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Sydney Cromwell
Members of the Tragic City Rollers practice drills before their first bout of the season.
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Sydney Cromwell
Tragic City Rollers are not your typical 1970s roller derby league.
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Sydney Cromwell
The Rollers’ first bout of the season is on Feb. 18 against the Chattanooga Roller Girls. A full schedule for the season is at tragiccityrollers.com.
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Sydney Cromwell
The Rollers’ first bout of the season is on Feb. 18 against the Chattanooga Roller Girls. A full schedule for the season is at tragiccityrollers.com.
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Sydney Cromwell
Diana Bostick and Lauren Barranger are downtown residents and two of the 20 to 30 members of the Tragic City Rollers roller derby team.
Diana Bostick has an alter ego. When she laces up her roller skates, she becomes “Lana del Slay.”
Bostick, a cosmetologist who lives in the Highlands area of downtown, is the president of the Tragic City Rollers, Birmingham’s roller derby team. She’s one of 20 to 30 women from across the area who make up the team.
“They’re massively talented and completely fearless,” Bostick said.
Being at a roller-derby practice is a lot like other sports, as the players sweat through drills and cheer each other on. But before meeting the Tragic City Rollers, I’d never known a group of people so blasé about the possibility of falling or getting hit with an accidental elbow to the face. As fellow Roller and Five Points South resident Lauren “Mad Villain” Barranger puts it, that’s just part of the game.
“There’s a difference between going around a skating rink and learning how to skate derby, primarily learning how to stop,” Barranger said. “Our biggest thing is teaching people how to stop correctly, how to fall safely, just how to not get hurt.”
I also quickly found out that derby nicknames are the only names that matter when the Rollers are together. Asking for “Diana” or “Hannah” earned me confused looks as players tried to recall which names belong to which woman. But any of them could immediately point out “Slay” or “Lattitude Problem.”
“Being around all these women — and men, because we have some cool refs, cool dudes — has been absolutely incredible. I’m super honored to be part of this league,” Bostick said.
In roller derby, also known as flat-track derby, two teams of five can be in the rink at any time. The teams are made up of a jammer, who scores points, and four blockers, who try to keep the opposing team’s jammer from scoring as they make their way around the rink.
“The object when the whistle blows [is] the jammers have to get through the pack, come around and on their second pass, they score one point for each opposing blocker that they pass,” said Barranger, who started skating derby in 2012 in New Jersey and joined TCR about four years ago.
“I like that you really have to work as a unit. So it’s not just about you. You have to listen and feel the energy of your teammates and know where they are headed,” Bostick said, who mostly plays as a blocker.
The TCR team was established in 2005. It’s a physical sport. While intentional elbow throws, clotheslines and hits to the spine aren’t allowed, players can still use their hips and shoulders to check each other and keep their opponents from scoring points.
“I like to hit people,” Barranger said. “You can take out a lot of aggression in one practice.”
“I’m scrappy. It’s kind of a joke. I will go for it — I’m probably going to fall, but I’ll figure it out,” Bostick said.
It’s also a sport that’s evolved a lot from the notoriety it gained in the 1970s, Barranger said. It’s less dangerous and less theatrical, more focused on the athleticism than its appearance. As president of TCR, Bostick said it’s a lot more like a business — with sponsorships and fundraisers — than “some cute little thing that we show up and put on outfits and put on a show.”
“There’s a lot of old stigmas attached to roller derby. They don’t realize how far the sport has evolved, and they think it’s a lot of WWE wrestling tricks and whatnot. And that’s just not at all what this is about,” Bostick said. “It’s not a big circus show. It’s more than hot babes in fishnets. I mean, we got plenty of hot babes, and we got some fishnets, but they’re serious athletes, and they will fight to the end.”
It’s a blast for spectators who come to the Rollers’ home bouts at the Zamora Shrine Temple.
“We’re very family friendly. Little kids love it. I think it’s really great because you look at role models that young girls have, it’s sort of like the princess image. They don’t realize you can do all those things, but you can really empower yourself, and you can be really strong,” Barranger said.
The Rollers’ first bout of the season is on Feb. 18 against the Chattanooga Roller Girls. A full schedule for the season is at tragiccityrollers.com.
“We’re playing Chattanooga and we have a score to settle with them. We lost to them three times last year so we’re out for blood,” Barranger said.
While every bout is thrilling, Bostick said she’ll never forget her first All-Star match in Atlanta.
“It was like this glorious high. I couldn’t wait to get back out there,” she said.
But being part of the rollers isn’t just about competition. They’re a group of extremely close women who spend time together and support each other off the track. That’s part of why Barranger is always looking to recruit people to watch a bout or try out for the team, even if they’ve never put on roller skates in their lives. Through her job at Whole Foods, Barranger said she has recruited coworkers or their friends or girlfriends.
“Eventually I just pick everyone out from Whole Foods,” Barranger said. “I talk about derby to everybody just because I love it so much.”
The women who make up the Tragic City Rollers have a variety of personalities, backgrounds and careers, but they’re brought together by their willingness to try something new and stick with it as they learn the rules of the sport.
“A lot of people think you have to be this crazy tough person and know how to skate, but you really don’t. Most of the people we get have never skated a day in their life. It’s probably actually better that way because then they’re a raw canvas,” Barranger said.
