When she laces up her skates, Paralympian Robin Tueting turns into her roller derby moniker — Hot Tamale.
“It's pandemonium,” she said. “It's bananas, action all the time in roller derby.”
Tueting — or Hot Tamale — plays for the Pikes Peak Roller Derby All-Stars and the Slamazons. The Colorado Springs organization has five teams in total, varying in skill levels. The Danger Dolls, Candy Snipers, and Killer Queens round out the pack.
Tueting’s two teams are the top tier for Pikes Peak Roller Derby, going on tour and competing against other teams, even internationally. Their bouts are sanctioned matches that count towards international rankings and tournament eligibility. A level of competition that Tueting is used to. The Michigan native represented the United States in goalball at three Summer Paralympic Games from 2004 to 2012. She won gold and silver medals along the way.
When we meet her, Tueting is happy to be back on the track after recovering from a knee injury last season.
“It feels amazing. I'm so thankful because … I'm getting emotional,” Tueting told CPR News as she prepared for a night of scrimmaging. “There's data out there that says less than 50 percent of athletes make it back to the level they were at in their sport prior to injury. So I'm just really grateful to be back at this sport that I love so much.”
At Skate City in Colorado Springs — a 50-year-old rink that held onto its 70s vibes — Tueting and company are preparing to play the top team from Mexico — All-Star Juarez. It’s a testament to how the organization has grown over the last 20 years.
Pikes Peak Roller Derby was founded as the Pikes Peak Derby Dames in 2005. The organization is a charter member of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. The WFTDA is the international governing body of women’s flat track roller derby. According to its website, the organization began as the United Leagues Coalition in 2004 with only a handful of flat track derby leagues. Today, the organization includes more than 400 organizations spanning six continents.
Natalie Wirt, who goes by Cherri Springer, joined the Pikes Peak Derby Dames in 2007, back when their bouts were played in downtown Colorado Springs.
“We played at the City Auditorium during those days,” Springer, who is a mother of two and works as an elementary school administrative assistant, said. “We did a lot of flyering downtown, old-school marketing in that way.”
Some bouts had interesting themes. Wirt first saw action in a mixers game in Denver that involved 80’s prom dresses.
“I got airbrush face paint, and it was supposed to look like a skull, but it really looked like a sad panda,” Wirt said. “And so I did not look tough at all. I was like a sad panda skating around in a pink prom dress. That was my first game.”
The organization eventually changed its name to Pikes Peak Roller Derby to sound more inclusive to align with the WFTDA’s expansion of gender definitions. There are also junior teams that welcome all genders.
“It's really neat to see the explosion of roller derby over those years,” Springer said.
Roller derby works like this: skaters roll around a set track along the inside of the rink, while officials stand in the middle and skate with the players. Jammers from one team skate around the track and try to break through a line of blockers from the other team. Each time a jammer gets through, that’s one point.
Hot Tamale, who is visually impaired, usually plays blocker.
“While I'm out skating, I can't see it,” she said. “Sometimes from the bench I can, so that's cool. But I just know I need to do my job and block when I'm out on the track.”
Blockers form a pack. They are responsible for preventing a jammer from passing through an opening. And they create an opening for their own jammer to advance to score points. Tueting has been a jammer before.
“If I am a jammer, that's more a thing where I either have to pay attention to the clock, or I have to pay attention to my bench coaches telling me,” she said. Pikes Peak Roller Derby recruits new members four times a year. Katie Helm joined the team in 2019. The North Carolina native goes by Helmuva Goodtime on the track and said many of the players come and go due to Colorado Springs being a military town.
“We're making these really great connections, and then someone is moving after two years,” Helm said. “But the other great part of it is we have people that are constantly coming in that are from Hawaii or Alabama or Oregon,” Helm said.
New members must complete a boot camp on the basic skills of the sport before competing. During scrimmages are divided into segments based on levels.
“What you saw earlier was so we could cater to the needs of some of our newer skaters that are trying to learn roller derby but are not necessarily at the point where they can take a full hit,” Helm explained after a round with Level 2 skaters. “That's why we do the different levels so that we can get them to understand the gameplay and slowly build up those skills and feel more confident in taking those heavy hits.”
Those heavy hits are what some players live for when they hit the rink. That’s the case for Brianna Salazar.
“There's something about coming in really fast and hitting a wall super hard and actually moving bodies. There's something really satisfying about that,” said Salazar, who goes by Probable Claws. “But everybody just calls me Claw.”
The Los Angeles native is a 4-foot-11 preschool teacher by day and has been involved in the sport for 12 years. Claws says she’s made friends and built a community through the game. But, as you can imagine, she takes no prisoners in the rink.
“We know that what happens on the track stays on the track. So, you might've got a really solid hit if it was a legal hit and it wasn't egregious,” Salazar said. “Like, 'Hey! That was a solid hit. Good for you, but I'm coming after you next.’ I mean, it's fun.”
Helmuva GoodTime says the bumps and bruises can pile up.
“People get injured all the time — broken bones, torn ligaments,” she said. “It's definitely a part of it. So we do everything we can to try and keep it safe, but these things still happen because it's full contact. So it's inevitable.”
Beck Briggs, a criminal defense lawyer whose derby name is Tyrannosaurus Becks, calls the sport an oasis.
“I think everyone wants to perform really well, and the travel teams are very stressed right now and got a lot to show. They want to lay it all on the track,” Briggs said during a scrimmage break. “There've been a lot of hard hits and a lot of really big collisions tonight.”
A global rink
The sport of roller derby connects skaters from all backgrounds, and Pikes Peak Roller Derby hosts a colorful cast of characters. The organization saw a boom in interest following the pandemic in 2020. There are currently between 80 and 100 skating members in the organization right now, with the top 40 skaters as members of the All-Stars and the Slamazons.
Tueting was born with ocular albinism, which results from the inability of pigment cells in the eyes, especially the iris and retinal pigment epithelium, to produce pigment. She learned about roller derby when she and a neighbor kept meeting people who were connected to the sport.
“We'd be at Walmart, and we'd be getting help from somebody. And the lady's like, ‘Oh, my daughter plays roller derby,’” Tueting said. “We decided to give it a try. And since it's a sport that doesn't have a ball that I have to catch or throw, it seemed like something that I could probably do despite my lack of really good visual acuity.”
She has played on teams in Colorado Springs and Germany, where her husband was stationed in the Air Force. And she isn’t the only skater to have played in rinks abroad.
“It's taken me all over the world,” Briggs said. “I've been to Thailand, to visit people in Europe, to visit people in Las Vegas, numerous times for the annual roller derby convention. And the friendships that I've developed are so deeply sacred to me. There's really nothing that can replace them. It is the most tolerant, the most celebratory, and the most diverse group that I've ever encountered.”
Some skaters, like Salazar, will join a borderless team with athletes from various countries, cultures, and diasporas. Her team, Fuego Latino Roller Derby, is composed of Latinx/e skaters across the Americas.
“You do get to really bond with your teammates,” Salazar, who will compete with Fuego Latino Roller Derby in Ecuador later this season, said. “You can have some time off the track and be silly or spend time together. That's always a really great time. You make memories that way.”
Pikes Peak Roller Derby vs All-Star Juarez
When the All-Stars and Slamazons welcomed All-Star Juarez to the Pepsi Roller Sports Center, a much newer and bigger facility in Colorado Springs, it wasn’t just any ordinary competition.
After 14 years together, this would be All-Star Juarez’s first sanctioned match in the WFTDA. Captain Carolina Valenzuela said the team used a simple method to learn how to skate.
“YouTube,” Valentina, who goes by Qaruca, said. “Believe it or not, at the beginning, we knew absolutely nothing about the sport. So we learned to skate, to brake, to fall. We started literally with YouTube videos.”
They then found a team right across the border in El Paso, Texas, to scrimmage against. From there, the sky has been the limit.
“We are undefeated. The nationals are in November in Mexico,” Valentina said in Spanish. “The team has come together; it’s like we are all in sync. It’s been the best year we’ve had.”
All-Star Juarez wanted to take the next step in the sport by getting an international ranking. To do that, they needed to compete in a sanctioned game. After sending out emails to numerous organizations, Pikes Peak Derby stepped up to the plate.
“We sent out to anyone within our category, reaching out in the U.S. to see who's willing to play,” Valentina said.
“It's a big deal. It's a big deal for them,” Helm said. “We're excited to be a part of this game. Other than that, we've been watching footage, and they look pretty tough, but we're ready for it."
All-Star Juarez proved to be pretty tough, indeed. They beat the Pikes Peak All-Stars 212-75 and the Slamazons 331-22.
“We didn't know what we were coming to. It was definitely very hard for us,” Juarez All-Star Frieda Campos, who goes by Lady IBO, said. “All amazing blockers, amazing jammers. And I think we learned a lot, and it gave us a lot to work on when we are back in Juarez.”
“They're so good playing together,” said Juarez All-Star Ludwika Montes, who has family in Colorado Springs and goes by Beethoven. “They are strong, and they have agility, so it was really hard to pass them. It was really, really rough. But we did it, and I'm so happy to be here with my team.”
As for Tueting, she said she’s grateful to return from injury to compete at a high level.
“It's really hard to be an injured athlete,” Tueting said. “It can leave you really defeated and depressed. It's such a long journey and so much hard work to get back and to come back from the injury to build all the muscle back that atrophies when you're injured. So to make it back at the level I was playing before — close to it — just means the world.”
“It's about friendship and companionship,” Valentina said. “It’s healthy competition and training hard. That’s been my favorite part of the week, practicing and being with my team and learning new things together.”
Pike Peak Roller Derby returns to action on Nov. 8 for the Garden of the Quads.
CPR's Stephanie Rivera contributed to this reporting.
