HELSINKI ALL-STARS, HELSINKI BEES & HELSINKI C-KASETTI @ HARD BLOCK LIFE, Helsinki
HELSINKI ALL-STARS @ HOLY DUCK 2.0. ANTWERPEN, BELGIUM
Sat 29.2. IN KUPITTAA, turku. SM-sarja/divari.
All-Stars battle with the best teams around the world.
interleague@helsinkirollerderby.com
Bees are the current Finnish Champions.
b-team@helsinkirollerderby.com
C-Kasetti is our competitive team playing in the Finnish Nationals 1. division.
c.kasetti@helsinkirollerderby.com
Flat track roller derby is a fast-paced contact team sport that requires speed, strategy, and athleticism. The flat track version of the sport evolved in 2001, and has quickly grown to encompass more than 400 leagues worldwide. The popularity of the sport is, in large part, due to the ease of setting up a track – it can be set up on any flat surface suitable for skating; skating rinks, basketball courts, parking lots, or even airplane hangars. This means that not much capital is needed to start a roller derby league, and even small groups of people are able to get a fledgling league off the ground. The sport is all about the DIY spirit, which allows roller derby leagues to create their own unique identities and adapt their structures to reflect their local communities.
The roller derby you may have watched in the 70s and early 80s was often scripted and rehearsed. Roller derby today, however, is more a sport than a spectacle. The skaters are athletes. They take the sport very seriously and train hard every week.
There are quite many referees rolling around during a game. They are there to enforce the rules, which protect the athletes’ safety and preserve the fairness of the game. There are still plenty of hard hits, hard falls, and fast action.
Roller derby is played on classic quad-skates. A roller derby game, also known as a bout, consists of two 30-minute periods, during which the two opposing teams try to score as many points as possible. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. Both teams have one point-scorer, known as the jammer, on the track at a time. The jammer’s job is to pass the pack of other skaters, known as blockers. The jammer scores one point for each opposing blocker they pass legally and in-bounds.