At long last, Philly Roller Derby’s Liberty Belles are back on the track

Walking into Millennium Skate World in Camden, one is flooded with nostalgia and greeted with neon, black light floors of roller skates, arcade games, and disco balls glistening over the rink. Despite the bright lights, a sophistication and determined mood carries over the room on Wednesday nights as Philly Roller Derby (PRD) takes the track once again.

After a competitive play drought since spring of 2020, skaters are eager to get back to their ambitious spirit, especially the Liberty Belles, the All-Star team ranked eighth in the world.

Competing on a flat track, roller derby is a contact sport with each team putting four blockers and one jammer on the starting line. The jammer scores a point for each opposing blocker she passes, as the blockers attempt to stop the opposing jammer from skating around them to score.

Roller derby is an up-and-coming women’s sport around the world with 450 member leagues across six continents in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA).

The sport gained more steam when ESPN3 began to stream derby championship games in 2015 and as Olympic speedskating gold medalist Erin Jackson made a name for herself with a background in roller derby.

The future of PRD, while it works out its kinks after the time apart, seems to have light at the end of the track.

“I think we have a really unique opportunity right now to kind of reintroduce ourselves,” PRD interleague games coordinator Kara “Whiskey Chaseher” Rivers-Reilly said. “Not only here in Philly, but kind of all over, especially here in Philly where there is a gaping lack of professional women’s sports. We want to be the pioneers in that and show organizations like the WNBA, ‘Hey, you can have a women’s sports organization here, and they will get the support there. There are fans here. People want this here.’”

» READ MORE: Why Philly doesn’t have a major pro women’s sports team, and how that could change

While it is a competitive sport, don’t be fooled. Roller derby has its fun, from derby names to decked-out helmets decorated with stickers, rainbows, mohawks, and the faint glitter lettering of “FURY” hitting the light from across the rink.

This energy is why many join roller derby, as well for the escape, the welcoming team environment, and the athletic competition. All skaters, across all ages and genders, have their own stories on how they found roller derby.

“Some people buy a car at 50. I joined roller derby,” said Andi “Molly Striker” Perez, a blocker for PRD’s City Wide Specials and West Philly Warriors.

Perez joined the new skater program, the CheeseSkates, right before the pandemic to relieve stress from her job as a political director of a labor union. Before that time, she had not put on skates since elementary school, when she would skate up and down her street.

“I always needed something to kind of hold on to,” Perez said. “It’s different than other stuff I’ve done; it’s a team sport. People rely on you. They rely on you to come to practice. They rely on you to give it your best, and so that pushes me past my comfort zone.”

Pop culture has influenced incoming skaters, from the television show Rollergirls to 2009′s Whip It movie for Liberty Belles blocker Leah “Russian Bayou” Yancoskie and Rivers-Reilly, respectively.

Yancoskie has been skating for 16 years. She joined PRD in 2014 and commuted two hours from Lancaster to compete with the team.

“I just wanted to skate with Philly,” she said. “Players do that. They will transfer across the country to join a team. Philly is just one of those teams that attracts people, I think.”

Now 40, Yancoskie sees herself as an athlete through the movement and speed of the sport, which she says is a rare experience for someone her age.

“There aren’t a lot of opportunities for people my age, women my age, to really be in their bodies and physically feel and move,” she said. “I think the movement is important, and the community. It’s just the best people.”

Before the pandemic, in 2019, the Liberty Belles went from 22nd to ninth in the WFTDA rankings and were scheduled to fly to a tournament in London. After a few short weeks, there was a keen awareness that the tournament and the Belles’ momentum would be put up on pause.

“We didn’t jump. We clawed our way through to get there,” Yancoskie said. “It’s been hard as a vet to see all of that hard work just evaporate.”

Adjustments had to made, as they were all over the world at the time. PRD had rented a warehouse in Germantown to use as it pleased and had to let it go for the success of the league.

“It looks very different than it did a few years ago. I’ll say that,” said Mar “Sherman Tank” Sherman, president of PRD.

» READ MORE: Philly’s junior roller derby team is No. 1 after winning national championships last weekend

Similar to many leagues, PRD does not have a permanent space to skate. Participants have had to turn to renting spaces — all teams practicing all together, not separately like before, only twice a week, paying hundreds of dollars an hour.

“It’s been really hard, and I think, honestly, fully returning to competitive play is not going to happen until we get our own permanent space,” Sherman said. “It’s great for the community, and we are all really close. It’s not that anyone doesn’t want to practice with other people, but we are better able to specialize and offer everyone individual support when we’re able to break out into groups.”

Added Rivers-Reilly: “There are very few leagues that came out of the last couple of years completely unscathed.”

Through her contact with other leagues, she has found that many lost their space or the amount of access they had to it. PRD has even seen other teams fold completely within the past year of skating again.

“Derby is really strong in this area, and I do think it’s going to spring back,” Yancoskie said. “But I do worry about the practice timing and space, and just not having that stability that we used to have.”

The league typically hosts a three-day tournament in June each year called the East Coast Derby Extravaganza, which historically brought in a great deal of money. But because it hasn’t been able to host this in a few years, it has had more financial difficulties than in the past. The league has to rely on dues and merchandise sales. The PRD hopes to return to ticketed games soon enough.

Following the WFTDA’s and CDC’s guidelines, PRD recently has been able to return to competitive play. It is still developing protocols. The first game was on Aug. 6, and the league tested everyone involved — skaters, officials, and volunteers — beforehand and has a vaccination policy with the exception of a doctor’s note.

The first game back was a mix of emotions, recognizing the feeling that something was different — but also familiar. It was a time to be reunited with friends to do what they love once again.

“It felt like a good omen of good things to come,” Sherman said. “It was really awesome to get back to that.”