Jammer Time Beef? What’s beef?

Jammer Time is a monthly take on the thrills and spills of Toronto Roller Derby by original-six team member, jammer Candy Crossbones.

When it comes to the rivalry between Toronto Roller Derby’s two top teams, the Gore-Gore Rollergirls and Chicks Ahoy!, words by the immortal Biggie Smalls drift to mind: “Beef is when I see you / Guaranteed to be in ICU.”

Okay, so it may not be that bad. But it’s no effing joke either.

When the Gores and the Chicks hit the track Saturday for the league’s Season Six opener, there will—as always—be the visible signs of aggression that come part and parcel with roller derby. At least one skater, if not a few, will be laid out by a sweeping, full-power body check. Girls will get tripped. Girls will accidentally hit each other in the face. While not, strictly speaking, legal (no elbows, trips, or head-hits allowed), these things happen. Constantly.

But what you won’t see, if everyone behaves, are the tensions that have long been simmering between these two teams. Before winning the 2011 league championship, the Chicks—my team—had been biting at the Gores’ heels for years. We’d only beaten them once before, in the 2008 championship game, so after three years of trying our darndest for another win, we were well overdue. Taking that trophy back felt so, so sweet.

Long referring to themselves as “the Dynasty,” the Gores were not expecting our rather decisive win in 2011. A highly competitive and dauntingly confident team, they were—as Gores blocker Santa Muerte said this week—knocked down a few pegs by the upset. The team has since chosen new captains and drafted one new skater, and will relish the chance to re-establish their supremacy on Saturday.

If you’ve never seen a derby game, you might be surprised to see how seriously players take it. Most amateur athletes don’t have to play to crowds that sometimes top 1,000 people, so that surely plays into the pressure—but in a large part, it’s about saving face in front of each other, says Chicks Ahoy! super-blocker Mega Bouche.

“I find the home league actually more competitive than going out and playing with [Toronto all-star team] CN Power,” says Bouche, whose real name is Megan McPhail. “You just want to be better than your friends.”

Known for solid blocking and jammer-killing tendencies, Bouche is no stranger to game-time drama. Her intense personality and unbridled energy—which also earned her the league’s fan-favourite designation last year—mean she has something of a habit of getting riled up. If Bouche is upset with a ref’s call, an illegal block, or her own performance, it’s best not to get in her way.

“It’s rage that just comes over me,” she says, relaxed and calm on her living-room couch. “When it’s happening, I want it to stop but I can't. ... I say I’m never going to do it again, but I always end up doing it again.”

But for Bouche, like most others in derby, on-track disputes are just that—on-track disputes. Outside of game day, she’s decidedly friendly, fun, and totally non-threatening.

League co-founder Monichrome (born Monica Mitchell), who plays on the Death Track Dolls, has a theory on these confusing personality shifts that happen in the heat of the game—one of the few full-contact sports available to female athletes. “There are people who are high school teachers, or kindergarten teachers, who can’t be brash or obnoxious in that way,” she explains. “So they let that be their derby personas. They hold those emotions in and let them out on the track.

“That’s why they choose derby.”

The Gore-Gore Rollergirls play Chicks Ahoy! at the Bunker At Downsview Park Saturday, Feb. 4, preceded by an exhibition game between two squads made from the league’s farm team, The D-VAS. The first bout starts at 6 p.m.