Roller Derby

Hockey may still lack the necessary popular apppeal to get a network television contract, but the game between the Boston Bruins and the New Jersey Devils Sunday night had no trouble making the network news. This was thanks mainly to a complex low comedy that started with the alleged assault of an official by the Devils' coach. It eventually involved everyone from a New Jersey Superior Court judge to three hastily rounded-up game officials, who initially skated onto the ice in what appeared to be green-and-yellow clown suits.

Patty Curran put it bluntly: The 44-year-old from the Jersey Shore, a tiny woman with a thin, muscled build and black hair in braids, wants to roller derby with the Philly Roller Girls. No matter what it takes. "I'd do anything to make this league. Literally," she said, no trace of a smile on her lips. "This is huge. " To prepare for the big event, Curran had spent two years playing with a smaller league in central Jersey under the name "Redneck Roller," a shout-out to her Florida roots.

Maybe we were asleep when it happened, but it seems like there's a lot of new interest in the good ol' roller derby. It's a weird sport. Dudes and dudettes on roller skates chase each other around a concrete track, dead set on doing bodily harm. Chip remembers watching it when he was a kid. Jonathan has no clue what it is. But we both like these games; they take roller derby from the arena out into the street . . . where it probably belongs. ROLLERGAMES, BY ULTRA, FOR NINTENDO: ($44.

Nearly 30 skaters of all shapes and ages raced among cones, skated laps and tried to impress onlookers at the Ice Chalet with hopes of playing roller derby. That's right - roller derby. The sport is making a comeback in a new television show called "RollerJam," which will debut on the Nashville Network in January. "I never thought it would come back," said World Skating League commissioner Jerry Seltzer, who was a honcho with the original roller derby. "But I guess everything comes back.

Incredibly, Drew Barrymore, 34, has been in the movies as long as Tom Hanks, 53. Like him, Barrymore has distinguished herself as an actor and producer. Now, with the buoyant comedy Whip It , an archetype-busting and delightful roller-derby tale, she establishes herself confidently as a director. Her feature debut stars Ellen Page ( Juno ), as Bliss Cavendar, a high school senior from Bodeen, Texas, where beauty contests and football are civic religions. Bliss' mom, Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden)

Maybe it's because speed roller-skating makes people think of roller derby - that could be why so many of her classmates simply shrug and tell Margaret Allmond it's not a real sport. But the 15-year-old Tacony resident is quick to refute misconceptions about the sport at which she excels. "Unlike roller derby, if someone pushes, shoves, elbows, or pulls another competitor's hair, they are disqualified," she said. The Frankford High School sophomore already is a veteran of the sport.

There was a time when sold out crowds gathered each week at the Arena, in West Philadelphia, and later the Spectrum to watch Judy Arnold and her Philadelphia Warriors wreak havoc on the roller-derby track. It was a sport that in its heyday could draw more fans than basketball or hockey did, and was a television staple that combined athleticism and showmanship with nonstop action. "The fans in Philadelphia went crazy for roller games," said Gary Powers, curator of the National Roller Derby Hall of Fame and Museum, in Brooklyn.

The player who calls herself "RUDEpunzal" and the player known as "Black Eye Susan" were skating in a pack at a Penn Jersey She-Devils Roller Derby practice. Black Eye tried to block RUDEpunzal, who fell, trapping her left foot beneath her. Black Eye jumped over her, and tumbled back. The long-haired RUDEpunzal (Katie Birtell) wound up with a broken tibia. The brown-eyed, unblemished Black Eye Susan (Dee Thurner) suffered a broken tailbone. That's another day at the rink for the Bensalem She-Devils.

Judy Sowinski gazed at the 40-year-old photo and got the same look in her eyes - a half-grin, half-sneer - that roller-derby fans used to see whenever she was about to knock an opponent head over wheels. In the photo, a bouffant-topped Sowinski is clenching her jaw, bracing herself, and winding up to deliver a roundhouse right to the angelic face of Judy Arnold, the fair-haired skating star of the old Philadelphia Warriors. "They called me the Queen of Mean", Sowinski, now 67, said, with a chuckle.

Anyone who watched roller derby at the old Arena or saw their wild games on Channel 48 will recall that the Philadelphia Warriors had a thirst for mayhem. "I had three bodyguards whenever I came to Philadelphia," said Gootch Gautieri, a former player and official with the New York Bombers. "One time, I was in a grudge-match race against Ruberta Mitchell, and an idiot fan jumped on the track and attacked me. I kicked him in the face with my skates and put him in the hospital. He had no business assaulting me. " The Warriors arrived here in 1967, nearly two decades after the sport had debuted in the city in 1948.

Judy Sowinski, 71, of South Philadelphia, a roller derby coach who won the title of "Queen of Mean" as a player, died of lung cancer Wednesday, July 27, at Vitas Hospice at Methodist Hospital. A native of Chicago, Ms. Sowinski skated with the Philadelphia Warriors, the New York Bombers, and other clubs from 1959 through the early 1980s. In 1972, she appeared as one of the skaters in the movie Kansas City Bomber , which starred Raquel Welch. Ms. Sowinski's career bnoegan when an aunt took her to a match at the Chicago Coliseum in 1959.

In her everyday guise as suburban working mom, Joette Fisher gets up at 4:45 a.m., heads to work at a battery manufacturer in Reading, comes home to cook dinner for her kids, give them baths, and put them to bed. But shortly before 9 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, this 5-foot-1, 39-year-old grandmother with long blond hair slips out the front door and off to the Boyertown area of Berks County, where she puts on her pads and her helmet - and becomes...

There was a time when sold out crowds gathered each week at the Arena, in West Philadelphia, and later the Spectrum to watch Judy Arnold and her Philadelphia Warriors wreak havoc on the roller-derby track. It was a sport that in its heyday could draw more fans than basketball or hockey did, and was a television staple that combined athleticism and showmanship with nonstop action. "The fans in Philadelphia went crazy for roller games," said Gary Powers, curator of the National Roller Derby Hall of Fame and Museum, in Brooklyn.

Friday-Sunday Rock and roller derby More than 900 skaters from about 85 all-female roller derby leagues will compete in the East Coast Derby Extravaganza this weekend at the Sportsplex, 1331 O'Reilly Dr. in Feasterville. The event will feature simultaneous matches in three rinks. The Philly Indepen- dence Dolls face the Gotham Girls Wall Street Traitors in the first match, at 6 p.m. Friday, followed by a match between Gotham Girls Roller Derby and the Windy City Rollers. Bouts on Saturday will run from 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; matches on Sunday are scheduled 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for Friday; $30 for an all-day pass on Saturday or Sunday; $50 for two-day passes; $60 for all bouts; $15 for the 6 p.m. bouts on Saturday and Sunday and the 3 p.m. bouts on Sunday.

I don't play golf. Never have. And while I occasionally catch a few minutes of the major tournaments on television, I much prefer sports in which the players inflict physical torment on one another and roll around in the dirt and mud. Next to players in brilliantly color-coordinated uniforms and plastic harnesses to protect various body parts, people who dress in plaid knickers and argyle knee socks and call themselves athletes seem like, well,...

Patty Curran put it bluntly: The 44-year-old from the Jersey Shore, a tiny woman with a thin, muscled build and black hair in braids, wants to roller derby with the Philly Roller Girls. No matter what it takes. "I'd do anything to make this league. Literally," she said, no trace of a smile on her lips. "This is huge. " To prepare for the big event, Curran had spent two years playing with a smaller league in central Jersey under the name "Redneck Roller," a shout-out to her Florida roots.

Incredibly, Drew Barrymore, 34, has been in the movies as long as Tom Hanks, 53. Like him, Barrymore has distinguished herself as an actor and producer. Now, with the buoyant comedy Whip It , an archetype-busting and delightful roller-derby tale, she establishes herself confidently as a director. Her feature debut stars Ellen Page ( Juno ), as Bliss Cavendar, a high school senior from Bodeen, Texas, where beauty contests and football are civic religions. Bliss' mom, Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden)

Allison Baver's speedskating career has been marked by seemingly devastating setbacks - always followed by remarkable successes. After she took to the ice in the late 1990s, her competitive run could have been ended by an on-ice collision that left her with nearly 50 stitches in her face - yet she dared to return to skating and made the U.S. Olympic teams in 2002 and 2006. Out for a year with a leg injury, she almost didn't make it to the 2007 National Championships - but somehow recovered in time to win the short-track title.

Anyone who watched roller derby at the old Arena or saw their wild games on Channel 48 will recall that the Philadelphia Warriors had a thirst for mayhem. "I had three bodyguards whenever I came to Philadelphia," said Gootch Gautieri, a former player and official with the New York Bombers. "One time, I was in a grudge-match race against Ruberta Mitchell, and an idiot fan jumped on the track and attacked me. I kicked him in the face with my skates and put him in the hospital. He had no business assaulting me. " The Warriors arrived here in 1967, nearly two decades after the sport had debuted in the city in 1948.

Judy Sowinski gazed at the 40-year-old photo and got the same look in her eyes - a half-grin, half-sneer - that roller-derby fans used to see whenever she was about to knock an opponent head over wheels. In the photo, a bouffant-topped Sowinski is clenching her jaw, bracing herself, and winding up to deliver a roundhouse right to the angelic face of Judy Arnold, the fair-haired skating star of the old Philadelphia Warriors. "They called me the Queen of Mean", Sowinski, now 67, said, with a chuckle.