Hammer City Roller Girls gear up for their last bout

The clock says zero minutes to go but the score reads 106-106.

The Hammer City Eh! Team is tied with London's Forest City Roller Girls at a home game in Dundas. Only once has Forest City ever beat Hamilton's ladies. So, you can imagine the fans are tense.

Rules say the teams must play a full two-minutes in overtime with no lead jammer, or primary point-scorer.

The whistle blows. The women skate and only the goal of winning is on their minds. Shoulder check after check and bodies are rolling on the track.

Fans are not to worry, Hammer City's Mean Little Momma scores points for the victory. 123-108 is the final score of this final home bout of the season.

On Sunday, the Hammer City Roller Girls will play an end-of-the-season exhibition game for their fans — the team's rookies against their veterans at Hamilton's waterfront rink.

CBC Hamilton introduces you to one of each, two star skaters with no end in their derby career in sight.

The veteran

Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different story about how Jacquie Malley got her derby name.

Malley once worked at a store with a screen press and made a T-shirt with a set of dice.

"I thought of Dicey and all the catch phrases: She slices, she dices. Don't play the dice if you can't pay the price!" Malley said with a laugh.

Paul Piche, the team's bench manager, tells a different tale.

"When she first started skating, she got her name because she couldn't skate worth a damn," said Furious P, his derby name.

She may have been dicey on skates then, but six years later Piche said she's one of their strongest players. At the team's July home game when Hammer City was behind after the first half, Dicey skated circles around their opponents to rack in the points.

She'll modestly say she " just got lucky" that night.

Again, Piche would tell you otherwise. He said she saved the game.

"She's just fantastically talented," he said.

Malley, with the exception of one season, has been a Hammer City roller girl since the league started in 2006. When a co-worker suggested she come out to a derby practice, Malley wasn't convinced.

"I was like, 'Derby? Girls in skirts? I don't want to play derby,'" Malley said, of her first reaction. "I went out to watch it and it was a collection of amazing women, all super supportive and welcoming. It was all about the sport."

That fit with Malley nicely. She's been an athlete for years.

Malley started playing soccer at Nelson High School in her native Burlington. She went on to receive three scholarships to American universities. She chose Florida International, but only attended for a year.

Returning to Burlington, Malley went to college and worked for a retail company for about a decade. She's now a friendly face at Jack and Lois's diner on James Street North. Malley is pleasantly chatty and welcoming to patrons, doing what needs to be done to keep her friend's new diner busy.

On skates, Dicey is competitive. She jokes that she gets knocked down a lot by the bigger girls because she's short. And she's right. During one jam in August, Dicey is knocked down more times a fan could count on one hand. But she's up on wheels just as fast as she went down.

Dicey is looking for a win.

In overtime, the opponent's jammer is called out on a penalty. Fans wouldn't notice from the stands, but from the sidelines you can see Dicey gives her wave goodbye. She knows Hammer City will take the lead.

But it's not only these wins that keep Dicey coming back.

"It was the girls and being brought into the family," she said. "I'm a totally different person now than I was then."

This team having become a family is true in almost every sense. Malley is godmother to Piche's children.

While Malley may (or may not) have been dicey on skates on day one, she's always proud of the team and the community. She wears the number 905 on the back of her jersey for a reason.

"It's part of Hamilton. It's part of me," she said.

The rookie

At the beginning of the game, a little blonde boy on the sidelines of the Dundas arena wouldn't let go of his mom. It was a moment when Ginger Wilde, the star derby rookie, and Lesley Taylor, the mother of three, blended together.

Taylor is one of team's graduates from Derby 101 introduction course. Despite being a new player, fellow skater and president Zoe Siskos said her sense of strategy is one of her strong points.

With nine minutes to go, Ginger Wilde is the jammer. She is tall and thinly-built, and wiggles her way through the other team's blockers with ease.

But Ginger is strong and won't let anyone get in her way. A shoulder check and her opponent lands on her behind. Ginger is now the lead jammer, the all-mighty point-scorer.

"Let's hear it for Ginger Wilde!" MC Mouse yells into the mic. The fan roar, but not that she needs the encouragement. Ginger makes derby look like there's nothing to it.

She calls off the jam at the right time. Seven more points added under the Hammer City name.

"She's so zen," said Siskos, ZoeDisco on skates.

Taylor said, that's just what she's always been like.

"I've always been the calm one, it's always been in my nature," she said.

Perhaps it's something she also gets from parenting a 12-, 6- and 2-year-old, Taylor adds with a laugh. Or something she developed playing sports as a teenager.

"I started playing hockey at age 13 and then joined baseball," she said. "I've always been attracted to sport."

Taylor grew up in Stoney Creek, so it was an easy fit to join the Hamilton team. She is a community support worker in St. Catherine's and drives into town for games and practices.

Though Taylor is a rookie player, she's been watching the team develop since the league began six years ago.

"When it started in 2006, I had some friends who played but I had just had [my daughter]," she said. "I thought it was the coolest things, women on skates. The power of women on skates."

Now that she's a Hammer City roller girl, the team has been the second biggest part of her life.

"My kids are my life and derby has been the other part of my life for the last 11 months," she said.

Taylor said it's her fellow teammates that keep her coming back.

"Every woman who comes out and skates I am inspired by," she said.

When the game is over and the roller girls briefly celebrate their win on the track, Ginger and Lesley Taylor blend together again. That little blonde boy, her son, runs over to mom and attaches himself her left leg, with her roller skates still on.

The next skate

With a successful season under these girls' wheels, the Hammer City Roller Girls return to their fall-winter-spring routine of three weekly practices, two weeknights and Sunday afternoons. But they also return to a challenging reality.

Six years later, the HCRG still don't have a venue, which is why their home season runs in the summer when hockey rinks are not iced.

"We just don't have enough," president Siskos said. "We don't have enough playing time, we don't enough resources, we don't have enough publicity. We're struggling and it makes you run ragged."

Now that recreational skating and hockey are about to begin again, Leah Visser, Miss Carriage on the track, said the team can't find a local arena for practice. As it stands, they must travel to an old, unheated rink in Caledonia until next season.

While Malley said she'd never say Hamilton is not supportive, there are teams who have it easier. Montreal, another original Canadian roller derby team, has their own venue and lots of city support.

"The day that we nail our own space is the day that we'll get to the masses of Hamilton," she said. "And compete with the Ticats. We'll get there one day."