Pink Panzer warming up before a United Front bout. Photo by Novella Photography; May 16, 2015.
Pink Panzer #88 (she/her/hers) was a cofounder of PVRD, with Bazooka Joe. She skated from 2006 to 2018, playing on every PVRD team at some point. She also began coaching PVRD’s junior program in 2013 and continues to this day.
Read her interview below!
Do you remember the first time you saw roller derby?
It was one of my best friends, she used to live here in the Valley, but then she had to move away to Providence. We were chatting and I was like “What’s new?” and she was like, “I just joined roller derby…I don’t really know what it is, just gonna see how it goes.” It was so weird, because she was this mild-mannered, middle school teacher, and like visualizing, growing up watching roller derby in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I’m like “that’s not you, I don’t understand.” And she was like “Well, I was at the rink and these people approached me and were like “You should join us!”” And we went to our first bout and we thought it was so cool!
How did you choose your name?
Pink Panzer, a panzer is a tank and it was a play on Pink Panther… Pink Panzer was not my first choice. Immediately, I had the brilliant idea that I wanted to be Punky Bruiser, because I grew up watching Punky Brewster, but I was like “I got it!” and then literally like a day later was like “Oh no, that’s already taken. Of course. Of course it is.”
I, to this day, still have people who call me “Pink Panther,” all the time, and I’m like, “No, it’s Panzer.” And I remember a conversation where someone was like “Oh, I get your name! It’s like Pants-Her.” I don’t know if at that point they had just not seen my name on my uniform, and I was like “And have you ever seen me do that?” So, you know, lots of times people don’t get it, so it’s super fun when, you know, someone does get it. It’s satisfying, I guess.
Did you play any sports other than derby?
Right, so I’d played soccer through college and after moving out here, I wasn’t playing any sports, but I knew that [derby] was something that I would enjoy. Believe it or not, I play sports, I enjoy playing them, I like the teams and everything, but I’m not sporty.
When I started soccer, it was the 1980s, you know, and at that time, where I lived, there were teams for boys and there were teams for girls at my age and everything. I know now sometimes they’re mixed at the younger ages, but I mean there were so many kids playing at that point. So, growing up, playing soccer I had been fairly good. Then we moved, and where we moved, it just hadn’t been as big of a sport, so literally when I was in 8th grade at the school, there wasn’t a girls’ team to play on, so I played on the boys’ team. And it went, you know, I was a bit starry-eyed, but I don’t remember there being an issue. I didn’t get to play just because I showed up, I got to play because I was performing and I was fulfilling a need the team had and I was doing it well, so I got to play. The next year, when I started high school, there wasn’t a girls’ team. So I had played with these boys, who now were moving up and everything, and what to do? Well, I went to an all-girls school, and we had a brother school, and it was like…the state rules were that if your school doesn’t offer the sport that you want to play, you get to choose the school you want to go out for. In my head, it wasn’t political, it was the obvious choice. Here’s the guys I’ve played with and I know them, and I’ll go play with them, that’s what I should do, it’s our brother school. So, I went and tried out. I thought I did alright, I didn’t get on the team, and hearing from them, it was because I was a girl. You know, what can you do? Start your own team. So we started a women’s team at school.