Roller derby season is coming back to the Lane County Fairgrounds this Saturday, and the women in fishnets and spandex want the credit they deserve as players of a real sport. Considering the current trend that suggests this is soon to be an officially recognized Olympic event, it’d be wise to treat it as such.
“There’s a fine line between the show and the athleticism at roller derby events, and the community really eats up the culture and loves the flashiness and the scantily clad attire,” said Sunny “Rex Havoc” Arthurs, league president of Eugene’s Emerald City Roller Girls and a member of the Andromedolls team. “But there’s a whole other piece of it, and that’s that the athleticism is developing nationwide.”
That athleticism has come to be a defining characteristic of West Coast teams and has proved not only to garner attention from the sporting community, but it also seems to attract the strongest, most difficult teams in the nation.  
Take a look at the top 10 nationally ranked roller derby teams, and one can easily see a West Coast dominance. Why is that? Speed skating, Sephra Oare, or “S.O.,” a league referee, said.
“There ends up being a lot of roller skaters in rainy environments,” Oare said.
Washington state has developed quite the reputation as a roller derby Mecca with three of its teams in the national top 10 rankings; the Oly Rollers from Olympia at the number two spot behind only the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls of Denver. However, this hasn’t discouraged Eugene’s Emerald City Roller Girls from setting their sights high and establishing big goals.
“The long-term goal is to become a part of the WFTDA’s (Women’s Flat Track Derby Association) officially recognized top 10 teams in the nation,” Arthurs said. 
Right now the team is ranked 14th in the Western region, notably the most difficult, and the Emerald City Roller Girls need to be ranked in the top eight to qualify for national contention.  
Above them sit Portland’s Rose City Rollers, Seattle’s Rat City Rollers and both of Denver’s teams, the aforementioned Rollergirls and the Denver Roller Dolls, all teams of distinction that the girls admit would probably give them a walloping right now.  
Nevertheless, the optimism that they express and their crowds of more than 2,000 (now considered standard at their bouts) point to an upward trajectory. They’ve seen success quite regularly.
“In November our travel team went down to Southern California and we played a team called Central Coast and demolished them,” said Katarina Van Rotten, a pivot for the Flat Track Furies. “In December we went to Bend and played the Lava City Roller Dolls and demolished them, and in January we went to Las Vegas and played the Sin City Roller Girls and demolished them too.”
There are two different levels of competition that take place in the WFTDA officially sanctioned leagues: intra-league competition, and then there’s a traveling team representing the whole league. This is essentially an all-star team composed of the league’s best players, who contend for regional and national ranking.  
The intra-league competition will take place this Saturday. One should expect bone-crushing and skate-slicing action on the track as the league’s fourth season is ushered in.

[email protected]