The Oil City Derby Girls are trading in their roller skates for water wings.

Edmonton's oldest roller derby club is a last-minute entry in this weekend's 50th anniversary Sourdough River Festival.

This year's regatta features the usual 8 a.m. Sunday morning pancake breakfast and noon raft race from Terwillegar Park to just past Louise McKinney Park.

Corrine Thain, vice-president of the Oil City Derby Girls, insists her crew won't be wearing their roller gear for the event. "Our bearings might seize."

Thain isn't kidding. The ladies have yet to test their raft, an eight-metre-long, two-metre-tall paddlewheel constructed from old bed frames and tandem bicycles. It could be sink or swim.

The club acquired the raft via trade last year with campus radio station CJSR. In exchange for a pair of roller derby tickets, the non-profit organization landed the rights to the coveted seacraft formerly known as the Rising Star.

The only problem was the Rising Star has been in dry dock for three years on a farm two hours southeast of the city. The boat rolled into town late Thursday afternoon.

"We're not really sure it's seaworthy," says Thain, a training co-ordinator by day who becomes the roller derby queen Wytchy by night.

"I don't know if the sucker will float all the way."

The Oil City girls will have to hustle to get the ship into shape this weekend. In addition to weekly practices, there are two weekend roller derby games Saturday night at Sherwood Park Hockey Arena. And while there may not be time to transform the Rising Star into a roller skate as planned, Thain and crew will at least try to make sure it floats.

"It's really going to be a tight squeeze to get it built and seaworthy."

By this weekend, Sourdough Raft Race Association president Walt Badowsky will have seen it all.

Badowsky watched the inaugural festival in 1960. In 1963, organizers were offered $1,000 to turn the event into an attraction for the newly minted Klondike Days attraction. The Sourdough Raft Race transformed into its own festival in 2005 when Klondike Days became Capital Ex.

The tradition began with an informal race between Edmonton Power employees from Devon to Edmonton.

"It was a weekend party," said Badowsky, then a young electrician with the city.

"They chopped trees down along the river and built themselves rafts."

The small party quickly evolved into an event for city workers. With Klondike Days aboard, it became open to the public. Badowsky oversaw the formal event until the early 1970s and has remained closely involved for the past four decades. He became president once again two years ago.

Over the years, the initial idea of racing gave way to novelty crafts, water fights and old-fashioned mischief.

Badowsky fondly remembers the early 1970s, when then mayor Ivor Dent would challenge northern Alberta's mayors to a dinghy race.

"It's changed complexion considerably," Badowsky said. "It's just an opportunity for people to get out on the river and enjoy the river valley and the scenery."

New this year is the Sourdough Kids Zone Mini Carnival at noon on Saturday, featuring a children's mini raft construction event, face painting, and a barbecue.

bwittmeier@thejournal.canwest.com

By Stacy O'Brien - Red Deer Advocate

Published: October 06, 2008 6:33 AM
Updated: October 06, 2008 8:19 AM

Like a 1970s version of gladiatorial games, the roller derby girls cruised into Red Deer Saturday.

Decked out in old-style roller skates, fishnet stockings and mini-skirts the women looked more like vixens than vicious competitors — at least until things got underway.

As the announcer called out their skate names — Anna Salt, Viv the Shiv, Honey Crueler, Ana Filactic and more — the crowd of around 200 people hooted, yelled and whistled.

The audience at the Collicutt Centre encircled the track — some on the stands, other on chairs, their own lawn chairs or sitting on the floor. Early on the announcer warned people at the front, they might wind have a couple girls crash into them.

The way the sport works, five girls from each team go head to head at a time, skating around the track.

One of the girls acts as the jammer (or point scorer) and four of them act as blockers. The goal is to block the other team’s jammer and help your jammer get past everyone to score points.

Tripping isn’t allowed. Neither is hitting from behind or using “the big elbow.”

But hip checks that level a girl flat on her face or her backside are perfectly acceptable, as are “booty blocks,” with someone pushing their butt out to block the other team.

And while the girls look feminine, their injuries are more like one might see on a rugby or hockey player.

Tracy Cuillerier — AKA Trailer Park Tracy — with the Calgary Roller Derby Association said she has had a bruise on her thigh that hasn’t disappeared since July 2007. “It won’t go away,” she said.

But the chance of getting injured doesn’t stop her from playing.

“I think I just have a lot of aggression,” she said, laughing. “Work is stressful and relationships are stressful and this gets everything out.”

Cuillerier is a blocker who plays with the Thrashin’ Lassies in Calgary. “I love that I have 52 sisters and if something goes wrong in my life I always have someone to back me up,” she said.

The youth worker, who helps homeless youth in Calgary, said some of her biggest fans are the kids she helps. They even came up with her roller derby name.

Pasted onto the back of her helmet was a phrase close to: “Mess with me and you mess with the whole trailer park.”

As the game proceeded at times the jammers manage to get through the crowd of blockers with a little fancy footwork. At other times girls went down like dominoes — one after another falling to the floor in a cluttered heap of arms and legs.

Sabrina Beresford — Sabanatrix — is with the Oil City Derby Girls.

She said winning is all about working together.

“The only thing I can say is you work hard and you work with your team. So you go out there and there are five of you against five other players. You can’t play this game alone. It really takes a lot of teamwork,” Beresford said.

The mother of five — four boys and one girl, between age three to nine — said the sport is a great chance for her to get out of the house and spend time with other women. She has been playing for a year.

Her husband and her children are her biggest cheerleaders.

The bout Saturday night wasn’t about competition as much as it was for a good cause. The Walk and Roll to End Domestic Violence event raised around $1,000 for the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters.

It drew Jeremy Spenst, of Red Deer, and his friend Sarah Turl, visiting from Toronto.

Spenst was there to support the women’s shelters and said there are definitely worse ways to spend a Saturday night. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said.

Turl was also impressed. She said the game even inspired her to want to join a roller derby. “I’m loving it,” she said. The best part for her were “the sandwiches”, with girls wedged between each other fighting to get to the front. “There is nothing like watching two girls beat on each other,” she said.

The final score was pink 127 to blue 111.

Contact Stacy O’Brien at sobrien@reddeeradvocate.com

“I can’t believe I am the only one in Sherwood Park who wants to do this,” she said. “I’d like to find more women from Sherwood Park to try this. I don’t see any reason the Park couldn’t have its very own team down the road.”

McDonald’s own interest in the sport was a result of memories of watching the popular 70s sporting fad as a kid and was rekindled in recent years by the resurgence of the sport in the States.

“When A&E started airing the show Rollergirls I think it struck a cord with a lot of girls like myself that wanted to see something like that in this area again,” she said. “It used to be around and people still remember it. It’s weird how everything seems to come around again. As a little kid I remember watching this stuff late at night on TV and always wanted to do it and now some of us are in our 30s and we want to play. We want to play and do something that is for us.”
McDonald says the sport can appeal to girls of all walks of life.

“Like many of the girls I have a background in figure skating,” she said. “We have rugby girls on the team. We have a lot of girls that are athletes and a lot that aren’t either. You don’t have to have had an athletic background with this. We teach you how to skate and all the things you need. And there is no set size either. Small girls, big girls, they can all play this. And age isn’t really a matter either.”

About Us Rollergirls Contact Us Join Us Events Support Staff Comrades Press Photos Merchandise

© 2006 Oil City Derby Girls