Pre-match warm ups
On Friday, October 30, as a part of the 63rd annual Irvington Halloween Festival, local residents were treated to some old fashioned roller derby, featuring co-ed teams created by combining members of two, local roller derby teams, the Circle City Socialites and the Race City Rebels (most roller derby teams are of one gender).
This special, Halloween exhibition took place in front of a sell out crowd (650 plus SRO) at the Ellenberger Park ice skating rink (rather ironic in that the city of Indianapolis has decided to not open the rink for ice skating this year due to budget cuts).
In keeping with the Halloween theme, the two opposing teams were appropriately dressed up as pirates and ninjas respectively. In that this was an exhibition, the blocking was a little gentler than what you would see at regular league matches. Another difference was they were skating on a flat, concrete track rather than on a normally-used banked, wooden one, so there was always the risk of someone being injured by falling on the concrete --- and there were many spills. Luckily, no one was injured.
Fans (a fairly equal mix of young and old) were treated to a truly impressive display of precision and speed skating.
It should be noted that the two teams kindly donated a portion of the proceeds to Second Story, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children improve their writing skills.
Comments