From December 4 to 7 the second edition of the Blood & Thunder Roller Derby World Cup will be held in Dallas, Texas, and Team Netherlands will be participating for the very first time. Notice that this World Cup doesn’t contain the word ‘women’ in it because roller derby is predominantly a women’s sport: it’s the men that have to append an extra word to their World Cup.

Not even a year old, Team NL has been working towards Dallas from the very beginning, with about half the players hailing from the country’s first team, the Amsterdam Derby Dames, and the rest from the Rotterdam Death Row Honeys, Utrecht’s Dom City Dolls, Enschede’s Eastside Rock’n Rollers, Groningen’s Northern Lightning Rollerdgirls and Eindhoven’s Rockcity Rollers.

Today it has been announced that Team NL’s first tournament game will be against World Champion Team USA. Contrary to many other international sports, the US and Canada (ranked 2nd) dominate the sport because since the era of modern-day roller derby that coincidentally started in Texas in 2001, these two countries were pretty much the only ones playing the sport. Since then roller derby has grown exponentially, and countries such as England, France and Germany are now approaching the level of competitiveness driven by the US and Canada.

Some of the Team NL girls will be travelling to the US for the first time and are as excited as can be.

(Disclosure: I skate with the Amsterdam Derby Dames. Photos of Team NL training by Branko Collin)