Behind The Wheels.

How Local Derby Girls Get Geared Up For Game Day.

From the clever nicknames of its competitors to the frequency of injury that the tough, contact sport brings, roller derby is pretty damn great. There's really nothing quite like it, where groups of strong, kickass women come together to show the world what hard work and dedication looks like.

It's a sport that allows its participants to really learn about themselves, to meet new people and release a bit of steam, too. Above all, though, derby is a sport that requires confidence.

What's cool locally is that the women that compete in the sport come from all walks of life.

That's precisely what we hope to convey with the following photo set, in which we snapped some shots of competitors from two local teams — Assassination City and Dallas Derby Devils — in their work clothes and derby gear.

Name:Colby May.
Derby Name:Arson Daly.
Squad: AC Derby.
Occupation: Attorney.
Experience: Two years.
How'd you get started? “I had a friend who played in Baton Rouge, and I love to roller skate, so I asked her about it. She was like 'Well I haven't died,' and I was like 'OK, I'm going to do it!'”

Name: Angela Hansen.
Derby Name: Bourbon Barbie.
Squad: Dallas Derby Devils.
Occupation: “I'm a personal trainer, I own a Subway restaurant and I sell medical equipment.”
Experience: “Well, my story is a little bit more interesting. I joined the league, technically, three years ago, and after a couple months I got pregnant. So, I missed the end of that season, and the beginning of the next season, and got to finish the last year and go to championship with my team — which we obviously won! So this will be my first full year playing. I'm really excited.”
What do you love most about the sport? “”I love competition; I've always been an athlete since I was itty bitty. I started skating since I was two, I love coming out here. I love the adrenaline, I like winning and there's so much team comradery. Because this is a new sport to me, aside from the actual skating part, every time I come here to learn from all the girls from my team. We now have one of the best teams in America, which makes it even better that I'm skating with some of the best people.”

Name: Allison Slomowitz.
Derby Name: Dark Alley.
Squad: AC Derby.
Occupation: Photojournalist.
Experience: “I've been with the league about a year and a half. I just got drafted about two months ago.”
What have you learned from doing derby? “Derby has given me a lot of confidence I didn't know that I had within myself. I'm sure others think that I had always had that. It's given me a new look upon myself as to how hard I work for things and how much I can actually accomplish when I set my mind to it. It definitely didn't come naturally to me; I was an OK skater when I started. There were a lot of things that took me a lot longer than I would've liked, and I saw other people surpass me, and I was strictly hard on myself.”

Name: Tara Patterson.
Derby Name: Hazarditz.
Squad: Dallas Derby Devils.
Occupation: Insurance sales.
Experience: “This is my second season.”
How'd you get your derby name? “Well, I originally had another derby name, but it included a cuss word. So we had to change it for this league. A friend of mine just said that, 'Uh, I was thinking Hazard-dis,' and so she was like, 'You're such a ditz.' So it just kind of stuck. Some people don't think I'm a ditz, but I'm just one of those people that makes me a minute to get things.”

Name: Iris Clawson-Davis.
Derby Name: Prism Riot.
Squad: AC Derby.
Occupation: Horticulture supervisor.
Experience: “This league I've been in for about a year.”
How'd you get your derby name? “My given name is Iris, and since that's the Greek goddess of the rainbow, I sort of pulled from that for 'Prism.'”

Name: Amanda Brennan.
Derby Name: Bazooka Bubble Bum.
Squad: Dallas Derby Devils.
Occupation: Corporate loss prevention at Neiman Marcus.
Experience: “Last year was my first year, so I'm half way through my second year.”
How'd you get started? “I'm 28 now, so there's not many competitive sports for females to play at this age. I like soccer, but soccer got kind of boring. So derby, I like to hang out with these girls and I like to hit them too! So, it worked out.”

Name: Amanda Wachtler.
Derby Name: Sally Mander.
Squad: AC Derby.
Occupation: Bank teller.
Experience: Five months.
Have you been injured yet? “I just had a knee injury that I have been dealing with for the last couple of weeks. It's kept me out so far, but hopefully I'll be back at a bout. I just fell wrong on it, and so it messed up the bursa sac, and so it's inflamed. It makes it really tough to fall on, it has a pain and it just shoots in it.”

Name: Meghan Anderson.
Derby Name: Karmen Getmeh.
Squad: Dallas Derby Devils.
Occupation: Scribe for a medial office.
Experience: “This will be my third year.”
How'd you get started? “I always heard about it and thought it was so cool. I didn't have any connections to get into it. I was actually at the mall one day, just getting makeup. Normal day. There was a girl there at the counter, she played derby. She was talking about it, and told me I should come into practice. She thought I'd be good at it, just by my body shape.”

Name: Kim Brice.
Derby Name: Polly Annarchy.
Squad: AC Derby.
Occupation: Speech pathologist.
Experience: Three-and-a-half years.
What do you love most about the sport? “It's hard to find a team/sport for adult women that is as aggressive as derby.”

Name: Aundrea McCollister.
Derby Name: Lunatick Tick Boom.
Squad: Dallas Derby Devils.
Occupation: Registered nurse.
Experience: “Well, I am relatively new the Dallas Derby Devils, I joined October of 2014 while pregnant. If I'd actually been playing, this would have been my fifth season. I was playing with another league at the time. So, of course I wasn't playing, but I continued coaching the Rumblers. I made the decisions that this would be my home whenever I had my baby.”
How'd you get your derby name? “Honestly, finding a name as a roller derby girl, you try to find something creative, something that will stand out. I couldn't think of a name as a fresh meat a long time ago. All of a sudden I herd the song “Tick Tick Boom,” and I was like “tick tick boom…Lunatick Tick Boom!” It stuck. I'm a blocker that's known for my hard hits, so they were like it's perfect. So when I hit somebody, they yell, “Boom!'”