The Choice City Rebels roller derby league out of Fort Collins was just accepted as an apprentice league by the Women's Flat Track Derby Association.
"We want to win and we want to win all the time," says Choice City skater Jennifer "Laura Mangles Wilder" Gorek. "If you want to be ranked and be really competitive, you've got to be in WFTDA so the big girls will play you."
Colorado is already home to some of those big girls: the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls of Denver (currently ranked No. 3 in the country) and the Denver Roller Dolls (ranked No. 5).
And if Colorado leagues continue to sprout up at the rate they have been, the state could soon be home to the most derby girls in the nation.
Like many roller derby leagues, the Choice City Rebels split off from another local league: FoCo Girls Gone Derby, which has been around since 2006. The ten founding members of Choice City were once FoCo skaters, Gorek says. Though she was hesitant to badmouth FoCo, Gorek says the biggest difference between the two leagues is democracy.
"That's one of our things: straight-up votes," Gorek says. " We don't have a board, and there's no huge set of by-laws. We're trying to stay low-key with that kind of stuff. There are no committee obligations or attendance policies. It's kind of a trust factor with us."
The Choice City Rebels currently have thirty skaters who go by derby nicknames such as Buster Hiney, Moustache Rider and SexyCutioner. So far this year, they've played teams from the Pikes Peak Derby Dames, the High City Derby Divas of Aurora and the Slaughterhouse Derby Girls of Greeley. And they've won every bout but one: a matchup against a mixed team of experienced and not-so-experienced skaters from the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls, which they lost by a single point.
Their next bout will be against the Pueblo Derby Devil Dollz on August 7.
