Hello, World.

I'm Mary Helley. You won't know that name- I skate for a team that has just started on its first season. That team being in Alabama, you might guess that we don't have quite the population to pull from that teams in other, bigger states and other, bigger cities might have.

However small we might be, though, Belles 'N' Bombshells is a family. Me being one of those "women who don't generally get along with other women" types, I wasn't expecting to roll up into Montgomery and find a bunch of amazing sisters, people who have extended my concept of what a roller derby team is, and moreover, what a friend is.

I skated my first bout this past weekend- well, that's actually something of a misnomer. I skated my first bout as a skater this past weekend. From January to November of 2009, I nursed a knee injury and skated as a referee for my first league, Auburn's Burn City Rollers. I realized a few important things during that time- one, that I loved roller derby too much to quit when I didn't know what was wrong with my knee, like a lot of our other skaters had. Two, though I learned a lot from reffing, it wasn't satisfying in many ways.

Truth was, I needed a team. It was scary for me to make the decision to be a skater. Over the time that I'd been hurt, I'd built up a lot of resistance to the idea. And by that, I don't mean that I didn't want to do it. I wanted it still. But I was scared, first of all. I didn't know what was wrong with my knee, and though it was better by the time I started training with BnB in November, I was still scared that it would give out on me, or that I would injure it worse. The other thing was the more crushing of the two: I didn't believe. I didn't believe that I could do it.

Whatever the impression BCR had meant to convey (and I don't fault them for this), they had made me feel like they didn't believe either. Like nobody but my husband believed. To his credit, he never stopped believing that I could be a skater if I wanted to.

So here I am now- a shade more than a year after I first started reffing for this wonderful sport we call roller derby. Things are different now. I look at the game from a totally different perspective. But there are still things that I have to learn. That's the aim of this blog- to write down those things that I learn. To offer some insight into the mind of a referee-turned-pivot, and hopefully entertain a few fellow derby lifers at the same time.

Slugs 'n' Stitches,
Mary Helley