On Wednesday afternoons, the members of Elevated Roller Derby practice at Heights Community Center at 823 Buena Vista Dr. SE, near CNM, on an outdoor court surrounded by a chainlink fence in the blistering heat. Kimberlee “Kapn’ Krush” Haines is Elevated’s vice president and has been skating roller derby since 2006. She says the Las Cruces roller derby team once said the Albuquerque team plays “prison derby.” The squad has always been scrappy and gritty, and they’ve been through a lot of changes since their first game in October 2005.
This year marks Elevated’s 20th anniversary, and the team is planning events that represent the current face of roller derby — distancing themselves from some of the theatrics of its wild beginnings, highlighting the legitimacy of the sport and reminding everybody what made us fall in love with it in the first place. Next weekend, for example, they’ll be hosting bootcamp tryouts. And with a new season looming, the future of the league is looking pretty damn hot. But Krush says the sport as a whole has undergone a bit of a makeover since the early 2000s.
“We want new blood. We want new energy and new ideas, and that only happens when you bring in new people,” Krush says. “Roller derby changed my life, and it changes most people’s lives. It makes you physically and mentally stronger. It teaches you resilience. It gives you community, and it gives you something that’s your own — it isn’t your spouse’s or your partner’s, it’s not your kids’, it’s not your boss’, it’s yours. The beautiful part of it is that when you join, you become a part of this organization [in which] we take on these fake names, these funny identities, and it’s sort of part of that process of reclaiming yourself and renaming yourself and giving yourself this much more powerful identity. And that’s something that I don’t think people will get from just going to the gym, or running or jogging.”
Elevated Roller Derby is New Mexico’s first flat-track roller derby league. They’re also Albuquerque’s first 501(c)(3) non-amateur sports organization and one of the state’s only nationally represented women’s sports franchises. Twenty years ago, when the league was called Duke City Roller Derby and their old stomping grounds were located inside Midnight Rodeo in the Northeast Heights, the team had a different identity. After all, it was a different time in general, but Krush says they did a total name change and rebrand during COVID because they wanted their image to match their current social justice-oriented philosophy.
Originally from the East Coast, Krush transferred to Duke City/Elevated Roller Derby in 2012 and has been hitting the courts — and the other players — like a wrecking ball ever since.
“In 2021, we had realized that some of our imagery, names, things like that, didn’t really reflect who we are as a community,” Krush says. “Our original logo contained a sugar skull with bones in the Zia shape, and as a non-Spanish or Native organization, we thought that was kind of culturally appropriating. It didn’t really fit with the demographics of our league. So we did a rebrand where we changed our name to Elevated Roller Derby and we have a new logo which is a hot air balloon over the Sandias.”
Krush says Elevated Roller Derby’s code of conduct is very extensive. As a founding member of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), they follow the league’s rules, including its open gender policy. She says the team does not “tolerate intolerance in any way, shape or form,” and that means firmly standing against discrimination based on race, sexual identity, gender identity, body size, neurodivergence or income. According to Krush, they’re trying their best to be part of the solution to intolerance in society, not the problem.
“We’re trying to be a safe place for all different kinds of people to come together to play a sport, because that’s not really how a lot of sports operate,” Krush says. “We do have a lot of trans or non-binary skaters as part of the organization, which for women’s sports — especially right now with the Olympics and the NCAA just banning trans athletes — is not a thing, unfortunately. We like to be a safe place for trans people and gender expansive people to be able to participate in sports and have that community and that camaraderie.”
Krush says the WFTDA welcomes anyone of a marginalized gender including trans men who feel that women’s roller derby is the space that they want to occupy. The WFDA is working on an open gender program which might allow mixed gender teams including cisgender men. But for now, the WFTDA and Elevated Roller Derby are designated as women’s sports leagues.
“So, at some point we have to have that conversation. Are we going to have an open gender team? What does that look like? Because a lot of women join roller derby with a lot of bad experiences with cis men. And it’s a safe place for women to be aggressive and to be physical, and some women do not want cis men in that space, so we have to figure out what that looks like.”
The Team
For a detailed description of the WFTDA’s rules, you can visit rules.wftda.com, but Krush is kind enough to break down the basics of roller derby and a bit of the terminology for us.
“A jammer is the designated point scorer represented by a star on their helmet, and they score points by passing opposing blockers,” Krush says. “We have specific areas where you’re allowed to hit somebody, and there are specific areas of our body we’re allowed to use to hit somebody. So nothing below the knee, nothing above the shoulders, nothing in the middle of the back. All of those are illegal and will be penalized — sometimes by expulsion from the game — depending on the severity. You’re allowed up to seven penalties per game, and after that you’re removed from play.”
Elevated (who were Duke City Roller Derby at the time) were one of the founding members when the WFTDA became an organization around 2005. Now that organization has grown to hundreds of leagues all over the world, they compete within the North American West region. Elevated has 40 to 50 members split into two charters (A and B level teams that compete for rankings), and members range in age from 19 to “very fit grandmothers” in their 50s. Krush says since there really isn’t a lot of competitive derby locally, the teams travel to places such as Denver and Phoenix to find opponents. The A team competes all over the West and the B team is more of a local travel team playing tournaments in locations ranging from Los Alamos to El Paso and parts of Colorado. Currently the All Stars (A Team) is ranked 30 in the WFTDA North America West region and the B team (Dawn Patrol) is ranked 62.
Elevated has some “star” players with badass nicknames. Erica “Doom” Voges-Ringia has been with the franchise since its inception and is also its president. “Kell’s Inferno” is the All Star team’s captain, an 18-year veteran of the sport and a standout player to say the least. Krush says “Fighting Girlfriend” — who doubles as an official — is definitely beloved in the roller derby community, “Bampf” is the co-captain and jammer, who might win the award for coolest comic-inspired name. “Tsunami” has been rolling since they were a little kid. Their mom is a one of the team’s travel coaches and a retired skater, so Krush says it’s been fun to see the family grow up together, both literally and as skaters.
Technically, Elevated Roller Derby isn’t the only league in town. Albuquerque Roller Derby is an open-gender amateur franchise founded around 2015. They practice in Wells Park, but since they are not a member of the WFTDA, they don’t compete for professional rankings. Krush says there’s no professional rivalry there, but they do have a fun rivalry with the Arizona Rising Stars, who they play at least once or twice a year. Despite the beef they might have on the court, Krush says as a rule, Elevated skaters and other WFTDA members generally like each other.
“I think this is unique to roller derby — or maybe it’s unique to women’s sports, I’m not sure — but we all go out after the game to drink beer and have fun and talk, and the teams are friendly with each other. Even on the track during games, you’ll see jammers cracking jokes with each other. During an official time out, you might see a little dance party breakout on the track between the two teams. The vibes are very positive, so we don’t have a lot of bad blood between teams.”
The New Generation
In addition to the Aug. 2 single-day new skater intake bootcamp, there is a 20th Anniversary event in the works planned for September 6 at the track at Heights Community Center featuring skaters from Elevated Roller Derby. Krush says they’re still in the planning process of what those teams are going to look like, but they will be giving some “nods to the past.”
“When roller derby first came back on scene in the early 2000s, it was a much more theatrical sport with staged fights and choreographed moves and things like that, sort of harkening back to the ‘70s, when it was much more like WWE,” Krush says. “As the sport evolved over the last 20 years, it has become a more serious competitive sport, but we want to kind of highlight some of those fun, theatrical things that we used to do while still playing in the current rule set. There will be fun outfits: hopefully some fishnets and little booty shorts and the things we used to wear. Now, it’s much more serious. We all wear athletic clothing, and it’s rare to see fishnets or tutus at a competitive game, but we’ll hopefully have some of that going on.”
For now, the skaters at Elevated are continuing to practice on the court without a roof, at the mercy of Mother Nature. They’re looking forward to competing against the toughest teams in the country and representing New Mexico on the International stage for years to come. Krush says she might have to retire in a few seasons due to all the wear, tear and injuries, but not before she brings some new players to the sport. Since the themes that permeated roller derby in the past haven’t always aged as well as the players have, Krush wants to balance preserving the sport’s past while aligning the next 20 years of Elevated Roller Derby with their new values. Just don’t expect them to get rid of the customary drag shows at halftime anytime soon.
“Roller derby makes me mentally stronger by reminding me that I can do hard things, and I take that with me through the other areas of my life. I take that with me, to home, to work. I can do hard things because I can do this really hard thing that is physically and mentally complex,” Krush says. “We’re playing offense and defense at the same time. It’s a contact sport, you’re always on the verge of being knocked over, so you have to be mentally on guard while you’re playing this game. We like to say, ‘Head on a swivel.’ You’re constantly interacting with the environment around you, and it makes you feel so incredibly strong, because you are physically strong. But every time you get knocked down and you get back up and keep going, that builds mental strength, that builds that resiliency. And the first time you take a jammer out, that first time you do something really cool that you hadn’t done before, that is so rewarding.”
You can check out Elevated Roller Derby on Facebook and visit the New Skater Bootcamp event page (facebook.com/events/s/elevated-new-skater-bootcamp/574024952383857/) if you’d like to join.
If you’d like to get involved, you can register for the Aug. 2 new skater intake bootcamp here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeyvhXVWl5QahomOVJaToTUFcZg9JYRJxHxsj_mCE12lgK8dQ/viewform.