February 28, 2012

Bam! First roller derby bout in the Netherlands

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Branko Collin @ 10:43 am

Last Saturday the entire 24 Oranges team (yes, all two of us!) were at the first official roller derby match (’bout’ in derby jargon) of the Netherlands, held in Amsterdam between the Amsterdam Derby Dames and the Roller Girls of the Apocalypse (Kaiserslautern, Germany).

Roller derby is a full contact sport on wheels in which designated scorers need to pass a pack of blockers for points. We covered the basics before in an article about the first unofficial match (‘scrimmage’) last year.

Oohs and aahs ensued in the packed and beautiful Apollohal (on regular days a basketball venue) whenever Amsterdam’s Abs of Steel stepped on the floor, as even those among the visitors who had never been to a bout saw how she tossed unwilling opponents aside like rag dolls. You can see her earn that Most Valuable Player award in this video by Paul Siegman:

Despite heavy resistance from the German women, the Amsterdam Derby Dames kept adding to an early lead and in the end won the match 105 – 69. Our very own Orangemaster could not compete because of a broken leg she got in a practice match in Antwerp, but this did give Nasty Moves (her derby name) a chance to keep people entertained with music and informed on Twitter of the score.

Currently there are 12 roller derby leagues in the country. The women-run sport was re-started and re-imagined around 2001 in Texas, USA, and has made great strides ever since in that country, and is slowly and steadily growing in popularity in the rest of the world.

As always I will be adding a photo impression to our Flickr account later on (see the sidebar).

Update: the photos have been uploaded to Flickr.

(Video: Youtube / Paul Siegman)

Tags: , , , ,

January 17, 2012

Amsterdam hosts the first ever Dutch roller derby bout

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 7:19 am

While the country was away on vacation last summer fleeing the total lack of warm weather, the Amsterdam Derby Dames, the first roller derby league of the Netherlands, trained and geared up for their first bout (official competition) in Essen, Germany.

And now another first — a historical moment if you will — is right around the corner: the girls will play their first ever home bout against the Roller Girls of the Apocalypse from Kaiserslautern, Germany. It’s one thing to keep playing abroad, as they went all the way to Cork, Ireland for the second bout, but like any other sport, it’s a different set of wheels to play it in front of your home crowd.

Find out more about the actual bout and tickets, and how you can be part of women’s sports history if you’re anywhere near the Dutch capital.

Disclaimer: I will be playing working for this bout, while Branko continues his moonlighting as an amateur derby photographer.

Here’s a video that just starting doing the rounds about the sport through the eyes of derby girls on both sides of the pond.

Tags: , ,

August 15, 2011

First ever Dutch roller derby bout in Essen, Germany

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 12:48 pm

This weekend the Amsterdam Derby Dames (of which Orangemaster is a member) went to Essen for their first ever official match (there was a scrimmage of mixed Dutch and Belgian teams a couple of weeks ago, which is a practice match). This also made it the first ever bout of any Dutch team.

The hosts, the Ruhrpott Roller Girls from Essen, Germany, beat the Dutch ladies handsomely, 165 – 83. Still it was a great game, and I assume, a great learning experience.

Tags: , ,

January 11, 2011

Roller derby taking off in The Netherlands

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:00 pm

“Roller derby, what’s that?” my Dutch doctor asks while looking at my swollen knee. I hurt my knee falling on the ice a month ago, but I wanted to make sure she knew I was planning to come back with more sports-related injuries and didn’t want to re-explain why and how.

In its modern form, roller derby was revived in the United States about 10 years ago and is an all-female contact sport played on roller skates (men are referees). Two teams skate around a flat track (not a banked track like in the film Whip It, although it’s an option) and score points by passing the opposing team and physically bashing them off the track using their torsoes.

When I joined last December, there were five Dutch teams, the first one being the Amsterdam Derby Dames, founded in 2009. Just two months down the road, another two teams have popped up in Arnhem and Groningen, both within a few weeks of each other. Roller derby is catching on like wildfire. All the teams are still recruiting, learning the moves and many members need to pass an internationally recognised exam to be able to compete. It’s a ground up, build your own team thing, with no real outside help — it’s real teamwork, not that crap your boss feeds you. Members pays fees and help each other out with gear, training and transport.

The Rotterdam Deathrow Honeys were featured last December in De Telegraaf and on the radio, and train with more advanced teams such as the Ghent Go-Go Rollergirls in Belgium.

Yes, we wear fishnets and skirts, yes, you can come and watch one of these days, and yes, it’s a real contact sport. To give you an idea of how it is live, watch our favourite video of Beyonslay (derby names are puns), a ‘blocker’ of the Gotham City Roller Girls give it to Rice Rocket, ‘jammer’ for the Texas Rollergirls, the US state where the revival began.

Nope, not the first block, the second one!

(Disclaimer: Orangemaster is a of the Amsterdam Derby Dames, ) Photo of Roller derby in Hobart, Tasmania by Christopher Neugebauer, some rights reserved.

Tags: , ,