Ready to Roll

The players with Arch Rival Roller Derby might be the nicest, most welcoming, yet toughest and most determined group of people in St. Louis.

They’re proud to represent home.

“Fueled by the Mississippi River and energized by the Gateway Arch, we skate, hit, and high-five among the best in the world,” says the league’s website.

Indeed. In November 2024, 13 of the best roller derby teams worldwide met in Portland, Oregon, for the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association global championships. 

St. Louis’ Arch Rival All Stars took second place.

“It felt incredibly validating,” explains Kayla Woodward, 33, a member of the All Stars team. The hairstylist, whose derby nickname is “K-Woo!!!” started playing roller derby in college in Springfield, Missouri, in 2011. 

“It kind of feels silly sometimes, because it’s like, oh, nobody knows in my normal life I have a silver medal for a world championship,” Woodward says.

It’s also validating for St. Louis, and for the league that has worked for 20 years to establish itself as a safe, inclusive haven.

“When I moved here, that was one reason I was really excited, because I knew this league existed,” says Krystal “Alison Wonderbra” Manka, 43, who moved to St. Louis in 2022 after playing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “It just gives me automatic friends. It’s a great, supportive community, and there’s always someone that’ll help you out.” 

“The culture in roller derby is about creating a safe space for all people,” says Crystal “Hammer” Grapes, 34, who drives about 120 miles from her home in Decatur, Illinois for practices and games. She found roller derby after graduating college with a degree in musical theater and was waiting tables when a regular customer who played insisted on signing her up. 

“I feel like everybody finds roller derby when they’re missing something, or they can’t quite figure out what’s either the next step or what they’re going to do next,” Grapes says. “And it just kind of seems to end up being the place they were supposed to be.”

Rules and Bruises

What is roller derby? It might evoke images of the campy ’80s television series “RollerGames,” which featured an alligator pit in the center of the track, or the Drew Barrymore-directed movie “Whip It,” a classic story of a small-town girl who finds herself in a big-city roller derby league. 

In short, 10 players take the track at once, five from each team. One member of each team is designated as a jammer. The jammers, who wear a star on their helmet, are the only players who score points. Their objective is to make it through a pack of skaters, called blockers, who maneuver and strategize and even run into the jammer to stop them.

For every skater on the opposing team the jammer passes, the jammer scores a point. Gameplay is split up into two-minute jams, and there is no limit to how many points one can score in a jam.

“The most I’ve heard of is 44 points, which is wild,” says player Annie “Frowntown” Swanson, 34, a member of the All Stars team. Everybody resets after the two minutes is over, she explains, and then different players can play.

“I’m a jammer, which means I score the points, hopefully,” Swanson says. “And as a jammer, one of the best feelings is just getting out of the pack and skating around and going to get points. You just feel like you’re flying when that happens.”

Although it’s competitive and physical, there are good vibes all around, on and off the track. 

“Everyone is just cool,” says Casey “POW!” Halikiopoulos, 52, of Wildwood. “They’re all similarly minded. They don’t mind getting beat up. They don’t mind beating up. Everyone in the league is pushing themselves to do something different, even the highest level skaters are always pushing themselves to learn something new or teach things in a different way.”

Speaking of getting beat up, while players wear safety gear like helmets, elbow pads, and knee pads, injuries are part of the sport. Manka, the player from Cedar Rapids, has had several injuries over the years, including a torn and disintegrated ACL, dislocated shoulders, and a concussion.

“That was a long time ago,” Manka says of the concussion. “Now we’re much more strict on checking for concussions. Derby has evolved so much since I started. Back then, it was like, oh, you’re fine. And now it’s like, we have tests, you go see a doctor, we’re much safer than we used to be.”

Players in the Arch Rival league range from age 18 to those in their 50s. There’s no particular body type or athletic background that gives one person an advantage over another, players say.

“It’s a sport that everybody can fit into,” Woodward says. “There are a lot of people who come to roller derby who have never been part of a team ever, and it can be really intimidating, but that’s what I love about it. There’s so much openness.”

To the World and Back 

Arch Rival Roller Derby is the area’s oldest derby organization, among others like the St. Louis GateKeepers, Confluence Crush Roller Derby, St. Chux Derby Crew, and Wreck Em Roller Derby.

While the league has received some local media attention over the years and support from friends, family, and sponsors, some players say that it’s difficult to gain attention areawide, especially since nobody’s getting paid to promote them. “It’s such a sports town,” Woodward says. “We have major, major followings in baseball, hockey, and soccer. But for us, we’re still such a niche, kind of small sport overall, with mostly women or queer folk in our organization specifically. It’s hard to get some of the attention and some of the respect that we deserve, especially as an organization that’s existed in St. Louis since 2005.”

Arch Rival has the All Stars, the league’s A team, which includes its best skaters, and competitive B-level and developmental C-level teams, called Arch Nemesis and the Fleur-de-Linquents, respectively. They also run a St. Louis Junior Roller Derby for kids and teens ages 7 to 17. 

Halikiopoulos directs the junior roller derby program, which she says is a welcoming home for kids who may or may not be into traditional sports. The kids learn the rules of the game and have fun. “It’s more like a vibe,” she says. 

She brings boxes of glittery makeup and face paint for the kids to put on before games, something the adult players like to do, too. 

“So they just get to be silly goofballs, but they also push themselves, and we push them,” she says. 

Members at all levels travel, and this summer, the adult teams will play away games in Indianapolis, Indiana; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Eldridge, Iowa; and Montreal, Quebec. The adult teams also play local season games at Midwest Sport Hockey in Ballwin’s Queeny Park. 

Practice, however, takes place in likely the most south St. Louis location imaginable: the St. Louis Skatium roller rink in the Patch neighborhood. The cinderblock building sits in a combined industrial and residential neighborhood just feet away from South Broadway, the St. Louis County line, the River des Peres, and the Mississippi River. 

“We call it ‘the cut,’” says Skatium owner Rob Grimm of the area.

Grimm points out the specific location has served as a source of fun since the late 1800s, when an amusement park opened there. Over the decades, it evolved under a series of names and owners: Mannion’s, Sauter’s, then Downs. There was once a roller coaster here, a pool, a giant toboggan slide, and a roller rink, which was destroyed by fire in 1964. The current building was erected not long after that. 

“It’s been here forever, you know?” Grimm says.

Grimm adds that he’s happy Arch Rival uses the Skatium. “They pay their money, they don’t make a mess. They’re respectful. You couldn’t have better customers.”

Local Pride

In a nod to the campy, theatrical era of roller derby and a nod to their beloved St. Louis, this year Arch Rival Roller Derby relaunched and restructured their local season, where the local players from all levels play one another, with new St. Louis-themed teams.  

There’s the Jewel Boxers after the Jewel Box in Forest Park, the Botanical Guardians after the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Fabulous Foxes and the Lafayette Scare after the Fox Park and Lafayette Square neighborhoods. “And that’s my team,” says All Star player Swanson. “Go Scare!”

Swanson explains that the derby landscape has changed over the years, from a “riot grrrl-esque DIY approach” to the sport. 

“And I think a lot of that is still around,” she says. “But there is this big resurgence of professionalizing what we do on skates and how we carry ourselves and how our business operates.” 

Swanson says she has noticed a wave of excitement since the 2020 global health crisis of people being able to come back and be together. “And a lot of that is rooted in the community of the sport, which has always been important, but I think it’s even more important now to people,” she says.

The LGBTQ+ community also finds a welcoming home with Arch Rival Roller Derby, whose mission statement says it “exists to provide an opportunity for transgender women, cisgender women, intersex women, and gender expansive participants in the St. Louis region to participate in the challenging and exciting sport of roller derby.” In 2016, the league changed its name from Arch Rival Roller Girls to reflect this inclusivity.

Autumn “Sin” Dennis, 33, moved here in 2017 for a job but had played since they were a teenager in their hometown of Nashville.

Dennis, who is agender, says participating in roller derby has been “transformational” in their life as an adult. 

“Just to have this constant, steady stream of friendships, many of which are queer and trans, but altogether inclusive,” they say. “Not to be totally sappy, but I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have this community of people, especially in tense, political times like this. This is what keeps me going some days. I also love that it is a source of sport and empowerment that has never felt toxic or aggressive.”

They had always heard that it could be difficult to move to St. Louis. “Everyone grew up here. Everyone’s hanging out with their high school buddies. I never have experienced that because of these people. I had moved in, and within the next day, someone from the league was dragging me to a party, and dragging me to this, and ‘Have you met this person?’ So that is one thing I never take for granted.”

Dennis adds: “Anytime folks are like, should I do roller derby? And I’m like, if not for the sport, do it for the people.”