Alamo City Rollergirls looking for more skaters

Alamo City Rollergirls in the San Antonio Current

Ask any Alamo City Rollergirl and she'll tell you roller derby is no longer about corporate ownership and choreographed cat-fights. "We always get people asking, When does the beer and girl fighting start?" says DeAnne Cuellar, media reform activist by day, Paloma Negra 404 by night. "But rock 'n' roll derby is not just girls in skirts. It's a female-skater owned and operated sport, and it's an aggressive sport - girls get their teeth knocked out - and there's a lot of training, strategy, and gear involved."

Alamo City Rollergirls started up in May and already has 42 skaters. Even so, they still need to recruit at least 20 more skaters before they can break into teams and compete against one another, and many of their members haven't skated in more than 10 years. But with two practices and a roller-derby boot camp behind them - not to mention the sisterly advice of Austin's enormously popular Texas Rollergirls to guide them through the pitfalls of organizing a league - they seem to have their bearings. So it's not hard to imagine that in a mere eight months these girls are going to be kicking ass and taking nicknames on the flat track.

tags: roller derby, rollergirls, Alamo City