‘It gave me the courage to be me’ – Roller derby empowers skaters

On the track, they are physical and focused. There’s no room for emotions to get in the way of the game.

But beyond the track, women’s roller derby skaters find the confidence to just become more of themselves.

“It gave me the courage to be me,” said “Star Stormer,” otherwise known as Melissa Barfield, who skated for Columbia’s QuadSquad team until about two years ago. Now, Barfield is a referee for the sport as well as the owner of a local hair salon. “If you can hit somebody, you can do anything.”

Roller derby skaters and fans from across the nation and the world are in Columbia this weekend for the International Women’s Flat Track Derby Association Division I Playoffs. The top three finishers Sunday will advance to November’s international championship tournament in Portland, Ore.

Watching from the stands Saturday at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center was another former QuadSquad skater “Truckstop,” aka Liz Skelly. If you’d ever been hit by Skelly on the track, you’d understand why she was called Truckstop, another former teammate said.

A rugby player in her college years, Skelly came to roller derby several years ago seeking a new athletic outlet. Away from the roller derby track, she’s a firefighter.

“To get into it, mostly you just have to have a lot of heart and a lot of dedication to basically build something from nothing,” said Skelly, who now coaches a derby team in Minnesota. “In the beginning, it’s kind of daunting. But ... you can fight through that.”

Strong support – besides a fair amount of healthy competition – among teammates helps build the kind of community that draws many women, such as QuadSquad skater “RoxAnn Stones,” aka Maisie Osteen, into the sport.

Columbia’s roller derby community is partly what drew Osteen to the city after she graduated from law school in Virginia and became a lawyer defending poor people accused of crimes.

“I’ve played sports my entire life, and the group of women that decide to do this is self-selected,” Osteen said a few hours before she and her teammates took the track in the afternoon. “Everybody is fierce in some way.”

Many of the traits that make a skater a strong derby competitor are the same traits that support one of the sport’s core values: women’s empowerment.

“By the time you survive a few of these practices ... you really feel like a badass,” said “Dani Dynamite,” whose non-derby name is Leah Miller. A former QuadSquad skater, Miller teaches Spanish at the University of South Carolina and remains active in the league’s organization. “It does something for your confidence because the improvements are so tangible.”

Osteen and the QuadSquad eeked out a tight win in their Friday afternoon bout before falling to the reigning world champion Rose City Rollers, of Portland, Friday night. They stand to finish between fifth and eighth place Sunday among the 10-team field.

Game results and more information about the tournament can be found at www.wftda.com/tournaments/2016/columbia.

This story was originally published September 10, 2016 at 4:32 PM with the headline "‘It gave me the courage to be me’ – Roller derby empowers skaters."