Muscles are pumped. Lungs primed. Helmets polished and wheels wiped. But these aren’t the most important ways Bay Area Derby skaters are amped for the season.
That would be love.
“Our league members are so kind and dedicated and just genuinely good people,” said “Karma Koncussion,” 29, of Richmond, known off track as Gravity Emanuel, a player in Bay Area Derby (BAD), the Bay Area’s only competitive women’s roller derby league, drawing skaters from Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco, Berkeley, El Cerrito, and beyond.
“I’m happy to go out there and play as hard as I can and hug people after the game,” said “Umm Kaboom,” 39, who also lives in Richmond and goes by Alex Hanna when, say, at the supermarket or her desk job. While she’s a “super competitive” skater, she says hugs are for all players, including the opposition.
“It’s a community of mutual care,” she said.
But it’s also a demanding contact sport.
“Any sport is going to have an element of testing your mental and emotional fortitude, as well as your physical, and derby is no exception,” Emanuel said. “With derby, you are moving and pushing your body in ways most people have never encountered. The risk for injury is high.”
If you go
WHAT: Bay Area Derby women’s roller derby season
WHEN: April 5 (opener), June 28 (Pride event), Sept. 12-14 and Oct. 25.
WHERE: Richmond Auditorium, 403 Civic Center Plaza
TICKETS: $30-$55.20 VIP. Kids admitted free. Visit Eventbrite.
Bay Area league recovering post-COVID
Roller derby, invented in Chicago in the 1930s and now played worldwide, with male and female players from the start, has had popularity peaks and dips. As a kind of underdog, homespun sport, derby hooked enthusiastic fans but not lasting deep-pocketed investors.
But a Texas-born resurgence of all-women’s derby in the early 2000s appears enduring, with an estimated 1,250 teams or clubs worldwide today, most in the United States. The majority, including BAD, are members of the Women’s Flat Track Association, the sport’s international governing body, which formed in 2004. The association started with about 20 leagues and now has almost 450 from about 31 countries.
The pandemic hit women’s derby hard, like all spectator sports, halting games. But it’s fully in come-back mode.
“Last year (2024) was our first year back to full seasons and full games after COVID — our first big return,” said BAD player Amy “Sandra K.O.” Zhou, 30.
This is BAD’s second year playing at the Richmond Auditorium, bringing its own flooring, a necessity for a league without a permanent rink. For games, it needs space for a 108-by-75-foot long by 75-foot wide portable track, plus seating for several hundred spectators (Zhou said last year’s Richmond opener surprised them when it drew 800 attendees.).
Games have also been played at the Palace of Fine Arts and Fort Mason in San Francisco and the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond.
The nonprofit league has two regular teams, the Oakland Outlaws and the San Francisco Rolling Dead, as well as an All-Star traveling team.
Until a few years ago, it also included the Richmond Wrecking Belles and the Berkeley Resistance. But with each team needing at least 15 players per game, plus a few more for wiggle room, the league hasn’t had the numbers in recent years to support more than two teams, said Zhou, who skates for the Outlaws. The Belles folded in 2017 and the Resistance in 2019.
If the league grows, BAD would love to add these teams back, Zhou said. “That’s always the hope, to expand. It would be really amazing to have four teams.”
She said she learned in BAD’s learn-to-skate program, called “BADDIES,” and says they welcome novices.
On the track, each team fights hard for the win. But otherwise, it’s one family.
“It’s the most welcoming and supportive community I have ever entered, yet grounded in clear structure and strong discipline,” said Azin Kamali, whose team name is “Azinnosaurus Wrecks” or “A-Wreck,” 37, who skates for the Rolling Dead.
In each 60-minute game or “bout,” two teams face off in opposite directions, battling for progress down the track in two-minute intervals, called jams. The goal is to not get blocked. Each team has one jammer, marked by a star on the helmet, whose job is to make it past the four opposing blockers, called “the pack.” The first jammer to successfully complete one lap, starts scoring points every time they pass a blocker.
Blocking with arms, hips, legs, torso and rear-end is allowed. But skaters can’t block with their heads, elbows, forearms, hands, knees, lower legs or feet. There’s a penalty box for rule-breakers, and skaters can be kicked out of games.
Derby is seriously athletic. It’s also seriously fan-rousing, often with zany theatrics, wild make-up, live music and dancing, along with the sport’s trademark outrageously aggressive player names that tend to contrast inner kindness.
BAD player names include: Sleigher Moon, Murderbot, Jagged Little-killer, Flesh-eating Flem, Emma Eatya Brains. Comparisons with World Wrestling Entertainment, at least on this aspect, are common.
Keeping BAD up and running is truly a labor of love, from playing to administrative tasks to hauling and setting up equipment.
“The league is really scrappy, it’s all volunteer,” Zhou said.
But good vibes alone can’t maintain a league. Funding is needed for renting game and practice space, storage, equipment, uniforms and other necessary expenses. Tickets sales and donations help.
Until recently, BAD was based at a West Oakland warehouse, with room for practices, but a rent increase last year priced them out. Now, the 20,000-square-foot Richmond Auditorium is the closest thing the league has to a home. It’s renting storage space nearby. A more permanent home is on the league’s wish list.
Practices are still held at a few Oakland parks, and the nonprofit NorCal Inline hockey skating rink, when they can afford it.
BAD started hosting its games in Richmond last year.
“It’s great. It’s a fantastic venue,” Hanna said. “The workers there are phenomenal, they’re really positive partners with us, we love to work with them.”
The auditorium has plenty of spectator space, decent rental rates, and a supportive city community, Zhou said.
A welcoming sport for all gender, sexual identities
Finding a welcoming community for the sport has taken on new significance recently with President Donald Trump ending federal support for any school sports program with transgender women/girls. Gov. Gavin Newsom also shocked many of his supporters when he recently said on his podcast that trans women in women’s sports have an unfair advantage. The California legislature, however, blocked bills earlier this week that would have banned trans women in school sports.
Women’s roller derby has long self-identified as being inclusive of all players regardless of sexual orientation or gender identification.
The women’s flat track association (WFTDA) recently released an updated gender statement in response to President Trump’s January executive order, saying there are only two genders in the United States, male and female, and that this is determined at conception.
“The WFTDA does not and will not differentiate between members regardless of presentation and identity, and does not and will not set minimum standards of femininity or androgyny for its membership, or interfere with the privacy of its members for the purposes of eligibility,” the statement said in part.
To BAD players, who identify as gay, straight, bisexual, and transgender, with a “who cares” attitude, the recent political attention on gender is sad and scary.
“The politicization of trans athletes is blatant and completely unscientific fearmongering and scapegoating for the sake of political expediency,” said Emanuel, who’s on the Outlaws.
“It’s frustrating to even have to acknowledge this issue let alone constantly rebuke it because there is simply no basis for the ban other than targeting an already marginalized group of people for rhetoric’s sake,” they said.
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BAD player names include: Sleigher Moon, Murderbot, Jagged Little-killer, Flesh-eating Flem, Emma Eatya Brains
Hanna, who has has a doctorate in sociology and is the director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), which promotes AI that reflects diverse perspectives, said strong research on bone density, cardiovascular function and other physical traits, “suggests that physical characteristics end up not giving trans women a competitive advantage in sports. But as you may imagine, this scholarship is contested and is a minefield to navigate.”
Gender identification and freedom of expression “is not necessarily a new thing, but it’s also something we assert very strongly; it’s a central tenet of our organization,” Hanna said.
“As for trans women who play in women’s sports: trans women are women, they belong in sports. To exclude us from sports is to exclude us from public life. We’re not going away, under this president or any other state regime,” she said.
BAD players say they’re revved up for the 2025 season.
“It’s a place that feels good, with other people wanting to accept you with open arms,” Hanna said. But there’s still that competitive instinct.
“I play to win,” she said.
