By Alex McCuaig

Roller Derby

Toughest sport on four wheels not just a fad anymore

Dec 29, 2019 | 1:22 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Having occupied a place in Medicine Hat’s sporting tradition for more than a decade, it’s fair to say the city’s roller derby club can no longer be considered a fad.

Over the weekend, the city’s club, Gas City Regulators, hosted its annual Naughty and Nice invitational, attracting fans and participants from across southern Alberta to the Cypress Centre Field House.

Chairman and coach of the team, Joel McNally, says the club’s rise has paralleled the sport’s resurgence from its professional heyday in the 1950s and 60s on banked tracks to the explosion of the flat track amateur version developed in the 2000s.

“We had a good five or six years of real novelty value – everybody wanted to see girls hitting each other and knocking each other all over the place – and that’s how we started off here,” said McNally. “Over time, however, it has evolved into much more of a real sport. The rules have been dialed in, strategies are dialed in and now it’s becoming a sport like any other.”

And it continues to be a punishing sport, perhaps one of the toughest amateur team competitions out there.

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McNally highlighted roller derby continues to be dominated by female participants, estimating that for every men’s team, there are likely 20 women’s squads.

Locally, he says the sports also growing at the youth level.

“As far as Medicine Hat goes, we have one women’s team – about ten years old – and we have two junior teams also,” said McNally. “The juniors play at different levels depending on how old and large and what the skill levels of the participants are.”

McNally said the sport is still relatively new in Alberta but that has allowed participants who may not have played contact sports before the opportunity to participate at fairly level skill set.