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Topic: Flint River Floaters roller derby team looks for new members

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Steve Myers
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Flint River Floaters roller derby team looks for new members who are itching to compete GENESEE COUNTYTHE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITIONMonday, May 21, 2007By Chad Swiateckicswiatecki@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6237
There's a smile on Kymm Atherholt's face as she tumbles to the floor, followed by a laugh and a high-five for the roller derby teammate who caused her to go horizontal.

The Grand Blanc resident almost will certainly have a bruise the next day from the exchange, but Atherholt - one of the co-organizers of the Flint River Floaters - and others proudly display the battle scars from their new favorite sport.

"We're going to come out of here with some new tattoos," Atherholt, a mother and preschool teacher at the early childhood development program at the University of Michigan-Flint, said about the assorted scrapes and bursts of black and blue.

"I love being a preschool teacher, but I had to let go of things like my piercings and covering up my tattoos in order to become a teacher. Now I can kind of get that part of me back by doing derby and beating people up."

She's only partly kidding about beating people up.

As with many of the members of Flint's newly formed all-woman team and hundreds more across the country, the unhinged physical contact is an attraction to the revival of the sport that flourished in the 1940s and '50s. Flint joins more than 100 derby teams that have formed across the country in recent years, including roughly a half dozen in Michigan cities such as Detroit, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.

The Floaters will look to bolster their ranks Thursday with "Skate Or Die," its public kickoff at Rollhaven Skate & Fun Center in Grand Blanc. Instead of a full-on derby match, the fundraising event will feature registration and tryouts for new members, an exhibition of the two-minute "jam" that is the regulation scoring period in a match and games such as derby chicken, derby limbo and other skills contests.

Members of the Floaters - a gallows humor allusion to the Flint River's tendency of producing dead bodies - hope the evening will build on the enthusiasm they said they've received since forming two months ago. Chalk up the interest to a peculiar mix of nostalgia on the part of Baby Boomers who remember the sport's first wave of popularity and newer fans who are curious about the prospect of women skaters knocking each other down at high speeds.

"The people that I talk to about this can't wait to come watch us because it's something different and interesting to, and that's from 40 to 15-year-olds," said Maureen Devroy, who was unaware of the sport until friend Atherholt took her to see a match in Detroit earlier this year. "We want to bring people to Flint and keep them here and part of that is giving them something interesting to enjoy. My hope is that girls will come out and say they'd like to join or people will see us this one time and say they'd come see us again."

With the team - which practices at Rollhaven's rinks in Grand Blanc and Flushing - still in its formative stages it will take close to a year for matches to take place.

Depending on the call for players it's possible Flint could have three teams. Atherholt expects the teams to host exhibition scrimmages in the fall with competition between the Flint teams and other Michigan teams by spring 2008.

That's way ahead of the schedule that co-organizer Jean Peplinski envisioned when she contacted Rollhaven owners Kim and Danny Brown about forming a roller derby league, without knowing Atherholt had already done likewise. The Browns put the two in touch and before long a core group of six women were getting their skating legs back under them. The Browns - former professional roller skaters - have since signed on as coaches/trainers for the team and helped secure skates and protective equipment for the members.

Their role puts them at every practice, teaching basics such as balance and stopping to new skaters and how to jump and make proper fast turns for the more advanced.

"We knew it was the rage all over the country and that there are teams going up all over the place so when Kymm and Jean called we put them together to try to help," Kim Brown said.

"As a former professional skater you'd think this kind of thing would mortify me, but it really doesn't. It's not as pretty as what I'm used to but I'm a competitive person and so I can appreciate that aspect of what these girls are doing."

Like Atherholt, Peplinski said seeing a derby match in person was what won her over and drove her to try to join a team or start a new one. "I hadn't skated since I was younger and only vaguely remembered seeing roller derby on TV but when I went to a match in Grand Rapids I knew right away that I had to join a league because this is something I wanted to do," the North Branch resident said.

Peplinski's diehard enthusiasm is curious even to her since she never played competitive sports as a child and now earns a living as a yoga and pilates instructor, callings that seem pretty contrary to the rough-and-tumble world of derby.

The circus-like exhibitionism of the sport was part of the draw, but Peplinski said strong bonds and the chance to dig in and run the team make it an enriching, if demanding, experience. "It's great because you're with a great group of girls and we're cheering each other on and giggling as we're trying to knock each other down," she said.

"This is all operated by us with the girls making the decisions on how things go and no one else saying who's going to skate and who's not. I'm a ham to begin with so I'd probably do this anyway, but there wouldn't be the great feeling of sisterhood that we have here."

http://www.mlive.com/features/flintjournal/index.ssf?/base/features-6/1179755477159670.xml&coll=5&thispage=2

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Post Mon May 21, 2007 11:11 am 
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