New season, new faces for Kitsap roller derby team in return to in-person bouts

“Be your own hero.”

The tagline for “Whip it,” a 2009 sports drama, resonated with a young Sam Diemert as they stared at a flier in an A&W for a new skater cycle in Port Orchard. Much like the movie’s main character, who whipped out their old white Barbie skates to participate in a roller derby team, Diemert found some white Barbie skates, donned a bike helmet and stepped onto the track.

Diemert goes by the alter-ego skater name Sonic ChoRizo, or Rizo for short, keeping with a tradition of creative player names that started in the 1970s. Now Rizo has been rolling with the West Sound Roller Derby, formerly the Northwest Derby Company, for nine years and serves as team captain.

“I've seen how much roller derby has helped me change my life, including being a very supportive community that helped me leave a bad relationship,” Rizo said. “I'm not the only one that's had that story. People come and they find a whole new set of confidence and they’re given permission to physically take up space and that confidence translates to life.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit though, roller derby in Kitsap County came to a screeching halt much like everything else.

But this Saturday, Oct. 7, the skating company will make a comeback with their first bout since 2020 — the Return of the Living Derby. The event will be hosted at the Kitsap Sun Pavilion, which cost the organization $5,000 in rent that was fundraised, and will feature costume contests, a beer garden and a junior derby bout to start it all off at 4 p.m.

During the pandemic, practices were shut down entirely since roller derby is a full contact sport, Rizo said. Monthly league meetings and holiday parties continued over Zoom but weren't as exciting.

The skating company hosted a bout in February 2020, a month before nationwide shutdowns went into effect. They didn’t return to practicing for well over a year.

“It was really a struggle to keep focus on the business when we didn't have the payoff of getting to practice together, of getting to play together,” Rizo said. “And in that time, we did lose a number of members.”

But just as many dropped skating during the pandemic, many others adopted it as a new hobby, Rizo said. When the team started up their new skater cycle again, they had to shut down registration because it had filled up. Now, roller derby veteran Rizo is skating with a team full of new faces.

The roller derby company called Sk8Town in Port Orchard their home until it closed in 2015. Then, their home was Skateland in East Bremerton until it closed in 2019. After practices resumed from the pandemic, the derby team bounced from venue to venue, practicing irregular days because of the inconsistent scheduling, until they landed in the Kitsap County Fairgrounds Sheep Barn. The team has called the concrete floor and high ceilings home for the better part of a year now.

“We are very fortunate to find this place and be able to practice — as long as we have a floor to skate on and enough room, we'll skate on it,” said Ryan Olmsted, a newer face on the team who goes by PWR BTTM, or PB for short. “We've been through a lot just trying to find a place that understands how important roller derby is to us. (Venues) think that we're going to beat up their floors and literally tear holes in their floor.”

Saturday's match pairs West Sound Roller Derby against South Sound Roller Derby from Olympia. Though the two teams will be bumping and racing each other in a heated match, there is mutual support. The South Sound team let the Kitsap team piggyback on their practices when they were short of venues.

“I really love the camaraderie with my own team as well as the other team because roller derby is very unique in that your opponent can hit you down and yeah, you want to get back up and get back in it, but you can also respect their skill,” Rizo said. “That carries through to the end of the game when we choose an MVP blocker and an MVP jammer from the other team.”

As the West Sound Roller Derby approaches their revival bout, PB hopes the event will serve current team members and future ones alike.

“We are using this bout, not only to get everyone excited, but also a learning experience for literally all of us, because a huge portion of us, including me, have never set up our own bout ourselves,” PB said. “We’re using this first bout to really be like, ‘Hey, hello, we’re here!’”

PB hopes that parents might watch Seattle’s South Side Revolution Junior roller derby that will kick off Saturday's match and see roller derby as a fun option for recreational sports outside of the mainstream options.

The competitive full-contact sport offers an engaging and community-oriented avenue for exercise and team building, Rizo said. Most adults don’t have access to the team and character building value of sports beyond high school.

“I never did sports growing up, I was not athletic whatsoever,” Rizo said. “So the fact that at this point in my life I can call myself an athlete is just something I never envisioned for myself … I'm not going to be on a treadmill for an hour, but skating around and hitting my friends for two hours a week is a lot of fun.”

After the West Sound Roller Derby breaks in the long awaited season of in-person games with the Return of the Living Derby, they will compete in an away game during the middle of October before hosting their next bout on Dec. 2. The Pleasant December Bout will begin at 4 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: West Sound Roller Derby returns from pandemic with first bout