Hillary Buscovick’s transformation into a roller derby superstar started with a red envelope on her doorstep in Portland, Oregon.
In 2010, the Gunnison native and Western Colorado graduate had recently moved there, and after playing ice hockey throughout her upbringing and into college, she was searching for a new outlet. That’s when she ordered the , back when Netflix still delivered DVDs.
“They had no women’s ice hockey in Portland, and I figured I’d maybe join a lacrosse team or something,” Buscovick recalled. “I’d never played that before, but then Whip It came onto my doorstep, like two weeks after I moved there. It was destiny.”
In the 16 years since, Buscovick — whose skating name is Scald Eagle — in a sport that’s seen significant growth over the past couple of decades, especially here in Colorado.
Buscovick has been a longtime pillar for as the club morphed into a world power in a sport showcasing speed, physicality and agility. is done on an oval track, and designated skaters called jammers earn points by lapping opponents over the course of 60-minute, full-contact bouts that are divided up into continuous-action plays called jams.
Buscovick — known for her signature face paint and a jukey skating technique reminiscent of a running back jump-cutting to evade a linebacker in the hole — is one of the best jammers in roller derby history. The 39-year-old played the first half of her career with the , and is one of five Roller Derby World Cup skaters on , Denver Roller Derby’s top travel team.
Along with Buscovick, who competes for USA Roller Derby, Mile High Club also features other internationally elite skaters in Jennifer Dean (aka Miss Tea Maven, England captain), Cailin Klein (aka Sharon Tacos, USA), Sara LeMay (aka Scara ta Death, ) and Natalie Davidson (aka Killifornia, Philippines).
Those talents and more have made Denver one of the sport’s epicenters, and are a primary reason that Mile High Club is one of two frontrunners to win the upcoming Championships in October in Sweden.
“If you like to watch people skate fast, hit each other really hard, yell, but then also burst out into laughter pretty much every time the whistle blows, it’s a sport for you,” Denver Roller Derby president Isabel Gareau, aka Miserabel, explained. “It’s very high energy, it’s very dynamic, it’s very fun.
“… The only other league that keeps up with us in terms of (participation numbers) is Rose City, who is definitely considered our arch nemesis, affectionately, at this point in time. But there’s no doubt, the city of Denver has become a pillar in this sport’s ascension.”
A home and a pipeline of skaters
Last Saturday, Denver Roller Derby held a scrimmage event featuring their juniors as well as the club’s top two travel teams in order to raise money for the
Even for the most talented skaters, is no money in roller derby. Skaters like Buscovick and Dean have gear sponsorships, which helps offset some costs, but it’s still pay-to-play for them and everyone else. That includes $60 in monthly dues to be part of Denver Roller Derby, plus travel costs for the handful of tournaments that Mile High Club as well as Bruising Altitude and the Standbys (the club’s B and C travel teams, respectively) go to each year. Dean estimates she spent about $10,000 last year on travel.
But as Saturday’s atmosphere at the underscored, those who participate in the sport see the cost as well worth it for the camaraderie and community that skaters get back.
The Rollerdome is a warehouse located in an industrial area just west of the South Broadway strip. It features a track made of sport court tiles, a couple side walls that look like hockey boards, two wooden benches in the corner that serve as the penalty box, and a handful of bleachers. There is no air conditioning, and a glittery silver metal horse hangs from a chain from one of the beams on one end of the track.
That all creates a certain gritty, homespun vibe that has made the Rollerdome a beloved gathering place for local fans and skaters alike. Denver Roller Derby shares the venue with another club, Rocky Mountain Roller Derby.
“We’ve put in a lot of work and effort to that place specifically, so we are really incentivized to stay there long-term,” Gareau said. “It’s hard to find a really good place in Denver to have a roller derby venue that includes bathrooms and parking and heat and relative stability. The warehouse has its quirks, but when its packed (like it was on Saturday), it’s an amazing home for this sport here.”
Beyond Denver Roller Derby’s the club also has a recreational team and an adult training program called Flight School. Plus, there is a home team league that features skaters from the club’s travel teams. The club has about 80 total skaters. Denver Roller Derby also has a that has over 90 skaters aged 7 to 17, with two competitive teams, a home team group, and Jet School for beginners. There is also an affiliated men’s league,
All told, Denver Roller Derby is believed to be the second-largest roller derby club in the world, behind the Rose City Rollers
“The future is in the children, because the juniors are definitely going to carry the sport forward,” Dean said. “My dream would be that this is something that can be picked up in schools or by colleges and it becomes a lot more widely recognized. And that dream starts with getting more and more kids to do the sport, like we have done.”
Phoebe Petersen, aka Shebe Dangerous, runs the youth program. She was a skater in its inaugural year, 2011, and has witnessed the program’s numbers more than double in size as Denver Roller Derby now also has 10 full-time youth coaches split between the various levels.
The program is producing more talent than ever, too, as earlier this summer the competitive A team Major Turbulence qualified for the Junior Roller Derby Championship for the first time (finishing fourth) while the B team Minor Turbulence won that level’s national championship.
But most importantly, Petersen says, the youth program provides a competitive outlet for kids who don’t see themselves in traditional sports.
“There’s a skater on my A team right now who always struggled to fit in with traditional sports, and she’s really shy,” Petersen said. “But her mom came up to me at the end of the season and was like, ‘I’ve never seen my kid so open and with such a great community. She’s a different kid.’ It’s the same story with a lot of our kids who have gotten involved in our program.”
Beatrix Tempel, an 18-year-old graduate of Erie High School who is going to CU in the fall, is one of the budding stars to come out of Major Turbulence. Tempel, aka Track Mamba, skated with the adults in Saturday’s event and is currently on the practice squad for Mile High Club. The jammer has been in the sport for 11 years.
“I grew up watching Scald Eagle and (other Mile High Club skaters), so being able to have them cheer me on as I’m growing, that was a big motivator,” Tempel said. “One time during a recent juniors event, from the stands I heard one of the younger speeders cheer for me, and I was like, ‘Wow, I can be a role model for these young kids.’ Because I used to be that kid. That’s how the sport gets passed on.”
‘The sport helped me find myself’
Roller derby’s origins date back to the 1920s, when the Transcontinental Roller Derby tour (which was performed on a raised, banked track) laid Banked-track roller derby had another blip in the 1980s and ’90s via the RollerGames, which featured a figure-8-shaped track and staged action similar to professional wrestling.
But in the early 2000s, roller derby entered its modern chapter on flat track, which was more affordable to set up anywhere, from a parking lot to a regular skating rink. Colorado’s roller derby trailblazers, the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls, were founded in 2004. Denver Roller Derby (originally known as the Denver Roller Dolls) got its start about two years later, and by 2010, there were more than 450 flat track roller derby leagues worldwide as the sport became less about gimmicks and theatrics and more about true athleticism within genuine competition.
As Buscovick’s genesis in the sport underscores, many of roller derby’s current stars got their start on quad skates in unique ways. For Dean, it was from a Craigslist ad that led her to a random parking lot in New Jersey 16 years ago. She accompanied a friend to that roller derby practice, when a coach pulled her off the sideline and forced her to participate.
“(That coach was like), ‘You’re not allowed to just watch. You either skate or you go home,'” Dean recalled with a laugh. “I wasn’t about to just leave my friend at some random parking lot. But I didn’t have skates. So the coach went to his car and pulled out size 13 skates — I’m a size 7.
“So I am forced to wear these (expletive) clown shoes. I fell a million times. I’m pretty sure I broke my tailbone that day. But I had so much fun, and I kept coming back to practice. My friend quit two weeks later, but I kept going and then eventually I found the WFTDA.”
That was the inception of a global sensation, as Dean played for the powerhouse and was part of their 2014 world championship team before moving to Colorado to join Denver Roller Derby during the COVID pandemic.
Dean is also and the 37-year-old is taking a leap of faith by quitting her job as a data engineer to pursue coaching full-time. The 2025 Roller Derby World Cup MVP Team selection has battled through an array of injuries to keep playing the sport, including five knee surgeries, a nose surgery, and three hospitalizations from concussions.
Through all that, Dean explains that roller derby helped her find her identity as an individual after growing up “as a shy, meager kid, who was mute and had no friends and refused to talk to anybody.”
“I’m autistic, I’m super neurodivergent, I really struggle socially,” Dean said. “So (myself as) Jennifer struggled a lot. But then I got on the track and I came up with Miss Tea Maven, and Miss Tea Maven could be whoever the (expletive) I wanted to be. It was a completely new refresh on life that started when I was 21.
“So if Jennifer was quiet and meek, Miss Tea Maven’s going to be louder, going to be impressive. The sport helped me find myself. And it was just so freeing to be the persona you always wanted to be, regardless of who you were beforehand.”
The WFTDA also has an so the association is accepting of all types of sexualities and gender identities in a time where the latter has become a divisive political topic in sports. From a competitive standpoint, Dean says that policy works because “size and strength really don’t matter that much, because (quad) wheels are the great equalizer.”
“It’s a very queer sport, it’s a very feminist sport, and it’s very centered on embracing all gender identities and gender expressions under its participation values,” Gareau added. “We are very aligned to the inclusion of trans people, especially trans women in sports. It’s a different take than a lot of sports are having in this current climate, but it’s something that roller derby really prides itself on.”
Roller derby’s umbrella of inclusion is where Gareau theorizes skaters’ roller derby names first came about, and eventually became a permanent, empowering part of the sport’s lore.
“There’s a lot of mythology and a somewhat nebulous origin about that particular element of roller derby, but we think it has a lot to do with women not being able to express an aggressive or violent side of themselves,” Gareau said. “So this creation of a sort of persona helps deflect that, or allows you to stand in that power.”
Pursuit of the Hydra
With the WFTDA Championships looming on October 15-18 in Malmö, Sweden, the Mile High Club is currently ranked second in the association’s behind Rose City’s top team Wheels of Justice, who they’ve beaten twice this year. (The rankings are slow to update.)
Denver Roller Derby’s top team is also third in the behind Rose City and St. Louis’ Arch Rival All-Stars, which is the other top contender to win the coveted Hydra Trophy. Buscovick, who won the Hydra twice in her time with Rose City, is impressed by Mile High Club’s ascension over the past decade to become a frontrunner entering 2026 worlds.
“Any movement in the Top 10 rankings is really difficult to do, so having gone from ranked seventh in the WFTDA when I first joined in 2017 to where we are now — in contention for a Hydra — feels like a major achievement,” Buscovick said.
The Mile High Club’s best finish at the WFTDA Championships was third in 2024, when the event was held in Portland. But with Buscovick, Dean and Klein as three of the most formidable jammers in the world — each skater is capable of threading her way through the start of a congested jam with a skillful combination of force and finesse — Mile High Club has arguably the best offense in the world.
That offense could meet the world’s best defense, the , for the world title on Oct. 18. The St. Louis squad beat the Mile High Club in April, and this fall, the two teams are on
“I want to beat them so bad at champs coming up,” Dean said. “I’m really hoping for a Denver-Arch Rival final. We can take them.”
If Denver Roller Derby can fulfill Dean’s prediction, Sara LeMay says the win would emphasize the growth of the sport within Colorado as a whole, where other clubs such as Rocky Mountain Roller Derby (formerly the Rollergirls), FoCo Roller Derby, Boulder County Roller Derby and Pikes Peak Roller Derby have athletes competing in the sport up and down the Front Range.
The Rollergirls in the fifth iteration of the tournament, so a Mile High Club victory in October would return the sport’s most coveted trophy back to the Centennial State.
“To come back with the Hydra would mean so much to Denver Roller Derby, having been such a legacy league,” LeMay said. “It would also show the world of roller derby the effect of growing and learning and teaching this game at the local level. Hopefully a world championship can also show Denver that roller derby is a sport to watch, and we’ll make everybody in the city and this league proud.”
