Roller Derby Queen Is Professor : High Marks Go to Students Who Learn to Take a Fall

Joannie Weston rolls with the punches and makes a living teaching others to do the same--on skates.

At her workout center, students of the undisputed queen of the Bay Area Bombers are racing, blocking, slamming, whipping and occasionally slugging their way around a wooden track, driven by dreams of becoming pros on the roller derby circuit.

Weston offers lessons on the only banked, regulation-size derby practice track in the country and draws students from all over. She teaches both sexes, but has more women students than men.

Just Like Football

“I like real aggressive sports and since they don’t have women’s football . . . ,” explains petite Lindy Coehlo of Santa Rosa.

“It’s like all these mavericks are here. It’s like one big, happy family,” says Coehlo, one of the newest members of the Eastern Express, one of four professional roller derby teams in the United States.

Her husband introduced her to roller derby 18 months ago. Today she has all but given up a previous hobby of 60-mile bicycle road races. Instead she coordinates her job, working with the developmentally handicapped, around at least four practices a week and games with the Express that have taken her to Madison Square Garden.

Roller derby is a speed skating sport in which players score points by passing an opponent after skating one more lap than the opposition. Players are allowed to block each other, and that can lead to injuries. Men and women may be on the same team, but skate separately.

Sonita Karch, 18, works full time but manages to go at least once a day to the corrugated metal building that houses Weston’s practice track.

“It’s great for your figure,” says Carole Crivello, a utility company repair woman. She’s on the Southern Stars pro team.

Taking the ‘Rough Stuff’

“You gotta learn to take the rough stuff,” Karch warns after a practice in which more than one skater spilled a little blood.

Lisa Knapp, 40, agrees. She says she was sore for days after a game with the Midwest Pioneers.

“To be a skater, you have to be young at heart. And if you’re timid, you’re just not going to get along here,” says the 6-foot electrologist in purple tights, knee pads and skates.

“You take one horrendous crash, if you survive, you won’t take another one,” advises Weston, adding that her job is to teach how to skate like a demon and survive without serious injury.

Even for those in shape for roller derby, she says, it’s a risky business that takes its toll in stitches, fractures, concussions and broken bones.

“There’s no way you’re going to avoid falling. It absolutely can’t be done,” she advises. Since roller derby began in 1935, there has been one fatality.

All kinds of people come to Weston’s classes. There’s a lawyer, a grocery store checker, a manicurist, a dental technician and a mother with two children. A cat nicknamed Bomber is a frequent visitor.

The draw is Weston, a tall, battling blonde and a top star on the professional roller derby circuit since breaking in more than 40 years ago at the age of 14.

What’s it take to make it in roller derby? Skates and gum, says Weston, who chews ferociously while putting students through their paces. “All right, one at a time, to the rear, let’s go,” she commands.

Weston sets up several orange cones as a slalom for the students to skate around and orders them to jump over plastic pylons as they round the curves. She teaches them to fall, and tries to persuade them to relax when crashing onto the track.

After their workout, they come off the track sweating, breathless and smiling.

“Nothing will get you in condition for this,” says Weston, calling bike racing the closest sport in terms of required power, endurance, coordination and balance. “Your whole body has to get into roller skating.”