20
April 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine
BY NICOLE LEVY
For the women of the CT Rollergirls, breaking bones is just part of the game. But what happens when injuries threaten to strip them of their roller derby identities? Enter RollerDurance.
very roller girl has an alter ego. When Jen Reynolds laces up her skates, she becomes Jayne Bondage, 007. By day, Jen works two jobs: she files legal bills at a law firm and books appointments as a freelance massage therapist. Level-headed and honest, Jen makes you feel welcome, and she makes you laugh. Before a resurgence of cancer beneath Jen’s pectoral muscle necessitated five weeks of radiation therapy, her alter ego Jayne spent her evenings at derby scrimmages in Danbury as co-captain of the Elm City Bone Crushers, one of three teams in the all-women’s Connecticut Roller Derby League. Jayne was tough, wild, and decisively fearless. Jen and Jayne met two years ago in a scrimmage that demanded the intersection of their parallel realities. Jayne took a hit from her teammate, Guns ‘n’ Bruises, sailed off the rink in midair, and collided with the floor. The force of the impact dislocated both her ribs and a tumor, yet undiagnosed. When a PET scan failed to detect any malignancy, Jen sensibly requested her biopsy as a cautionary measure. The prognosis was delivered on October
15th: her cancer had returned, and the tumor was twice as large as before. It was surgically excised one month later. “So basically,” she concludes, “roller derby saved my life.” With the support of her family, friends, teammates, and with the courage of her alter ego, Jen skated her first and final bout as Jayne that December.
The Warm-Up
F
ar from the raucous sport it is today, roller derby began as a test of endurance. The derby made its debut at the very height of the Great Depression. A Chicago promoter named Leo Seltzer had schemed of a skating spectacle to overtake the dance marathon craze then electrifying the nation. His brainchild was a smashing success, commanding an audience of 20,000 spectators in its first week alone. On August 13th, 1935, the first bout featured two competitors, one man and one woman, skating 57,000 laps, or 4,000 grueling miles.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICOLE LEVY