AURORA, Colo.—By day, Crystal Stone is in the business of helping people improve their vision.
When she laces up her skates with the Denver Roller Dolls, however, the longtime Kaiser Permanente optician and Aurora native doesn’t mind delivering black eyes.
Stone is one of several Aurora women who are part of the revival of roller derby, a more pure remix of the showy spectacle that became popular in the 1960s and ’70s for its professional wrestling-type antics.
In today’s world of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association—home of Colorado’s Roller Dolls and national champion Rocky Mountain Rollergirls—athleticism is at much more of a premium. Hard hits are still encouraged, and Stone is more than willing to oblige.
“Roller derby is so much fun. Everybody seems to be happy, and the best part is you get to hit people,” Stone said. “That’s the part I enjoy.”
In derby basics, each team has a jammer, whose job is to score points for her team by passing as many of the opponents’ players as possible during a two-minute “jam” period. Stone is a blocker, making her the first line of defense to impede a jammer.
Known by her derby name of Extinction Level Event—inspired by her 8-year-old son’s belief she would hit as hard as “the comet that made the dinosaurs extinct”—the Rangeview High School graduate draws energy from the crowd and uses whatever legal means she can to stop her.
“The crowd is great, and it makes it a lot more fun. You can hear your friends yelling and it gives you a boost,” Stone said. “Sometimes I just have to knock somebody into the stands.”
Though her position requires physicality, Stone has skating skills honed since her youth. Her parents helped open the iconic Skate City rink in Aurora that is still in operation, and she started skating when she was just three. Stone was part of the world speed skating team in the 1980s, but a serious car accident in 1992 led to a 17-year stretch where she was off her wheels.
A friend encouraged Stone to come out for roller derby and she took to it immediately, soaking in the competition, the workout and the camaraderie of the sport. Playing with a lower level league—one of an estimated 1,000-plus across the country—Stone had a nasty run-in with an opponent who stomped on her back and fractured her T-12 vertebrae. The incident showed her she needed to skate with a higher level of league, so she joined the Roller Dolls, one of the elite teams in the country’s largest league, the WFTDA.
Besides the sisterhood she has with her teammates, roller derby has become a true family affair for Stone, whose son Quartz is part of the Dolls’ junior roller derby team. Her 4-year-old daughter is a little too young to join. Her husband helps her with her other job with the Roller Dolls—maintaining the track, which the team uses daily at its Glitterdome practice facility in Denver, as well as the 1stBank Center in Broomfield where they hold their home bouts.
The Rocky Mountain Rollergirls, the 2010 WFTDA champions, also boast Aurora ties.
Aurora Central High School graduate Pam Eastwood—known in derby circles as Pam Demonium—hadn’t done anything athletic in her life other than lettering in tennis as a senior in high school. But something immediately appealed to her about roller derby.
“I saw it and I thought right away, this is something I have to do,” Eastwood said.
Eastwood, an administrator of 401K plans with Great-West Retirement Services in Greenwood Village, has developed a legion of fans among her co-workers. Every once in a while, Eastwood has to resist the urge to hip-check them into their cubicles, which she jokes is “just instinct.”
It hasn’t always been fun for Eastwood, who shattered her ankle in a scrimmage and missed an entire year mending.
Eastwood’s given up two inches of ankle bone for her sport and has a metal plate and eight screws in it that will be with her forever, just like her love of roller derby.
“It took about a year for me to get back on skates and everybody asked, ‘Are you really going back?'” Eastwood said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah of course, it’s my passion.'”
Passion is what drives the members of the Rollergirls—like the rest of the WFTDA, a non-profit, skater-owned and operated venture—to balance their personal lives with their derby lives.
Every skater has to serve on a committee or work on some other aspect of putting on bouts.
It doesn’t leave much time for being a wife, girlfriend, partner or mother, according to Pierette J. Shields, a Rangeview graduate who goes by the name of Dangerous Leigh’Azon.
“We call the people in our lives Derby Widows,” said Shields, a crime reporter at the Longmont Times-Call who plays, coaches, handles the Rollergirls’ media requests and heads the team’s growing Rollerpunks youth league.
“We run every aspect of this business, so it’s definitely a labor of love for all of us,” she added. “We know it’s the best sport in the world.”
The emergence of the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls and Denver Roller Dolls netted Colorado the chance to host the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association championship tournament in November at the 1stBank Center.
