Roller derby rocks as after-dark sport for moms in Philadelphia suburbs

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 Divine Vengeance.

The Pheasantland Roller Rink is where she hooks up with Ally Avalanche, a mother of four and owner of a dog-grooming business; the Hillbillie Hustler, who runs the popular Funky Lil' Kitchen in Pottstown; and Low-Blow Lida, a stay-at-home mom who, unlike almost all the others, actually has a few years' experience in the rough-and-tumble sport of roller derby.

These are the Pottstown Roller Derby Rockstars - quite possibly the only league in America devoted to this high-speed and serious-contact sport, in which the skates don't start spinning and hip checks and elbows don't start flying until the kids have been tucked in and read their bedtime stories.

Most of the 38 women in the fledgling league are moms, four of them with twins, and in their 30s and 40s, a decade or two older than the iconic bad-ass roller girl.

"This is why I do this - I never get out of the house!" said Allyson Coffin, a slim blond who goes by the name Ally Avalanche and raises an 8-year-old, a 5-year-old, and 2-year-old twins - all boys - and works from her Berks County home. Before last summer, her skating experience had consisted of occasional kid birthday parties.

"I needed something for me," Coffin said after practicing her team's whip-it move. "This is great. This is my outlet. If it wasn't at 9, I couldn't do it."

These exurban roller girls throw a hard elbow to many of the clichés of the sport: There are no tattoos splayed across muscled biceps, and unlike some of their urban counterparts, their nicknames, such as Busty Cage, reflect a funky fishnet sense of style rather than any penchant for unrestrained violence.

Compared with Philly Roller Girls, the city's six-year-old league, which boasts "athletic, ferocious kick-ass chicks on wheels," these relative newbies are still working on attitudes to match to their punky attire.

"We're getting there, slowly, inching there," said Lida Addison, 36, her team's president and coach, whose thick black eye liner gives her the edgiest look.

Another goal is to become a member of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association, which consists of 104 leagues, a figure that has almost doubled since 2009.

Membership requires nomination by an existing league, such as Philly's or the Lehigh Valley Rollergirls, and being skater-owned and operated.

WFTDA spokeswoman Juliana Gonzales conceded that the Rockstars "are a bit unusual."

Most derby girls are in their 20s and 30s, though some "outliers" are older. And while moms are among the diverse group of skaters, she knew of only a recreational league of all moms in Austin, Texas, the birthplace of modern roller derby 10 years ago.

"It's hard because derby starts to take over your life," Gonzales said.

The roller-derby revolution in Pottstown started on Facebook, more or less. One night at dinner, 41-year-old health-care manager Patty Fetterman - a married mother of four, also including twins - was having dinner with neighbor Tonda Woodling, the restaurateur who skates as the Hillbillie Hustler.

Both had watched the 2009 Drew Barrymore roller-derby flick, Whip It!, which, along with a TV reality show, Rollergirls, has renewed interest in a sport once associated with the black-and-white days of early TV in the 1940s and '50s. But the nearest league, in Philadelphia, was too far for Fetterman and Woodling and required too much time from their busy lives.

Nonetheless, "I got tired of Longaberger and Silpada parties," Fetterman said of the basket- and jewelry-pitching events. "Socializing with women has to be a different event for me. I can only do so much of those before I want to poke somebody's eyes out."

A few nights later, after "a crappy day at work," Fetterman posted a note on Facebook asking if anyone in Pottstown was interested in starting a roller-derby team. The link found its way to Addison, a stay-at-home mom with a 1-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a track record on skates.

She had competed with the San Diego Derby Dolls and the Lehigh Valley Rollergirls, and now that she had begun a family was getting eager to lace up her skates again.

Just seven women were at that first August practice, but through word of mouth and publicity the numbers have swelled. Now, Woodling said, it is likely there will be tryouts before the next season.

During their twice-weekly two-hour sessions, the women work on speed and footwork drills, how to fall and pop back up, the rules of hard checking - shoulders, hips, and elbows are OK, but pushing is not - and balance-perfecting ab exercises, such as crunches and planks.

They've put on some exhibitions, in front of friends and family who proudly wear Rockstar T-shirts. They hope to start matches - "bouting" - with other leagues by summer, and fans will have to start paying to watch.

The women are saving up for a $17,000 flat track that they can put anywhere, even outside, so they can play wherever they want.

Many of the skaters seem in no rush to compete; they're just thrilled to get out of the house.

"What's great is the cross-section of women - professionals, hairdressers, nurses, stay-at-home moms, a grandmom," said Fetterman. "It's not often you get to experience something with such a diverse group of women."

Pole Cat is a good example of that.

A 36-year-old part-time nurse from Exton, Jen Christacopulos has four children - 2-year-old twins, a 6-year-old, and an 11-year-old she takes to Hot Topic to shop for the red fishnets she wears at practice.

Though she looks like a PTA president and lives in an uber-suburban neighborhood, she said, "I'm not a typical mom." Christacopulos proved that when her neighbors asked her to join a book club but she couldn't because it was the same night as her pole-dancing class. "I just call it 'dancing,' " she said of the stripper-esque fitness routine, using air quotes to make her point.

"I could get up at 5:30 in the morning and go to the gym - or this," Christacopulos said, adding: "It is harder than I thought. We're on wheels, pushing each other around. We could get hurt. I'm learning not to hold back."

They're also working on their teamwork, and not just on the rink.

Sheryl Moyer, a 41-year-old hairdresser from Oley Township in Berks County who calls herself Red Wreck-Her because of her crimson hair and helmet, had been to only five practices when her fiance died unexpectedly, just before Christmas. Many of her teammates went to the funeral.

"This is the only thing that has gotten me through it," she said. "I just walked in and said I want to join, and I had 20 instant best friends."

Roller derby also reignites the former tomboy's competitive spirit. Moyer, who has skated at the Pheasantland rink her whole life, playing roller hockey with her three brothers and stealing her very first kiss on the second turn, said: "It gives me energy. It gives me drive to beat a 21-year-old - and I did last week during speed and endurance tests. I can't wait to come here."