Emerald City Roller Derby Hundreds gather at the Bob Keefer Center for Sports and Recreation in Springfield, Oregon to watch the Emerald City Roller Derby team face the Lava City Roller Derby team on Saturday, April 6, 2024. (Sean Meagher/The Oregonian/Sean Meagher/The Oregonian)
When Felicity Farrell first saw Tawshma Pachito skate, she was starstruck. She never imagined they’d be coaching the Emerald City Roller Derby Team together over a decade later. Pachito—or Pow Wow, as she’s known to her teammates—played on the same team as Farrell’s mom. As a child, Farrell admired Pachito’s athleticism as she raced around the track, a blur of speed and tenacity, expertly dodging anyone who got in her way. liebherr top roller
“She was my biggest idol when I was a kid playing roller derby,” Farrell says. “I had her jersey.”
Farrell, known as Coach Babe to her teammates, says having Pachito as her assistant coach brings their relationship full circle. Farrell still has pictures of herself as a child wearing a jersey emblazoned with Pachito’s name.
The admiration is mutual. Even after all this time, Pachito says she remains close with Farrell and her family. “She’s an amazing coach,” Pachito says of Farrell. “It’s been really cool to work together.”
Shown here at 14, Felicity Farrell has long admired Tawshma Pachito. “She was my biggest idol when I was a kid playing roller derby,” Farrell says. “I had her jersey.” (Emily Ann Farrell)
Emerald City Roller Derby, based in Eugene, went through a recovery period after the pandemic forced them to disband for a few years. But now, attendance is rising, the track at Bob Keefer Center in Springfield full of skaters once again. They compete regionally, against teams across Oregon, Washington and California. Oregon has historically been a hub for roller derby, even more so in recent years with the Rose City Rollers Rosebuds All Stars in Portland gaining recognition as national champions.
Coaches Pachito and Farrell agree that there’s something special about the derby community and their dedication to one another as they support one another through illness and other personal and financial hardships. Farrell says that people get addicted to the person they are on skates, to the idea of having a derby alter ego, of choosing a name to become.
Derby, Farrell says, is a fast-paced sport with five skaters from each team on the track at any given time. Team members choose derby names for themselves that can be anything but usually are funny, badass, feminine or some combination of all three. Each team has a jammer, a player who scores points “by getting through the pack of eight players and lapping opposing team members,” Farrell explains. They get a point each time they lap a member of the opposing team. Basically, two people are racing each other while opposing team members attempt to block them.
Pachito misses the thrill of the track, the energy of the crowd. For her, the transition from player to coach was bittersweet. “Being there to help is a blessing,” she says, “even though I can’t skate and play the game as much, I can at least give back.”
If she had it her way, she’d still be a player—but when Pachito was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017, the team was there to support her through the diagnosis. “The league, they coordinated a meal train for me for a couple weeks and brought food and flowers,” she says. “They all made a get well card for me and signed it. That was really, really sweet.”
Pachito says coaching has been a learning curve because she’s had to find the vocabulary to explain movements that felt natural to her, but it’s been a fulfilling experience.
“I love it,” she says. “It helps me right now, it gives me something to look forward to; it breaks up the monotony of my life and what I’m going through.”
Since 2017, Pachito’s cancer journey has been full of hardships, but the support and friendship she’s found through the team remains consistent. “People will show up for you,” she says. “It’s a community where you can go and ask for help, whatever it may be.”
Cadence Brown aka Slaystation, an Emerald City Roller Derby player since 2015, agrees that the level of support and commitment teammates demonstrate for one another goes beyond what’s expected. “A teammate even bought me a washing machine one time,” she says. “That’s next level.” Brown says that she likes the people roller derby attracts: kind people, who like herself, may not have felt at home on more traditional sports teams.
Farrell echoes Brown’s feeling, saying, “I think it brings people together who may have felt like they don’t fit the bill for other sports.” Farrell says that she believes body positivity is at the root of roller derby’s inclusivity and a big part of why people feel safe and comfortable with each other.
“In a lot of sports there’s like a body type or something that can make you more successful,” she says. “People feel like if you’re taller, you’re probably gonna be good at basketball or, you know, if you’ve got broad shoulders, maybe you’ll be a better swimmer.” In roller derby, that’s not the case. “There’s not one body type that’s more successful,” Farrell says. “You don’t have to be six feet tall to be good or you don’t have to be, you know, super small to be fast.”
Brown, who identifies as queer, says that roller derby has become a haven for athletes who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. “It’s very pro queer, pro everyone,” Brown says. In 2016, the team changed their name from Emerald City Roller Girls to Emerald City Roller Derby.
“It’s an environment that feels safe,” Pachito says, “that’s respectful.” Pachito is amazed at the way the sport has become even more inclusive over the years. “It’s evolving into a beautiful thing,” she says.
Pachito says that in the past there were no men’s teams or co-ed teams, but all that has changed in recent years. Now, there are even borderless teams such as Team Indigenous Rising which formed in 2017, Pachito explains. That’s important to Pachito, who is Native American on her father’s side, part of the Luiseno Nation Soboba Band.
When Pachito started roller derby in 2009, she remembers the sport being predominantly white, often with only one other Indigenous person on the team. For her, it’s been gratifying to watch that shift over time. “Now you’re seeing teams that are forming like Team Indigenous that are made up of multiple different nations, around the United States, Canada, Hawaii, Mexico,” Pachito says. “You’re also seeing other teams like Jewish roller derby and Fuego Latino roller derby and Black Diaspora roller derby, and they’re just dominating the sport.”
As soon as Pachito heard about Team Indigenous Rising, she wanted to be a part of it. Despite her struggles with cancer and having to try out multiple times, Pachito didn’t give up. “I was not gonna stop until I was on that team,” she says. Pachito made the team in October 2022. Her health worsened soon afterward though, and she hasn’t been able to skate consistently since. Still, Pachito says she will never forget how it felt to be in a room full of Indigenous skaters for the first time and she wept “tears of joy.” She believes Team Indigenous Rising is “allowing our people to be seen for their intellect, beauty and resilience.”
Pachito says she’s proud to represent her Indigenous heritage through her derby name, Pow Wow. “Derby names add some freedom to people’s lives and make them feel like they can be whoever they want to be,” Farrell says. It allows them to put a unique twist on their identity and choose how they want to be perceived in this space, she explains. It can be a reprieve from who people feel like they have to be in their everyday life. Farrell understands the appeal of having an alter ego, of the name allowing you to access parts of yourself that you didn’t even know were there.
When Farrell was a child, she says she was painfully shy. But derby changed that for her, it got her out of her comfort zone. “Being able to be Bashful Babe and be super competitive and put on my makeup and wear my fishnets helped me grow as a person,” she says. “And feel a little bit more free, a little bit louder, more opinionated and aggressive in a positive way.”
Farrell isn’t surprised that people who start playing roller derby are often in it for the long haul, that there are people of all ages on the team; it makes sense to her. The game, the camaraderie, is addictive. Taking a break from Emerald City Derby during COVID was tough for everyone, including Farrell. “All of a sudden you are by yourself at home, isolated from the world,” she says. “It was a very stark contrast from having like 60 friends at any given minute that I could talk to.” Brown says that during the pandemic she didn’t skate for three years and its absence weighed on her. “It was a big blow,” she says. “I need socialization outside of work, I need movement in my life.”
Derby helps people find their voice, find their name, Farrell says. It helps people discover who they are, who they want to be. That, in of itself, is worth every blister, every bruise, every fall, every late night practice in the world.
Learn more: Emerald City Roller Derby hosts their home bouts at the Bob Keefer Center, 250 S. 32nd St. in Springfield, and their next bout takes place at 4 p.m. June 1. Any skaters who can safely skate backward, forward and turn successfully are welcome to drop in to any practice at the Bob Keefer Center. For beginners, Emerald City Roller Derby puts on skating bootcamps that accommodate all skill levels. More information can be found at emeraldcityrd.org/#join
— Sofia Garner, for The Oregonian/OregonLive
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