Sean C. Morgan
Two Sweet Home girls are following in their mother’s footsteps – or rather rolling along after her.
Zoe Links, 14, aka Hydro Jane, and Ivy Links, 12, aka Lethal IV, are competing as junior members of the Sicktown Derby Dames, a roller derby team, of Albany.
“I did it about a year and half before,” said their mother Kim Links. She resigned from the team for medical reasons and has been roller skating for fun for the past year. She has continued to skate with her team, the Sicktown Derby Dames, for fun.
“I was very involved with the girls and the Candystripers (the juniors),” Kim said.
“We never liked any sports,” Zoe said.
They tried soccer, softball and cheer, Kim said.
“We always came to her practices and watched, and we really liked it,” Zoe said.
The junior team started in January 2012, Kim said, and her girls joined.
“We got there the very first practice for the whole league,” Ivy said.
“Once we started scrimmaging, it was so much fun,” Zoe said.
“We love skating,” Ivy said, although she recalled only going roller skating once before they joined the team.
Zoe said she enjoyed skating with her friends before joining the roller derby team.
They had to learn all of the different ways to stop and fall.
Learning to fall is key, Kim said. “One of the things they always say, when you’re falling, you’re doing awesome.”
Then the players have to know how to get up, she said. “If you don’t get up, you’re going to get run over. You’ve got to get up immediately.”
Before bouting, the girls must complete a written test and a physical test, Zoe said. They also must complete 25 laps in 5 minutes. They can do 31 or 32 laps. Achievements like that are required to advance in the program.
The two girls had only scrimmaged twice before they were into their first bout, against Bend in February, Zoe said. “It was so much fun. We were so happy.”
At first, it was confusing, and they didn’t really know what to do, Ivy said.
But after halftime, they knew “we got this,” Zoe said.
The sport is rough, but it makes its players physically tougher and they get used to it, Ivy said.
Their first scrimmage was “very scary,” Zoe said. Their first bout, they were facing people they didn’t know and who had been skating a year longer.
Their team was the greenest, Kim said.
Even still, their team received awards for good blockers, jammers and players.
“They were so nice,” Zoe said.
“They are learning to interact with teammates all over,” Kim said, and they’ve gotten a lot of praise and high-fives.
“The coaches we have are excellent role models,” Kim said, and the girls are learning leadership skills, especially working in the pivot position.
“I like just skating and getting to be with my friends and family,” Ivy said, and she likes the contact part of the sport.
“I like the hitting , physically getting to play the game,” Zoe said. It’s a real workout. “One jam is two minutes, but you’re short of breath.”
Ivy is the smallest member of her team, which can include players ages 10 to 17, Kim said, and she just has to work harder to compete.
The team is a family, and its members look out for each other, Kim said. It’s “awesome” that the girls, if they feel they can’t talk to her, have coaches to whom they can talk, along with the older girls on the team.
More girls should join the sport, she said. They don’t even need to know how to skate to get started. She has been amazed at the progress of her girls since they started.
Roller derby is a contact sport played by two teams of five, who skate in the same direction around the track. They compete in two-minute jams. Each team designates a jammer, who scores by lapping members of the opposing team. Each team assists its jammers while trying to block the opposing jammers.
For more information about the team, email [email protected].