The Return of the Show Stopper Part one

DES MOINES –Watching Malay Bouaphakeo, aka Show Stopper, the founder/player and coach of the Des Moines Derby Dames, conduct practice can be an exhausting experience in and of itself.

Bouaphakeo was a force of nature during D3’s Wednesday night practice at Skate North Incrediroll in Des Moines. Whether explaining the proper implementation of defensive maneuvers like the snowplow or when to do a two-wall or a three-wall, or serving as jammer or blocker during scrimmages, she maintained the same level of intensity mixed with iron will and determination.

“BUILD A WALL!” she yelled out at one point from the sidelines awaiting her turn in a scrimmage.

“GET UP HERE!” she called from the front of the pack to a teammate inside it.

“HERE SHE COMES!” she exclaimed to her scrimmage teammates  as an opposing jammer creeps up.

This kind of drive and focus is par for the course for the 27-year-old Storm Lake native.

“She’s always been intense,” said D3 Blocker Monica Thompson, aka MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs). “She’s always been in our faces and pushing us hard because that’s how she works and that’s why we love her.”

Bouaphakeo will bring that intensity back to the oval on Saturday night as the D3 will take on the Old Capital City Roller Girls in a rematch of their teams first bout at the 7 Flags Event Center in Clive. Old Capital City won that bout by the score of 192-81 on April 3 in Iowa City

It was also the bout where Bouaphakeo suffered a partially torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and a partially torn PCL(posterior cruciate ligament), an injury that has kept her out of the previous two bouts.

Details are sketchy among her D3 teammates as to what happened exactly, which can be expected given the fast pace of a derby bout. The injury occurred in the closing stages of the first bout with Old Capital City. Jennifer Dixon, aka Squirrel Ex Machina, D3’s bench coach, said the combination of Bouaphakeo taking a good hit from an Old Capital City player that she didn’t see coming, combined with her left knee pad being slightly out of alignment contributed to her injury.

Bouaphakeo said she herself does not even remember what happened except that she fell.

“I was in the pack and I was just blocking and I fell,” Bouaphakeo said. “I don’t know how I fell, really. I hurt it instantly and I couldn’t really move it. And I’m a pretty strong person and to actually start bawling in the middle of a game or with an injury- it’s a pretty tough thing. I’ve played sports my entire life. I’ve played Division I softball. I’ve never been injured in my life. It was a big deal for me. I mean I usually just get up.”

Evidence of her strong will was on display later that night. Dixon said after being taken to the hospital, refusing painkillers and being fitted with a knee brace, she returned for the after party. Still seeing their founder and captain on the ground was very dramatic for D3, although according to Jammer Lacy J. Brunnette, aka Cosmo Disco; it has been easier since Bouaphakeo has switched her to a coach while she has been off the oval.

As for Thompson feels partially responsible for the injury to Bouaphakeo.

“I feel like if anybody on our team gets injured, whether it’s my job to be there and protect them or not, I feel like I’m partially responsible,” Thompson said. “I’m a blocker. I am ‘The Mother Of All Bombs’ and I protect people. That’s what I do. That’s why I’m here. This is my family and it’s my job to protect them. If I’m not keeping them safe and happy so we can dance and sing afterwards then I have not done my job.”

The Return of the Show Stopper Part Two

Despite the injury, Bouaphakeo claims that this is the best year of her life thus far with the Dames coming into their own, her personal life and her career as a headhunter for Paragon IT. At the very least the last couple of years have been a whirlwind for her. After suffering a second degree sprain in her Medial Collateral Ligament in her right leg in June 2009 and stopped competing with the Mid Iowa Rollers. It was from there that the idea from the Des Moines Derby Dames began to take shape.

Initially the idea for a second derby team in Des Moines involved Bouaphakeo and two other people. The other two later bailed and she was the one woman left standing. Far from being disheartened, she intensified her focus on bringing her vision to life. Bouaphakeo described the preparation as similar to that of launching a small business including things like public relations, getting a plan together, going after sponsors and recruiting.  “We stuck out neck out to far to say that we are going to start another derby team and just quit,” she said. “And I am not a quitter. I’m not going to not follow through.”

Perhaps Bouaphakeo’s first major coup on the recruiting front was Brunnette, which occurred through an online conversation. Brunnette said she was one of the first people who signed up for the Des Moines Derby Dames Twitter account. Soon she got a private message from Bouaphakeo asking her if she ever thought about trying roller derby. Brunnette said she began watching Derby videos on YouTube while at the same time talking with Bouaphakeo.

The D3 mastermind drove a good bargain, apparently. Within three hours of initial contact, Brunnette had a pair of roller skates ordered and went to a skate shop to pick up pads and other assorted equipment needed to play derby. She attended practices religiously during those days that she described the Dames as merely a “wing and a hope,” with lots of open skate nights and only five girls, none of whom were guaranteed to show up at a practice.

Yet she stayed with Bouaphakeo, who refers to Brunnette as her Renee Zellweger to her Tom Cruise, ala Jerry Maguire. The vision and love for derby obviously transmitted from the founder to the devoted recruit.

“It’s everything a girl wants. You have the femininity. You have the athleticism. You have the fans. You have the lights the music,” Brunnette said. “It’s the perfect sport and it’s a fringe sport so the people who do it are so fun because you’re all doing something special together. She didn’t really need to convince me much but she’s an interesting character.”

Yet those days of open skate nights and uncertainty were very short lived for the Dames. She began training the team in November 2009 on an ambitious schedule that defied the expectations of everyone, who claimed that it would be at least a year before the Dames first bout, including members of the Dames sister team, the Omaha Rollergirls. The Dames made their first bout on April 3 in Iowa City. The next week, on April 10 the team made its home debut at the Val Air Ballroom in Des Moines. Bouaphakeo described the opening bout, which was a sell-out, as being ironic with her not being able to skate. Yet at the same time she focused her energy on bout preparation during the day and coaching during the actual bout, which resulted in a 223-88 win over the Wisconsin River Valley Roller Girls.

 “It was very difficult because I started the whole team,” she said. “This is my dream. This is my mission and that was exactly what I was hoping for our first bout and not being able to skate in what I created was very, very difficult but, you know, I do it for the girls. I do it for what we are trying to accomplish and it’s not the end of the world that I don’t skate. That means I take on another role. I coach and I lead the girls from the bench. So was it difficult not to play? Yeah, Absolutely. Was I happy just to be there? You bet, you know, because with all the hard work, I didn’t know what it was going to be, you know? I got to take it in a lot more.”

Bouaphakeo takes a great deal of pride in the rapid development of her team, taking a mere five months from the start of training to the first bout. She claimed that the Dames are in a spot where no first year derby team should ever be. But then she changed her mind. “They should be actually,” Bouaphakeo said. “”They should be that way because if you put enough time and enough effort to it and you train people properly, you can absolutely do it.”

Not only does she credit her teammates, the fans, the referees, the emcees, the volunteers and the sponsors for the success of the team, she also credits the Des Moines community at large.  Bouaphakeo insists that Des Moines was made for roller derby, citing the fact that the largest city in Iowa is a young community that has a desire to see and try new things. Bouaphakeo claimed evidence of this can be found in D3 being able to secure sponsors even before the team hit the oval, which, she added, was also a testament to the soundness of the business plan.

Perhaps a bit of serendipity can be credited with the initial success of her vision. Bouaphakeo pointed out that she has always worn the number 10 throughout the course of her athletic career, from her days at Storm Lake High School to Drake University to the Dames. D3 had its first bout this year, 2010, and had its first bout on April 10. She claims she did not plan any of this on purpose.

Dixon said Bouaphakeo is looking forward to donning skates on Saturday. “She’s pretty damn excited,” Dixon said. “I think she’s a little nervous, but she wouldn’t admit that. I know the girls are excited because she’s a force when she gets out there on the track. She’s an awesome communicator. She knows the strategies. She’s a fabulous leader and so having her on the track is just a huge asset for everyone.”

But more than that, Dixon said, because after three bouts to experience Derby, she believes D3 has a far better grasp of the sport and has been able to piece it together so now they will not look like “a deer in headlights” as they did in the first game.

Brunnette said that while the intensity is definitely up for the rematch against Old Capital City, it is a good natured since many of the players on D3 are friends with them. She added that Bouaphakeo can be expected to skate with her usual intensity and fire on Saturday.

“She’s an Aries sign which means she has a lot of fire,” Brunnette said. “Obviously she wouldn’t come back if she didn’t think she could handle it and she is a very physically and mentally strong person. You know there’s always a risk with Derby but she’s well aware of those risks and she’s prepared.”

As for Thompson, who is fiercely devoted to Bouaphakeo, she too is anticipating the return of the Show Stopper to the oval.

 “When she says ‘Come on! Get up here’ I can follow her and I would follow that woman into a burning building with a gasoline jacket because if she says I can do it, I can do it,” Thompson said.  “There is no doubt in my mind that if she says ‘Come on, MOAB, let’s do this,’ we can get it done.”

Saturday Night Derby: Des Moines Derby Dames Vs. Old Capital City Roller Girls

Stella Italiana, MOAB and the Des Moines Derby Dames take on Bat R. Up and Left 4 Deadwards and the Old Capital City Roller Girls in this much anticipated Battle of I-80 Rematch.

This bout also marks the much anticipated return of D3 player/coach/founder Show Stopper to the oval after being sidelined first D3- Old Capital City match on April 3 due to injury.

Bout time is 7 p.m. Saturday Night at the 7 Flags Events Center, 2100 NW 100th Street in Clive.


7 Flags Event Center is here...

D3's M.O.A.B. For One Hour Optical

D3's M.O.A.B. Featured in The Record Harold and Indianola Tribune

Des Moines Derby Dames blocker Mother of All Bombs, who gave me the D3 card at the St. Patty's Day Parade that started reignited my love of derby, is profiled in this article in The Record Herald and Indianola Tribune

Back To the Derby Conclusion.

I would be remiss if I did not talk about the blockers- those at the center of the action.

As I sit here at type this, upon reflecting on what I saw Saturday, it seems these women have the most complex job on the team. Certainly it can be the most frustrating and excruciating. If you are a blocker you are on skates, and while you may be experienced at skating, part of the back of your mind is working to make sure you keep balance and pace with the pivots. Not only that you have to worry about your counterparts on the other side. You have to be mindful of where they are and be prepared to act on them in split second. You have to have your body in a state of expectancy that you will be blindsided or unexpectedly shoved by the oppositions blockers.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly you have to keep in mind where your jammers are in relation to where you in the pack are. So when Minnie Mayhem, Cosmo Disco or Stella Italiana from the Dames and Sammi Tsunami and Hether Skelter from the Rollergirls come barreling toward you with the determined fury of a muscle car on the Autobahn you have to develop a split second strategies to deal with all of this madness.

But let us not sympathize too much with the blockers. They are also in the best position to knock someone on their ass. I remember a feature on Sports Center about the rise of roller derby (which I will post on here later) which included an interview with a girl with the moniker Honey Homicide. Honey said these famous words without a hint of cheekiness: "I hear people say 'well I don't want to hit somebody else.' Why not? You're totally missing out."

A final note on all of this. All the roles, pivots, jammers and blockers, are interchangeable. There was a sequence where Road Block, from the Rollergirls served as a jammer and Stella Italiana of the dames also served in role of blocker.

Regulars in the blocker pack for the Dames included Toxic Moss, M.O.A.B and Meggar Bomb and many others I am fogetting

Truly it was one of the best Saturday nights. This incarnation of Roller Derby was everything that I hoped for as a long time fan. From the first jam to the last, it had all of the warmness of catching up with an old friend. Yet during the match my mind could not escape the thought of the specialness of it all.

To me, the Des Moines Derby Dames, and the Wisconsin River Valley Rollergirls were a confirmation of everything that is noble, decent and honest in sports. You see, the weekend that Noel and I saw this match was day three of the Masters Golf Tournament. We all know about Tiger Woods' infidelities and while I try not to get caught up in expecting piousness from our athletes, I could not help but feel let down as a lifelong Tiger fan. It wasn't the same. It was also the first full weekend of Major League Baseball- a sport that has been tarnished by steroid allegations and multi-million dollar mercenaries that seem distant and aloof from its fans, even though I do still love it.

All of us who are fans of athletics are looking for something to love and believe in again. We desire the purity and competitiveness of the game that we see in our parks and rec softball diamonds and basketball courts. The Dames-Rollergirls bout provided that, but it gave us so much more.

Any who has played a game dreamed of becoming a legend. We dreamed of being heroes. We wanted to hit the game winning home run or sink the game winning basket. We wanted to be admired by friend and total stranger alike. We wanted to make the stadiums rock. We wanted to be heroes.

As I was watching these two teams skate.; observing the Dames joy at the close of their match, looking at the children of the Dames who were mothers smile and glow upon the conclusion of the match with the realization that their mom not only kicks ass figuratively, but literally; and listening to the applause and cheers and cheers of the audience during the match itself display pleasure at a successful or intense play got me thinking.

These women have not only resurrected a sport that I loved but thought was all but dead, they have turned themselves in the legends that most of us only dream about being. The names and persona may be exaggerated, but the event and the feeling were true. They dreamed. But more than that, they did something about it. And they did it with nothing more than a pure love for the game. No strings attached.

I sat there in the audience, which was cornucopia of average good midwesterners, handsome men and beautiful women out for a good time on a Saturday night, punks and regulars Children and families. I felt that we were witnessing more than a match. We were watching dreams in action. We were watching these regular women making themselves into legends. We were witness to pure sport and athleticism.

If you believe nothing else of what I have written you must do this: before the summer is ended you must go to a roller derby bout and see for yourself. There is nothing like a Roller Derby bout. Don't try to find a substitute either in one of those sports-entertainment derby leagues, either. Leave the buffoonery to the buffoons. Go to the real thing and go fast before it explodes.

And if you go, you will probably see me. I will be going back to Des Moines and am planning on making pit stops in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and the Quad Cities. 

And if you went on Saturday to the bout at the Val-Air or if you saw a bout in Wausau, Wisconsin, tip your caps to these women and be proud. They walk in the rarified air that most of us only dream of. . They are not sport entertainers like the Derby players of old.

They are athletes of the first degree.

They are legends.

They are heroines.

Back to the Derby Part One.

Roller Derby seems to come into my life at decade intervals.

I saw it on ESPN every morning at my grandmothers old house on the south side of Des Moines every morning before I boarded the school bus for a long cross town trip to McKee Elementary School. I remember the ladies of the L.A. Thunderbirds with their poofy hair done with what looked like a vat of hairspray.  Looking back I remember the sheer pro-wrestling quality of it all. Women were either bad asses or virtuous athletes who occasionally had to do a dirty trick to overcome the evil of whichever team they were playing. Men were conquerors of the banked track, complete with cartoonish braggadocio.

 I remember my father calling to inform me that he had tickets  to the Thunderbirds match when they came to town. I remember how disappointed I was when my dad called to tell me the show had been canceled. No, disappointment is too nice. I cried like a little wuss. Soon ESPN began getting more and more big name sports and fun oddities like Roller Derby and Australian Rules Football went by the wayside.

Fast forward to 1999. My father, who is a bit of a derby enthusiast, rushes home one day (I was living with him in suburban Chicago while I was attending college) and commands someone (probably me) to turn on TNN (The Nashville Network, now known as Spike TV) because something was coming on at 8 p.m.

The appointed time came and there it was. RollerJam. Updated for the turn of the century. You still had a banked track but everyone wore inline skates over the traditional quads. Everyone that is except the legendary Mark D’Amato- God rest his soul.

For a season and a half, my father and I had a bonding experience watching this RollerJam. We loved it. Still cheesy. Obviously made up. There were moments where you had to laugh and shake your head at the ridiculousness of it all.  But still it provided a bit of excitement and organized anarchy. The players had that same professional wrestling cartoonish quality (no one was better than D’Amato).  Yet, at the same time you could not help but enjoy the athletes prowess. More often than not they successfully cast the illusion of reality in their physical actions, even though you knew it was fake.

Something happened though about the middle of the second season, as I remember. Things began to get really weird on RollerJam. New “characters” were being introduced. One of them was known as “The Prophet.” Apparently, according to the storyline anyway, the Southern Baptist inspired Fundamentalist Totalitarian felt that he could secure his ideal vision of world utopia by seizing control of the “World Skating League” as it was known.  It was almost overnight that the program took this bizarre turn toward professional wrestling waters. Jams were becoming less and less. Weird stories and plot lines were on the rise-culminating in D’Amato and California Quakes men’s captain Sean Atkinson were brothers. The show reached its peak just before the second season, in the year 2000, when members of “The Bod Squad” (Jamie Conamac, Amy Craig and Olewein, Iowa’s own Stacy Blitsch) appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to being canceled at the end of the third season in 2001.

 There was no good reason to completely change the format of that show. Whoever came up with the idea of changing the show format should have been strung-up, hung and then shot. My father and I are still pretty bitter about this.

Little did we know at the time that a completely new wave of Roller Derby was taking off among a group of females in Austin, Texas around the same time that the pre-stupidity RollerJam was running its course. I do not  know who these girls are and since I am not getting paid to write this I am not going to find out.

I knew nothing of this until the annual Friendly Sons of St. Patrick Parade in downtown Des Moines. Two friends of my father’s ran the parade and since my wife Angie and I had the rare day off at the same time, we decided to take our three-year-old son Max on the two hour trip from Waterloo to see it.

In the middle of the parade, with its prerequisite candy tossing, marching bands and fire trucks (the presence of which never fails to blow Max’s mind), something blew my mind.

There she was, I believe her skating alias was M.O.A.B. (Mother of All Bombs). She was skating in uniform and on quads handing out business cards which contained the words “Des Moines Derby Dames” and http://www.dmderbydames.com

I could feel my heart leap with enthusiasm.

“They have roller derby around here?” I asked, my voice almost pleading that this was true.

“Yeah,” M.O.A.B. said with a warm smile. “First bout is April 10. You should come check it out.”

She skated off. Did that just happen? Was that an angel in quads? I didn’t even know I missed Roller Derby. I hadn’t brought it up in years. The transaction from M.O.A.B to me unleashed a torrent of intense feelings toward my  favorite long-lost sport. The Derby Gods, or in this case, A derby goddess named M.O.A.B. bade me to come.

Once I got back to Waterloo, I did some research. My mind was racing with the singular question: what the hell happened? Here is what I made out:  the women who came up with the idea in Austin, Tx. had unleashed a revolution. Women’s teams began to spread out through the county. Yet this particular form of roller derby that began to explode across the country was not the professional wrestling fueled wackiness that fueled the L.A. Thunderbirds and ultimately destroyed Roller Jam. 

The presence of that knowing ridiculousness is still there, but it is limited to the names and attire of the athletes. For instance, the ladies of the Dames tossed off their everyday names and equipped themselves with monikers like M.O.A.B., Toxic Moss, Meggar Bomb and Cosmo Disco. The matter of dress  below the waist was a different proposition. Some wear fishnets. Others wear shorts. Others still wear short dress bottoms. You might even see an occasional  tutu.

Further proof of this divine intervention of Derby into my life was that the weekend of the Dames first bout fell on that rare weekend where I neither had to work Saturday night nor Sunday morning. The opening home bout for the Des Moines Derby Dames was slated for Saturday night April 10^th at the legendary Val-Air Ballroom in West Des Moines. The Dames would play against the River Valley Roller Girls from Wausau, Wisconsin.

My wife announced that she would be heading north with her mother to crawl through the retail jungle that is IKEA for a certain dining room table and chair set that thus far had been as elusive to her as the holy grail is to archeologists. She wound up taking our three year old son with her. I had already telephoned my friend Noel to go to the match with me.  Something told me that this would be his kind of scene.

The choice was obvious to Noel and I. The question was not whether we should take the crazy action of driving the 110-plus miles to Des Moines to watch a Roller Derby match, but rather if we could gun it fast enough to cover the distance between us and the Val-Air between 5 p.m. when Noel got off work to the 7:30 start time in West Des Moines without dealing with the potential consequences of driving 85 in a 70 mph zone.

There comes a time in a man’s life where larger voices call him to drastic and necessary measures. This was one of them. Noel got off work on time. We went to his house where he fetched some caffeinated water and then we pointed my 2001 Saturn in the direction of Des Moines.