Local history: Confessions of a roller derby queen

“Killer Kaz” was hell on wheels.

By the light of day, she was kind, courteous and considerate, but when evening fell, she lost all social niceties.

Joan Kazmerski laced up her skates, strapped on her helmet, gritted her teeth and became an elbow-throwing, hip-tossing, rail-crashing fiend.

“I wasn’t mean or rough, more like ornery and sort of devilish,” she once told the Beacon Journal.

Tell that to the tangled piles of hapless opponents she left in her wake.

As a roller derby star of the 1950s and 1960s, Kazmerski entertained audiences around the world, appeared on hundreds of television broadcasts and basked in the cheers and jeers of boisterous fans.

Moon-Glo was Kent rink

It was such a thrill — and it all began at the Moon-Glo Roller Rink, her teenage hangout in Kent.

The youngest of seven siblings, Joan was born in 1934 to Anthony and Alexandra Kazmierski in Erie, Pennsylvania. The family moved to Kent when she was a young girl, settling into a small home on West Elm Street. Her father worked as a custodian at Kent State University.

A skater since age 6, Joan roamed the streets and sidewalks on silver wheels, taking them off occasionally to play sports with other kids.

“The neighborhood boys almost never had a football or baseball game without me,” she recalled.

When the Moon-Glo opened in the late 1940s at 1754 E. Main St., Joan found herself spending most of her free time there, whirling around to organ music and practicing fancy footwork. She competed in flat-track racing and won local, regional and state titles.

The Ohio speedster caught the eye of a roller derby scout, who invited her to attend a training school in Passaic, New Jersey. One of 300 invitees, Joan studied 12 hours a day for six weeks, learning the rules of the fast-paced sport and mastering its banked, oval track.

She was one of 30 skaters to make the cut.

Pro debut with roller derby

In 1952, the 5-foot-6, 18-year-old, hazel-eyed blonde made her professional debut with the Chicago Westerners in the National Roller Derby League. She erased a vowel from the Kazmierski family name to the more phonetic Kazmerski.

The league was a dizzying blur of jammers and blockers. Players earned points by circling the track and passing members of the opposing team in a 90-second jam. Each team was composed of five men and five women, but they alternated play by gender over 12-minute periods.

“There’s a lot of action at speeds of 40 to 45 miles an hour,” Kazmerski explained. “It may be the fastest contact sport of all. It also may be the roughest.”

Skaters slammed into each other, wiped out on the track and crashed over railings. Referees whistled two-minute penalties for minor infractions such as holding, illegal blocking, stalling, tripping and illegal use of the hands. They issued five-minute penalties for major offenses such as fighting, intentional roughness, deliberate and excessive insubordination and gross unsportsmanlike conduct.

Players who got caught had to bide their time in a penalty box. But, gosh darn it, referees sometimes missed obvious things. Like hair-pulling fights.

“I really don’t go out of my way to hurt anybody — except when tempers flare,” Kazmerski confessed. “I’ve pulled plenty of hair myself. I’ve also had a few black eyes, but I’ve given a few, too. I’ve lost some fights and I’ve won some.”

Biggest names on the track

The Ohio teen took a pounding in her first season, but rolled with the punches. Sports writers and broadcasters voted her as the league’s 1952-1953 rookie of the year, an honor that she later called “maybe my biggest thrill ever.”

Kazmerski’s pro career lasted nearly two decades. She skated with (and against) some of the sport’s biggest names, including Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn, Gwen “Skinny Minnie” Miller, Ann “Banana Nose” Calvello and “Queen of Mean” Judy Sowinski. “Killer Kaz,” as she came to be known, enjoyed a long rivalry with “Blonde Bomber” Joan Weston, who once cited Kazmerski as her “most feared opponent.”

Kaz enjoyed playing the villain, drawing boos and jeers from crowds, but she insisted she wasn’t really a roughneck. Just a ham on skates.

One night she fell so hard that she split her pants. She called a timeout so her teammates could form a circle around her as she changed clothes. The audience roared until play could resume.

Kazmerski spent five years with the Chicago Westerners and two years with the Los Angeles Braves. In 1961, she joined the Texas Outlaws in the National Skating Derby Roller Games, a rival league. In 1965, she rejoined the roller derby as captain of the New York Chiefs, where she earned MVP and all-star honors.

At the time, pro skaters earned $7,500 to $25,000 a year (roughly $70,000 to $232,000 today). While Kazmerski declined to reveal her salary, she was believed to be in the upper echelon.

Traveling was another perk of the job. She relished the opportunity to see the world at the promoter’s expense. She skated at Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden, the Cow Palace and other major arenas.

Drawbacks of life on road

In a 1966 interview with the Beacon Journal, she said she enjoyed life on the road, although there were certain drawbacks. After two hours on the track, she looked like a mess and felt too tired to do anything.

“We try to look presentable before the game … you know: hair in place, makeup just right, dresses and high heels -- all that,” she said.

“But after five minutes of skating, the hairdo is shot. By the time the game is over, and after a shower, you’re really a sorry sight. I usually put a kerchief over my head, duck out the back door and head home.”

She rounded out the 1960s with Roller Games, traveling to such exotic locales as Australia and Japan as a member of the San Francisco Shamrocks, Chicago Hawks, Detroit Devils and Texas Outlaws.

Kazmerski retired in 1970 after serving as captain of the Outlaws.

“I had a knee injury that was giving me trouble and I couldn’t move as fast,” she explained. “When you’re going around a track that’s built on a 45-degree angle, at 40 to 45 miles an hour, that right leg has to be in top shape.

“I had my share of bumps and bruises. You name it: broken wrist, ankle, ribs, toes, fingers and concussions, so I thought I’d better get out while I was in one piece.”

Kazmerski returned home to Kent to be near her parents. She hung up her old skates on a nail in the closet along with her cracked helmet.

Quiet life away from track

Life quieted down. She and Betty Norman opened Kaz-Nor Awards, a trophy shop at Summit Street and Franklin Avenue in Kent.

In a 1975 interview, Kazmerski said it took time to adjust. She wasn’t used to going to the grocery or doing laundry or cleaning house.

“Sometimes I look up at those jets flying over me and think, ‘I used to be in one of them,’ ” she said. “But you have to move on to other directions, you can’t live in the past all the time.”

In 1979, she landed a job at Rockwell Automation in Twinsburg, where she worked for nearly a decade. On the plus side, she no longer had to worry about getting elbowed in the stomach or crashing into a railing or accidentally pulling some skater’s hair.

The Moon-Glo Roller Rink closed in 1999 to make room for a CVS drugstore in Kent.

Joan Kazmerski, a roller derby legend, died Dec. 5, 2016, at age 82.

In her final interview with the Beacon Journal, “Killer Kaz” recalled how exciting it was to entertain crowds.

“Things have changed since I was skating, but maybe everyone says that when they’re on the sidelines,” she said. “The rules are different now. They’re more lenient with penalties and skaters get away with more than we used to. Tempers fly faster and there seem to be more fights.

“You bet I miss the thrills of those days.”

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Roller derby star Joan Kazmerski was hell on wheels