that was here for me again, they were literally coming to the hospital to visit, bringing supplies . . . They were trying to get me to come to practice,” Manley said.
Another co-founder of the program is Richel Whitley, whose roller derby name is “Ragdoll.”
Whitley doesn’t currently hold a specific job within the program and though she isn’t in a leadership position at the moment, she does offer support for the team and actively skates with them.
According to Whitley, she has always been involved in a variety of sports but found roller derby through the ice skating she did as a kid and wanting to be more than a “fill-in” on a team.
“When people look at roller derby they think of violence, and it’s judged in that kind of capacity when it’s actually a contact sport made of slow, strong skill the same way as football,” Whitley said.
According to Whitley, the community this team brings is at the core of the program, they make a large effort to make a safe space for their members to interact and do something to keep active.
“I feel like we’re all gonna be trading hip replacement doctors, like when we’re old, and we’re gonna have our own little community where we’re taking care of each other,” Whitley said.
ROCK can also offer a chance to get exercise while getting to meet amazing people with similar interests, according to Zamarron.
“We’re an adult recreational sport, it’s like life is hard, the world is hard, and everything is crazy right now, and this is a really good outlet, it’s a great outlet for feelings. It’s a really good way to move your body,” Zamarron said.
Zamarron and Manley want their team to be able to work towards their personal goals and find a community in the process.
“I love watching my people accomplish goals that they’ve set for themselves and getting to play like a specific position, people have different goals that they have for themselves for being here and getting to help my teammates accomplish those goals,” Zamarron said.
Another member of the team is Leonie Bettel also known as “Bettelscar.” Bettel came from Vienna, Austria, and is a University of Kentucky alum and is currently working toward her doctorate in civil engineering.
“I am in a unique position where I’m not from the United States, my home is in Austria. It is nice to kind of have a community that somewhat feels like family away from home,” Bettel said.
As the practice ends the team cruises off the track and goes to the sidelines to decompress after the last two hours of skating.
Members discuss their after-practice plans as they take off their skates and safety gear. The building is filled with goodbyes and “see you next practice” as the skaters leave to re-enter the chilly outside air.
