An Evening With The Eastern Iowa Outlaws-- Part One

MONTECELLO – During a derby scrimmage among members of the six month old Eastern Iowa Outlaws, something went wrong in one of the turns. Upon making contact with someone in the pack, Rockin’ Romeo, the alter ego of 24-year-old Robi Jo Griffin, lost her footing, went skyward and landed on her back causing her head to ricochet violently off sport court tiled at the Monticello Berends Center Thursday.

Griffin, of Cedar Rapids, lay there for about a minute, being tended to by coaches. Eastern Iowa Outlaw founder and coach Michelle Miller, a.k.a Dead Lee Danni, instructs the other players gathered in the center of the makeshift derby track down on one knee.

“In case some of you didn’t know, when someone from your team or the other team is down, you always take a knee,” said Tiffany Vomacka, aka V Train a player/coach for the Outlaws. “It shows respect.”

Griffin, who is a service clerk and photo specialist at Walgreens, gets up and quickly rejoins the team. Her journey to membership in the Outlaws was a long one. She kept trying out and never making a team. Finally, one of her fellow skaters who made the Outlaws told her about tryout at Super Skate in Cedar Rapids. Upon observing Griffin skate, Miller, and Vomacka offered her a position on the team.

“This is something so much bigger than I could ever imagine by myself,” Griffin said. “Like I got a group of girls here that’s become family now. I mean no drama or nothing. We’re here to skate. We’re here to play. We’re here to have fun.”

A few minutes after she rejoined the team after the accident, Griffin had to sit down a few minutes later.

“I feel drunk,” Griffin said. “I feel like I’m gonna puke.”

By the end of practice Rockin’ Romeo appeared to regain her original form and relatively injury free. Fortunately she was wearing a helmet, as required in the modern derby game. Like any other athletic endeavor, the modern roller derby game carries a risk of injuries, as Outlaw player/coach Michelle Miller can testify.

While Miller was skating with the Cedar Rapids Rollergirls she suffered a tear in her Medial Collateral Ligament, located behind the knee during a practice in March 2009. “I was bad, “ she laughed. “I only stayed completely off it for one week, then resumed half- practices for the next three weeks and bouted at the end of that March. I should have stayed off of it for at least a month.”

She added her main motivation behind taking a big risk was to make a Rollergirls bout.

The Eastern Iowa Outlaws began in the mind of Miller, 45, who is an insurance analyst for Aegon in Cedar Rapids, toward the end of 2009. Since that time, Miller has hit the pavement to recruit players around the Cedar Rapids hanging posters, making phone calls, getting the team licensed, getting a tax ID and securing a venue. Not only that there was the issue of finding players for her team, which involved phone calls, passing out flyers and taking out ad space in newspapers.

“Within about two months we had 20 girls,” she said, adding that while those initial efforts to recruit players began in the Cedar Rapids area, the Outlaws are planning a major recruitment push for players in the Dubuque area in the near future.

Just a brief conversation with Miller reveals her deep love for the game, citing the friendships it brings, the sportsmanship among the players and physicality of the game as reasons why.

“It’s always nice to hit girls and not get in trouble for it,” she added with a laugh.

The Miller’s hard work and perseverance began to pay major dividends recently. Not only did the team secure a practice facility, adding more players to the Outlaw roster and, perhaps in the biggest move of all, secured a location for their home bouts, the Five Flags Center in Dubuque, which are slated to begin in October.

Many of the ladies at the practice hail from the Cedar Rapids area, but a fair number of them hail from other towns like Marion, Monticello, Anamosa, and even McGregor in Clayton County. Michelle’s Husband Robby Miller, aka Rush-N-Rob, said the Outlaws would like to bring the tri-state area into the Iowa derby universe and the home bouts at the Five Flags Center will provide an excellent venue for them to do so.

While many of the Outlaws have little to no bout experience, a slew of events are beginning to line up for them to have the opportunity. On Wednesday, many of the Outlaws will have a scrimmage with the “fresh meat” of the Old Capital City Roller Girls. This Saturday some members of the Outlaws will travel to Beloit, Wisconsin to participate in the Military Madness Roller Derby Mixer. Plans are also in the works for the Outlaws to have a bout at the Jones County Fair, although all of the details have not been finalized.

Robby Miller described himself as a “Derby Widow” for the first year-and-a-half of Miller’s career. While she did derby, he raced stock cars on dirt tracks. When she announced her intention to form a team of her own, her husband hopped aboard.

It’s hard to believe that Rush-N-Rob, by day the general manager of Marv’s Glass in Iowa City, was ever a widow of the sport watching him in practice at Monticello. One minute he is offering kind, yet firm coaching to the Outlaw girls. The next minute he’s breaking out tools to work on the skates of girls having problems with their skates. Still another minute he is holding a rope with another person to assist his wife in a drill involving hitting to solidify timing and blocking form.

“It’s more involved than I thought,” Miller said. “There’s a whole lot more than I thought. There’s a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Contacts. E-mail.”

An Evening With The Eastern Iowa Outlaws-- Part Two

One of the latecomers to practice was one of the Cedar Rapids Rollergirls who made the jump to the Outlaws with Miller. Kathie Saunders, aka Mis-B-Havin. Saunders, who works at Cargill, jetted over to Monticello after getting off of a plane from Minneapolis where she attended various meetings. Not only that, Saunders, 43, also teaches fitness classes, including kickboxing, water aerobics and cycling, something she has done for the past 14 years.

Yet it was an feat of athleticism that she could not do that led her to begin a derby career in March 2009.

“I didn’t know how to skate and someone said ‘You should try out’ and so I decided I should,” Saunders said with a giggle“It probably took me a good six months to learn how to stay on my skates really well. I skated probably three time my entire life.”

Yet it was the fact that she hadn’t skated that motivated her because she saw it as a challenge. The challenge has come with some consequences, however. Saunders said that only recently has she started collecting bruises as the beginning struggles with skating have given way to a crazier approach that comes with confidence.

At home, Saunders has two children, one who is a college student at the University of Iowa and the other who is a sophomore. They are thrilled with their mothers derby adventure, but not surprised.

“I have this personality where people are not surprised when I go out and do things,” she said. “You know ‘Oh my God what are you doing now?’”

Her only previous bout experience was in a scrimmage, but she will be one of the Outlaws to attend the mixer bout in Beloit this Saturday.

The three hour practice in Monticello was a challenging, sweat soaked affair featuring drills testing skill and endurance.

During one drill, as the Outlaws skated around the makeshift derby oval, Miller blows a whistle

“BASEBALL!”

Immediately the girls on the track, who were going at a decent speed on their skates, hit the ground and do five sit ups. They get up off the ground and start to skate again.

A few seconds later, Miller yells, “ROCKSTAR!”

The team hits the deck and does five push-ups before getting up again for more skating. Among those engaged in this exercise was the skater known as Holly Hotwheels.



By day, Holly Hotwheels is known as Amber Jordan, a stay at home mom. Jordan’s adventure with roller derby began when she, accompanying a friend to a Cedar Rapids Rollergirl tryout at Super Skate in Cedar Rapids in February 2009, decided to put on a pair of quads after over 15 years.

“And I got to thinking ‘Hey! I don’t think I’m that bad!’” she said. “Then I got to thinking, you know, ‘I live in Scotch Grove. That would be an hour drive for me.’ And then I was like ‘You know what? You’re only young once you better do it now.’ So I did it and got on (with the Rollergirls).”

From there, Jordan, 37, immersed herself in the world of roller derby, to the point where her husband believed she became obsessed. After derby practice she would arrive home and hit the internet, looking at derby videos on YouTube.com, reading up on derby tips and drill, and even getting addicted to tights. Initially she would be more of a blocker, but after finding that she could attain a great amount of speed on the track, she decided to add jammer to her derby repertoire.

Her first bout was with the Cedar Rapids Rollergirls in November 2009, an experience she described as being full of adrenaline. More bout experience is in the future for Jordan and some of the members of the Outlaws when they travel to Beloit, Wisconsin to participate in the Military Madness Roller Derby Mixer on Saturday.

Jordan described her experience with the Outlaws as being a very happy one, with team members providing an environment where no one talks negatively about others and where a lot of bonding occurs between her and her teammates.
“We push each other in good ways,” Jordan said. “I can push somebody-not intentionally pushing them- to be faster or to try harder. And if someone is having a bad day, which we’ve all had our bad days and we think ‘why are we doing this?, we can see that in your eyes and you go pep that person up and bring them up.”

The practice moved into a drill where the Outlaws divided themselves into three groups. The two girls on the out lines were blockers with the center line being a jammer. One series saw Mis-B-Havin as a jammer and a player known as Da Thrilla Ice, or Ice for short, and another Outlaw serving as blockers. Despite the speed of Mis-B-Havin, Ice virtually stopped her cold by extending her backside in a textbook blocking maneuver. This was greeted with a positive reaction her fellow Outlaws, the coaches and Mis-B-Havin herself.

“Big ass, no pass,” Ice said as she skated back toward the line.

Outside the derby world, Ice is known as Christina Updegraff, 25, a mother and bartender at Buffalo Wild Wings in Cedar Rapids. Before seeing a Cedar Rapids Rollergirls bout that piqued her interest, Updegraff did not know that Roller Derby was as big of a deal as it turned out to be. Ice found out from fellow Outlaw Big Show that tryouts for the Outlaws were taking place, so she jumped at the chance- despite not donning a pair of roller skates in six years.

Updegraff said her first practice with the team was difficult with her struggling with balance and basic derby moves like the crossover. She credits Outlaw coaches for working with her one-on-one and understanding her skill level and her drive to succeed at a sport that she fell in love with at first sight. This drive is best exhibited by the fact that Updegraff has diabetes.

“I can’t do a lot of sports because getting hot and stuff gets me really dizzy and sick and stuff like that. For some reason there is a lot more strength in me than…I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do this,” she said with a laugh adding that she makes sure her blood sugar is up before practice.

At the end of practice, as the Outlaws gathered around center court to cool down, Vomacka led the team in an exercise where a team member is singled out and the rest of the team gives positive feedback as to the players performance. Vomacka finished this exercise by addressing the Outlaws as a team, crediting their perseverance.

“Hardly anyone just gives up and takes off their skates and that makes me smile,” she said. “Something must be here for you all to keep coming back.”