Trouble Makers

For Tragic City Trouble Maker Brianna Parmley, known in the rink as Ridin’ Derby, competing on a roller derby team has been has been on her radar ever since she watched her first bout. 

“As soon as my mom mentioned it to me, I was ready and I wanted to go play,” said Parmley, who is 15 years old and attends Chelsea High School. “We actually got skates that week.”

Tragic City Trouble Maker Head Coach Rachel Fallin, who also goes by Road Rach, said that unlike some of the other girls who recently joined Birmingham’s only junior roller derby team, Parmley is a bit ahead of the game. Many of the girls are still in the process of learning to skate.

“It sounds crazy, but it’s fun to watch them fall the right way,” said Fallin, who is also a Hayden High School PE teacher. “They’re little sponges, really taking it all in. I tell them they come in and train just like adults do.”

So far, the junior league is made up of around 45 girls in the Jefferson County area between the ages of 7 and 18. With the creation of the Tragic City Trouble Makers, Birmingham has joined other Southeastern cities such as Atlanta, Huntsville, Chattanooga, Nashville and Athens, Georgia, in having a junior roller derby leagues.

Since February, the Tragic City Trouble Makers have practiced at 280 Skates for an hour every Wednesday night, with players learning how to start and stop, and then advancing at different paces. Many are currently mastering the ability to land on their kneepads and “fall small,” Fallin said, so they don’t trip each other up.

Birmingham’s adult roller derby league, Tragic City Rollers, started in 2005. 

Fallin said that parents and girls have been asking for a junior league for years, and she’s thrilled to be chosen to coach it. Tragic City League President Heather Meadows, also known as Claw and Order, was the one who got the junior league going. 

As of April, Fallin said the league has been a hit in Birmingham, and community members have been showing support by reaching out to offer the girls sponsorships. 

“Roller derby is really a great sport for kids because anyone can do it. We take them even if they don’t know how to skate, they’ve never been an athlete,” Fallin said.

Roller derby is not like most sports, Fallin said, where everyone grew up running and kicking and generally knowing the rules. In roller derby, it takes some time to get the hang of the game and pick out a nickname, she said.

Roller derby is a contact sport where two teams of five face each other in the rink. Each team has four blockers, who try to keep the opposing team from scoring, and one jammer, who aims to score a point by making it around the rink. Players can use their hips and shoulders to block people from scoring, but it is against official rules to get rougher than that. 

“Everyone is on different levels right now. There’s people trying to get good at skating, and there’s people who are trying to perfect skating backwards and doing all the tricks,” Parmley said.

Parmley said even though she hadn’t skated a whole year before getting on skates again for roller derby practice, it’s been pretty easy to pick it back up again. She also loves how much she’s learning.

Fallin said it’s important that players learn how to skate right next to each other without tripping before they graduate onto “bumping each other around a little bit,” she said.

Even though the Tragic City Trouble Makers are hoping to have their first bout with another junior league in August, Fallin said they’re going to have to wait and see how much they’ve progressed.

“It’s just one of those sports where you really, really want to be ready before you get out there and play a game because you don’t want injuries,” Fallin said.

One of the first things Fallin and assistant head coach Bethany Snow explained was that although roller derby is an aggressive sport, Fallin said, “it’s not a sport where you bring your aggression to the tracks.” Rather, it’s a full contact sport with rules just like in any sport with physical contact, she said.

“People think that roller derby is the place where when you’re in a bad mood, you can come out and hit some girls,” Fallin said. 

“That is not what this is. You lift each other up, and it’s very much a team sport,” she said, which is something teammates learn to take pride in about each other.

Over time, Fallin said the girls will develop trust and learn to depend on their teammates in order to be successful and win games.

“It’s a sport where we are playing offense and defense all at the same time so we are constantly having to communicate with each other,” Fallin said. “It’s not a sport where you can get out there and be the best all by yourself.”

A point of pride, Fallin said, is that roller derby is specifically known as being a women’s — or in this case, girl’s — sport.

“You have soccer, and then you have women’s soccer, and you have basketball and women’s basketball. Well, in roller derby, you have roller derby and then you have men’s roller derby,” Fallin said. “It’s one of the few sports where it’s actually like that.”

Parmley said it’s a lot of fun to be able to play with all girls, especially playing one of the only “sports on wheels.”

Practices for the junior leagues are run the same way as they are for the adult league, Fallin said, with the team eventually scrimmaging each other. 

“It’s amazing, and I’m not just saying this, how much they have progressed already,” Fallin said. “Like the very first practice they couldn’t even stay up, they were like a baby giraffe on ice and needing to clench onto someone’s hand or a wall, and now these girls are already just figuring it out.”

Currently, Fallin said they don’t have the specifics on how they’re going to split the girls up, but they will be playing girls closer to their own age, she said. In the near future, they will also be involved in the community through several charity events and with this year’s Tragic City Charity Partner, the Magic City Acceptance Center. 

The Tragic City Trouble Makers are hoping to have their first bout with another junior league in August. To get involved, email juniors@tragiccityrollers.com.