All the Rage jamming for Western Mass Destruction. Photo by Andrew Hart; April 6, 2019.
All the Rage, #5 (they/them/theirs; she/hers) has been skating with PVRD since 2012. They play with the WMDs, QMCs, and UF.
Read the transcript of their interview below!
How did you come up with your derby name?
I really wanted something that had “rage” in it, I don’t exactly know why, it rhymes with Paige and felt like the vibe I was going for. It’s kind of fierce and a little bit like alter-ego, which is, I know, a thing that a lot of… energy a lot of folks doing derby are sort of looking for. I’m, I think, generally kind of like sweet as like, just as a person so I like something that’s a little like, I don’t know, challenges that a little bit.
Do you remember when you first heard about derby?
It might have been at Smith… I had heard that there was like a recruitment night, but I definitely didn’t like pursue it until like years later but it sort of stuck out in my head. I was like “I don’t really know what this is or means but like seems rad.” I couldn’t even roller skate, I hadn’t skated since I was a kid, but like it sort of stuck in my mind as like a thing to think about like, I don’t know, in the future and then like years later, I don’t know, I don’t even remember how I got sucked into this world, but I’m very grateful that I did.
Had you been to a bout before recruitment night?
I don’t think so. No, I didn’t really know what I was getting into at all.
It’s hard to conceptualize, but I just knew that it was a thing on roller skates, I didn’t really even have any like, back in the day, like I don’t know, I talked a lot of older folks and they are like “Oh, I watched that on tv when I was like a child in the 70s!” and like I didn’t have that—I mean, I wasn’t a child in the 70s, but I just didn’t have much to go on. I just was like this is a thing that… whatever seeped into my brain from the culture was like “this is a rad thing, this is a badass thing.” I didn’t really even have a a good idea, but it… I was drawn to it.
What was your worst derby injury?
Oh man, it was totally ridiculous and uneventful. A lot of people like get injured in a game, something really like dramatic and exciting, and I was at, actually, a United Front practice, it was like a makeup practice or something very low-key, like five total people there, I tripped over my own feet. Like no one was anywhere near me, I was not doing contact, I just stepped wrong, tripped over myself and sprained my ankle, and I was like out of commission for a long time.
I mean, it’s just like a fluke, like you can throw your body intentionally into other people a hundred times and nothing, but I just like… yeah, tweaked it and then you’re out. And then when you’re out, it’s like hard to… it can be hard to get back in and it happened to coincide with some like stuff in my life that was, you know… yeah. But it was a fluke, and I know that like sort of happens to a lot of people—just undramatic and depressing.
Other than derby, did you ever play any other sports?
Well… No, except I did a weird thing with tennis in high school that was not really… I don’t think I could reasonably say I did other sports, I was not a sports-ing kid and not particularly athletic or com- competition-driven at all, I mean, I’m still not… just sometimes still struggled to think of myself in athletic terms, but yeah, I know a lot of people feel really competitive and are like driven in that way, and it’s just like… I had to like work on that energy to, I don’t know, be more competitive in derby.
Like there are a lot of people that I know who are more competitive and who’ve… who come to derby from other sports or multiple sports or like other kinds of things, and it’s really rad. I love that derby is like space for all levels of competitiveness and backgrounds of sporting-ness.