When Courtney MacArthur isn’t at home with her daughter, she trains women to play the intense sport of roller derby.
The Boulder County Bombers roller derby team was founded by Courtney MacArthur after moving to Boulder. “There’s no montage scene, no quick learning. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work,” MacArthur said. (CU Independent Illustration/Robert R. Denton)
The 28-year-old founder of the new Boulder County Bombers roller derby team previously played with the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls, who are the current national champions. After moving from Highlands Ranch to Boulder, she founded the Bombers.
“I moved here in January and had to stop playing roller derby because I lived too far from the closest teams,” MacArthur said.
Since the closest teams were in Denver, MacArthur decided to start her own team in Boulder. She went to the first recruitment night with fellow 24-year-old derby player Brittany Strachan from the FoCo Girls Derby, and together they strung together a team of newbies.
“I was working with a group of women and we were trying to get a team started, but nobody had the time to get it together,” Strachan said. “I ran into Courtney and I was so happy to see there was going to be a team in Boulder.”
Together the two began to recruit more members and train them in the basics. When they aren’t practicing at their warehouse in Longmont, the two are involved in community service. The team is currently helping Boulder High School students learn skating tricks for their upcoming play “Xanadu.”
“We love to do work with school age children and spread our anti-bullying message,” MacArthur said. “That’s the main cause BCB has taken up.”
They have also helped raise funds for “Think Humanity,” an organization that helps refugees in underdeveloped parts of Africa, and pick up trash along the Boulder Creek Path. They will have a food and supply drive for the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless.
“This is a lot of stuff for a league that’s only been up and running for three months,” MacArthur said.
To promote themselves, the team will be hosting a poker tournament, a beer pong tournament with the Slaughterhouse Derby Girls in Greeley and continue fundraising for non-profit status.
The team takes in women ranging from inexperienced players to those who have experience on other teams. The group has a total of 25 active players and they recruit every month in Boulder and Longmont.
Sierra Cucinelli, an 18-year-old film major, is one of six CU students on the team. She heard about the Bombers in September through her tattoo artist, who plays for the Denver Roller Dolls, and decided to go to a recruitment night. Cucinelli said she was having a difficult time at CU and felt the need to get involved in something outside of school.
“I always thought roller derby looked pretty awesome,” Cucinelli said.
She bonded with the other girls over mock horror movies, zombies and tattoos and knew she had found what she was looking for.
“The team is exactly the social support that I need,” Cucinelli said. “There’s not too many sports you can start without having played it for a while. Most girls start without knowing how to skate so it’s awesome to all start at the same place.”
MacArthur and Strachan joke that the roller derby movie “Whip It” is nothing like the real thing.
“There’s no montage scene, no quick learning. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work,” MacArthur said. “In ‘Whip It,’ if I remember correctly, they had rivalries and … that sort of stuff really doesn’t happen. We work and play together really hard and that’s always our focus.”
Strachan said that roller derby really breaks stereotypes. In her last team, there were very small women who played just as rough and tough as the rest.
“That’s what’s so cool about derby, it’s like any other sport,” Strachan said. “There’s a spot for anyone, as long as they’re willing to put the time in,”
However, MacArthur is glad the movie came out because it raised awareness of the sport, which used to be more staged entertainment than athletics in the 70s.
Of course, a Hollywood film has to hype and inject a little drama, but essentially the rules are the same as depicted.
Four women from each team, called blockers, line up in a pack. Behind them are the two jammers, one from each team, who gain a point every time they pass an opposing player in the pack and when they pass the whole pack. The blockers will try to hinder the other team’s jammer while helping their own get through. Of course this is all while zooming around the circular track on skates in colorful outfits, for the audience’s enjoyment. They do this “as many times as possible within two minutes,” MacArthur said.
The first pass through the pack determines who is lead jammer and they can call off the game any time. The second time around is known as the “scoring pass” and that is when points are earned. The goal is to get as many “jams” in within two minutes and then the game resets. There are two one hour-long segments, or halves, which are full of two-minute games. The rules can be found on their website, in addition to other videos about roller derby.
Roller derby is a sport of strategy and endurance, and these women train long and hard to play their hearts out in the rink. The Boulder County Bombers will have their first game in November.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Laura Poole at Laura.poole@colorado.edu.
