The roller-derby Donnelly girls

Last summer my three oldest daughters; Mary, Bridget and Molly drove to Austin, Texas, to check out women's roller derby.

Mary had been reading and researching how women's roller derby was making a comeback in the United States. She wanted to be in an organized physical activity with other women and the more she read about roller derby it intrigued her. She convinced Bridget and Molly that this would be a fun venue to check out.

They contacted the Texas Roller Girls who were an established roller derby team and headed south. They stayed with one of the roller derby girls in Texas and went to a game. Mary, Bridget and Molly said that the game was very exciting and they liked the fact that each girl took on a different persona when she became a roller derby girl. They stayed with a roller derby girl whose persona was Missy Demeanor. Her team was called the Hail Mary's and the women wore tartan skirts with white blouses as their team outfits.

When Mary, Bridget and Molly returned to Minnesota, they got busy recruiting girls to start their own roller derby. They handed out flyers and had their first recruiting party last August at Psycho Suzy's Motor Lounge in Minneapolis. Forty women showed up for the recruiting party. On a big screen television was a video of the Texas Roller Girls in action.

The women were excited about picking out a name and being part of something that hadn't been around since the 1970s. Mary organized the first meeting of the Minnesota Roller Girls at her home. The newly founded organization had to raise funding for the rent time of a roller rink for practices. The closest rink was in Coon Rapids.

They also had to find coaches to train them.

Their first fundraiser was a car wash and bake sale, at Robot Love located on Lyndale Avenue in South Minneapolis. It was a beautiful warm Saturday in September and they made over $1,500 in four hours. I drove to Minneapolis to offer moral support to them on the day of the car wash. I sat at a coffee shop across the street from Robot Love and watched car after car with single men lining up to have these young women in their shorts, skirts, and tight tees wash their cars. The girls charged $10 per car and most of the patrons gave them $20.

One man said as he watched the young women clean his car, "I know I have died and gone to heaven." Another young man drove his bright yellow hummer into the parking lot. The hummer driver really didn't want the women to wash his beautiful car as he thought that they might scratch it. He had only stopped to meet the women. He argued with the girls about washing it and then left. He returned later, and he agreed to let them wash his hummer. The girls took extreme care not to scratch it, but they were glad to see him leave.

They held another fundraiser at Pyscho Suzy's in October where they played Twister. The Roller derby girls by now had their personas picked out. Some of their names are Rose Wilder, Floggin Molly, Led Debby, Lilâ Hellion, Rebel Stella, Miss Adventure and Norah Torious. My son Timmy and I went to cheer them on for their Twister Party. Timmy and I even got names for the night. Timmy was called the Timanator and I was called Mama Hot.

By December, four roller derby teams were formed with 12 girls on each team. My daughter's team is called the Garda Belts. Garda is police in Gaelic. They wear Kelly green shirts and tartan skirts as their team outfits. Their first bout after six months of practicing, meetings and other fund raisers is this Sunday at Cheap Skates in Coon Rapids. Part of every fund raiser and bout that the Minnesota Roller Girls have they donate a percentage of the profits to non-profit groups. Two of them have been the Minneapolis Crisis Nursery and the Soo Art Gallery. Check out their website at www.mnrollergirls.com.

I will be heading to Coon Rapids to cheer them on Sunday. They do scare me with how rough the sport is, and I will be cringing watching them take down one another. But they have made lots of new friends, have learned to skate really fast and are having a ball.