It’s 6:30 on a Thursday night and 47-year-old Julie Monahan walks through the doors of the Heights Community Center, a grungy building with a basketball court and Sesame Street characters painted on the walls.
She’s carrying a bag about half her size, packed to the brim with roller skates, knee and elbow pads, a helmet and hand guards. She wears a bright aqua tank top with the letters GSRD traced onto it.
“This is fresh meat Julie,” says Karen Forest, or Taz, if you meet her inside a roller derby rink. “When she’s been skating longer, we’ll call her ground meat. If she passes the national assessment for the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, well, then she’ll become rotten meat.”
A tall, energentic redhead made even loftier by her skates, Taz is coach, participant and cofounder of the Concord-based Granite State Roller Derby team.
The team, made up of about 20 women spanning the ages of 20 to about 50, has been meeting since mid-July. They practice twice a week, typically behind Everett Sports Center on Loudon Road if the weather’s good, with an extra night slotted for training during the week.
Practices are noisy, rowdy and sweaty. The derby girls perform drills weaving in and out of “the pack,” dodging cones, sliding on their knees and learning how to fall properly, without breaking hands or tailbones.
Monahan, a former hockey player, said she knew the risks when she signed up for the sport. She’d seen other teams compete and wanted to give it a whirl.
“The older you get, you just have to go for it,” Monahan said.
While the young team isn’t quite ready to start competing, more experienced members of GSRD hit the road most weekends, traveling to Canada and New Jersey to compete with other teams. Taz says she’d like to see the Concord team grow to about 70. She’s actively recruiting, so if you’re interested in learning about the team, shoot her an e-mail, tazslamiandevil@gmail.com.
(Amy Augustine can be reached at 369-3378 or aaugustine@theconcordinsider.com)
