Adam Bramburger
Beaver Staff
A world champion skated at Napanee’s York Street arena last Saturday.
The stands weren’t filled to the rafters as they were when Gordie Howe and the Detroit Red Wings came to town in the late 1950s, but for about 40 roller derby competitors from across Ontario and the northeastern United States, a chance to rub elbows with Laci Knight was a tremendous opportunity.
“If you watch high-level derby at all, you know who Laci Knight is. She’s pretty famous,” said Kingston Derby Girls member Stephanie Henry, who organized two skills training sessions that day.
Knight, who got her start in roller derby in Los Angeles, capped off a nine-year career by helping Team USA win the World Cup in Manchester, U.K. last year. Now, she focuses primarily on coaching and she’s relocated to Rochester, N.Y. Henry learned about that and seized the opportunity to invite her to make the short drive over the border.
“She’s someone who would be considered an elite athlete. That’s the great part about roller derby right now, the best of the best are still accessible to us as coaches, as trainers, and as people to learn from. They come and do training like this and it’s not out of our reach,” Henry said.
At the Lennox Agricultural Memorial Community Centre, Knight was working with local skaters and others who had come from places like Toronto, Ottawa, and as far as Michigan. She offered a series of drills as she kept setting up groups of blockers within the pink tape of the oval and showed them different ways to gum up the works.
Their efforts would either to allow their own scorer, known as a jammer, to break free, or to prevent their opponents’ jammer from doing likewise to score points.
The practice featured plenty of repetition, hard hitting, and fancy footwork.
“Today, we started with solo defence. Most of the time you’re out on the track with anywhere from two to three other blockers. I’m helping people work on being individually strong so they can be better,” Knight explained. “Then, we worked on offensive drills. Offence and defence is played on the same time on the track. Lastly, we figured out being a strong defensive wall around other moving objects. That’s how I evolved the practice today.”
The key, Knight said, is being able to hold defence while thinking offence.
JoAnne Himmelman, a local derby participant, appreciated the day.
“Skating with such a diverse group of people on Saturday helped me renew my love of derby. It’s a really difficult sport and it takes time and tenacity to push through some days. Skating with Laci, in particular, was wonderful,” she said. “She comes from a high level of derby and to bring her skill and break it down for the group was great. Early on in the clinic, I realized how fluent she was in the sport and how easily she can talk to all skill levels and help us through some of our frustrations in one drill or another.
“Laci was humble and approachable. She’s a derby hero to many, but you wouldn’t know that talking to her. It was a pleasure and a privilege.”
Himmelman said Knight was good at understanding the sport from the points of view of both blockers and jammers. A blocker herself, Himmelman said the idea of getting jammers involved in blocking drills may have given them some appreciation of the hard work they put in to allow jammers the glory of scoring points.
Overall, Knight said the participants picked up on the drills quickly, which made it one of her favourite clinics that she’s led. Coaching, she said, is about helping people to succeed.
“I like seeing progress and putting together plans that make people get better at drills.”
As a player, Knight said, she was drawn to the sport for two basic reasons.
“I just enjoy the full-contact aspect of it,” she said. “I enjoy the team sport. There’s not a lot of female team sports out there. It’s nice to have camaraderie at a level that’s not at work or with a mom group. It’s completely separate and different to everything we have access to as women.”
Asked about the sport in Canada, Knight said she finds it is just as big here as in the United States and Europe, particularly as Team Canada was a strong rival at worlds, finishing third. She encourages others who might be interested in derby to give it a shot.
“This is for everybody. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, you can get something from this sport.”
Locally, the Kingston Derby Girls have a fairly strong following and field two teams, while the Belleville Bombshells also compete. Between January and April, the two groups have come together in Napanee because of distance and because it’s one of the few buildings suitable for their needs that doesn’t have ice. It also keeps down costs and builds friendships.
This Saturday, the Napanee community can get a taste of the sport as there will be an open scrimmage on the oval from 1-4 p.m. Admission is $5.