With baseball season in the Battlefords coming to an end soon, there's a new sport starting up to take its place.
The Battlefords Roller Derby League started up in September. It welcomes women 18 and older to join the fast growing sport.
Five players from each team play at a time. There are four blockers and a jammer per team. The blockers stay in one spot, trying to stop the opposing team's jammer from making it through their wall, but also attempting to open up space for their own jammer.
Points are scored when your team's jammer makes it through the wall.
The games get physical as each team uses a combination of speed and physicality to score and to play defence.
"It's intimidating to be on roller skates, let alone trying to hit somebody," said Jes Kohut, better known as "Jesi Leethal," which is her derby name.
Being physical is important, but players also have to be smart about how they defend. Any use of elbows, forearms or pushing from behind will garner a one-minute penalty. It's similar to hockey, a penalty leaves a team short one player.
While roller derby is fairly new to the Battlefords, the girls are picking it up fast. They've been practicing twice a week since September aside from a short break in February.
New players need the practice. Before they're able to compete in bouts they need to be "benchmarked." Benchmarking is like a test that must be passed before competing. Players need to be able to skate 25 laps in five minutes, learn how to stop, hit and fall safely among other things.
"Most of our team has been benchmarked and that's a huge accomplishment," said Kohut.
Most of the girls on the team are new to the sport, but a lot have experience with other sports. The athleticism tends to transfer over. Kohut was a basketball player before one of her friends told her she should try roller derby. Some others came from sports like ringette and figure skating.
The girls are planning for a bout to be held at the North Battleford Civic Centre July 20 and are hoping to see a ton of support from the community.
"We're gonna try and get a lot of advertising going and get people kind of excited to come and watch what it's about," said Kohut.
All the information about the league is posted on the Battlefords Roller Derby League Facebook page. The team is hoping for some new recruits, or "fresh meat," in March.
