Emporia is now home to the fourth roller derby league in Kansas — the Flint Hills Fury.
Victoria Partridge, Angie Baker and Kari Crump have started the process of forming a league in Emporia. The league officially acquired non-profit status this past week.
Partridge said she had thought about a roller derby league last October but they didn’t act. In April this year, she went on a date to a roller derby in Kansas City, the Kansas City Roller Warriers.
She got to talking to people retired from the league and then talked to her friends in Emporia and they got excited. She got antsy about it and created a Facebook page to gauge interest in a roller derby league and the page exploded with interest.
“All of this interest just started pouring in,” she said. “And I realized it was much more than a team. A team can only have maybe 20 girls in it tops and we’ve got almost 200 people on the fan page already. We have people saying they want to be refs or announcers.”
There’s a lot of paperwork to start up a roller derby league, but the three are working their way through it, they said. The logo was done by April Armstrong of Black Hearts House of Art.
Only 20 women can be on one team, Partridge said. When the league gets going, they hope to have three to four teams in their league with 10 to 15 girls per team. To be a part of a team, women must be 18 or older and have health insurance. Rollers will work with the league for practice space and they plan to have women in skates by August.
All skill levels are welcome. Skating lessons will be provided.
“This will be a fun sporting event,” Crump said. “An alternative for women in the area — a sisterhood group activity.”
The events will be family-friendly, Partridge said.
“It’s action but it’s fun,” she said.
The Flint Hills Fury also will give back to the community. They will be hosting charity events and doing fundraisers with them.
Pre-orders are being taken for T-shirts and tank tops at Studio 11 in downtown Emporia. Funds will help pay for costs the league is incurring such as application fees and other fees.
The league needs referees, announcers, scorekeepers, announcers, sponsors and skaters. While the skaters have to be all female, males can serve in other positions. For more information go to: www.flinthillsfury.com or Facebook: Flint Hills Fury, Twitter: Flinthillsfury.
jasper007 (anonymous) says...
Hey, maybe we can get Larry The Cable Guy to come to town! He did a piece on his show "Only In America" on female roller derby recently.........
June 30, 2011 at 5:38 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )