Hurts so good: Bruises are a badge of honor for these locals on the roller derby track

HARRISONBURG — By day Lora Dattilio is a middle school English teacher. Caroline Cook designs costumes. Beth Van Pelt is a paralegal and Heather Cole is an author and archivist.

By night, however, they are badasses on roller skates, hip-checking and blocking and whipping their way around a roller rink. The women are part of the Rocktown Rollers, a Harrisonburg-based roller derby team.

The team practices at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds and holds home bouts — the name given to a game of roller derby — at Funkys Skate Center in Harrisonburg.

Van Pelt, who lives in Verona, joined the team in 2010, played four or five years before taking a break because of family obligations then rejoined the team around 2018. It was a Harrisonburg Fourth of July parade in which the team skated where Van Pelt first discovered the Rocktown Rollers. She had always enjoyed sports and, while she had some idea what roller derby was, she wanted to explore it more. She joined the team and immediately fell in love.

"It's a full-contact, kind of aggressive sport," she said. "You don't get that with women's sports a lot of time."

Explained in the most simplified terms, roller derby teams get points when their player known as a jammer laps a member of the opposing team. The other team's blockers try to stop the jammer with physical force. At the same time the blockers are trying to open up room for their jammer to skate through. Each team has four blockers and a jammer on the track at any one time. There are two 30-minute periods.

A good jammer tends to be quick on their feet, agile and strong. They also need to be attentive to what's going on around them.

Players can land in the penalty box if they elbow someone in the face or take someone out below the knees. So it's not a free-for-all, but it's also not necessarily for the faint of heart. Players wear helmets, mouth guards, and elbow and knee pads.

"Lots of bruises," Cook said. "We like to share them with each other. They're badges of honor. Sometimes a really good one, if you knew who did it, you might have them sign it. I've definitely had a few of those. Knock on wood, the worse injury I've sustained is a sprained ankle and I've been playing for nine years."

Immediately after saying that, both Cook and Van Pelt went to a wooden wall in the fairground's exhibition hall and knocked on it.

Van Pelt considers herself lucky that she's never had anything worse than a bruise. She's seen broken ankles, dislocated shoulders, broken collarbones and torn up knees. So injuries can happen. She said most hits are to the arms, upper legs and hips and chest.

"But's it's not your WWF-style sport," Van Pelt said. "Now it's a legitimate ruled sport."

Instead of going by their given name on the track, players all have a derby name. Van Pelt said she's not even sure she knows all her teammates' real names. She goes by Bassett Case. As a former vet technician she still has a love for hound dogs.

As a costume designer and technician for the University of Virginia's department of drama, Cook is known as Pin Pushion. The Staunton woman said she also likes to sew as a hobby in addition to doing it at work, so the name fit.

Dattilio also incorporated the day job into her name, calling herself Independent Claws. She teaches eighth-grade English at Wilson Middle School. Dattilio said most of her students know she plays roller derby and the reactions range from "Oh, I can see that," to "No way."

Dattilio, who lives in Staunton, joined the team in May, finally getting the "gumption up" to try something she'd been considering for awhile. Newcomers, like Dattillio, are referred to as "fresh meat" in the roller derby world.

"I was really nervous," she said of that first day. "But the overall feeling is just so friendly and supportive and welcoming. It's been truly wonderful."

Cook said when her stepsisters heard she was on the team they couldn't believe it, saying she was too sweet and tiny. "And my stepfather said, 'Not on the track she's not,'" Cook said.

Cole actually went on a dare. A friend's husband saw a poster for the Rocktown Rollers and challenged a walking group Cole was part of to step it up. Cole, as did one other member of the group, took him up on challenge, going to a fresh meat recruitment event in April 2022. She called it a total lark, but 10 months later she's still part of the team.

"Everyone on the team was so amazingly fun and interesting and supportive that I just kept going back," she said.

Her family thinks it's hilarious.

"I am not an athletic person by any stretch of the imagination, so they've gotten a kick out of the whole thing," Cole said. "My husband and teenage boys came out to my first game a few months ago and held a sign cheering me on and everything."

Van Pelt said the team is a non-profit that raises money for various organizations. While the group they are donating to this year isn't officially settled yet, Van Pelt said she thinks it might be Big Brothers Big Sisters.

In the past they've donated to Harrisonburg's Friendly City Safe Space, a community for LGBTQ+ people and aspiring allies; Cat's Cradle, an animal rescue in Harrisonburg; and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

The team, which is always looking for sponsors, has its first home bout Saturday, March 25.

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— Patrick Hite is The News Leader's education reporter. Story ideas and tips always welcome. Contact Patrick (he/him/his) at phite@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @Patrick_Hite. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Rocktown Rollers: Local women part of Harrisonburg-based roller derby team