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roller cont’d
some with pink hair, who want to be derby stars; older women who recall the heyday of roller derby in the 1940s; and men of all ages with tattoos and funky beards.
Most of the women involved in the sport to- day were not even alive when roller derby was born. That was 1935, according to The National Museum of Roller Skating, which credits a Chicago sports promoter with the idea of a roller skating marathon: 50 men and women skaters competing to be the fi rst to race around a track for a total of 3,000 miles, a distance equal to that between San Diego and New York City. It took more than a month for winners to emerge, but attracted some 20,000 fans along the way.
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The sport became even more popular years later, when derby hit the road and changed from an endurance test to a competition among teams trying to block or pass oppo- nents in fewer laps. The pushing, shoving and elbowing was largely exaggerated, Mu- seum offi cials claim, yet fans were not put off. At its height, roller derby appeared in more than 50 major cities, drawing an esti- mated 5 million spectators.
It crashed with World War II but re-emerged in recent decades, fueled by the 2009 hit movie “Whip it,” starring Drew Barrymore, and the TV reality show “Rollergirls.”
Searfass, a transportation manager, tax pre- parer and oldest Rollergirl at 51, remembers watching derby on TV in the 1970s. Judy Arnold from Philadelphia was her hero and she once went to see her play.
So, when
Searfass heard a team was forming in the Lehigh Valley, she signed up. That was in 2008, when her daughter was only 8, and she hasn’t looked back.
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Govern, a mainframe computer programmer for a Reading battery maker, said she knew nothing about roller derby until she read an article about a Lancaster team in the paper seven years ago. She was a good skater as a teen and was looking for a break from being home with the kids, who at the time were 1, 4, 5 and 8. First time around the rink, she was hooked.
“I told my husband I’m so in love with this I will not stop.”
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