Hardly. The women of Maine’s roller derby are tough, athletic and members of a special sisterhood.

It’s late on a Monday evening, and a dozen sweat-soaked women fly around the rink at Happy Wheels Skate Center in Portland, eyes gleaming with equal parts aggression and glee.

One by one, the members of the Calamity Janes — Maine Roller Derby’s B-team — close in on their teammates and send them sprawling to the floor with well-placed hip checks and shoulder bumps, until only two remain.

Coach Molly Sullivan, aka Bea Nimble, lives up to her nickname, gliding unscathed through the carnage before getting taken out by a fierce hit from player Jodie Keenan, aka Brannigan’s Law.

As Sullivan tumbles epically to the ground, arms flailing, Keenan’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Oh no, was that too hard?”

Sullivan beams back in reply, “No, that was awesome!”

It’s the last practice drill of a three-hour-long block of nearly nonstop skating for the members of Maine Roller Derby (MRD), the state’s first and largest roller derby league. The more than 50 women who make up the league attend at least two three-hour practices every week, in addition to dozens of weekend bouts each year in Maine and beyond.

MRD consists of three teams. In addition to the Calamity Janes, there’s a varsity team, the Port Authorities, and a C-team, the R.I.P. Tides, made up of new recruits, or “fresh meat,” as veterans refer to novice skaters.

On this particular night, the Janes have the rink to themselves for the final one-hour practice block. Team co-captain Amber Jo McCaslin of Lewiston, aka Curve Appeal, says the team will be taking it easy — “just playing some games” — for the night, because members are still sore from a hard-fought victory against Central Maine Derby in Bangor the day before.

“They talked a lot of trash, but we wrecked them,” says McCaslin with a playful grin.

“Just some games” quickly turns into a serious strategy session, though, as teammates deconstruct what did and did not work in their bout the day before. Sullivan, of Portland, takes the opportunity to have players practice one of her favored defensive formations over and over until she’s satisfied that the skaters can execute it without falling apart under pressure.

In addition to coaching the Janes, Sullivan, who joined the league three seasons ago, skates for the Port Authorities. She attended her first bout as a spectator, featuring New York’s Gotham Girls, with a now-ex-girlfriend. After the couple broke up, Sullivan decided to try out for roller derby “to prove something” and hasn’t looked back.

“This is the hardest sport I’ve ever played. Derby requires more smarts than other sports. It’s like playing chess on eight wheels, going 30 miles an hour. It’s really a difficult game to strategize,” said Sullivan, who played soccer competitively in her early 20s, in addition to basketball and other sports in high school.

A pair of Portland women started MRD in 2006, inspired by watching “Rollergirls,” an A&E reality series featuring the Lonestar Rollergirls league of Austin, Texas. In June of that year, a group of 20 women began practicing weekly at Roller World in Topsham, and a year later the league was accepted into the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the international governing body for the sport.

The league is part of an ever-growing revival of roller derby that began in Texas during the early 2000s and has exploded in popularity over the last decade or so. Currently, there are 243 member leagues in the WFTDA, and 101 apprentice leagues working to join.

The sport of roller derby was born in the 1930s, when endurance races on banked tracks, which had been popular since the invention of skating in the 19th century, evolved into a full contact sport where skaters tried to knock opposing players out of the rink.

Roller derby was one of the earliest televised sports, with bouts broadcast as early as 1948. In the 1950s, in an attempt to shore up the sport’s dwindling audience during the television age, promoters formalized the rules more or less as they exist today, with one scoring player and four defensive players skating for each team. (For more on the rules of roller derby, see related story.)

This era also saw scripted bouts and theatrics similar to those made infamous by professional wrestling, dark days that many of today’s derby players wish would be consigned to the trash bin of history.

“Whenever I talk to anyone about roller derby, they always think it’s like what they saw on TV in the ’70s or ’80s. That was not roller derby,” says Polly Smith of Portland, aka Kissy Kicks. “Roller derby is a real sport. We give, and take, real hits,” said Smith, who skates for the Port Authorities, serves as the training coordinator for the league and owns Turn Two Skate Shop, Maine’s first store specializing in high-end gear for the state’s growing derby contingent.

That was what Aerin Jenkins, aka Crystal Whips, co-captain of the Port Authorities, thought when one of her co-workers convinced her to attend a bout a few years ago.

“I thought it was fake, with elbows and people getting pushed over the rails. I didn’t realize how much of a sport it was,” says Jenkins, of South Portland.

While contemporary roller derby retains some of the campier elements of its earlier incarnation, including outrageous player nicknames like Grim D. Mise, Princess Layherout and Cherry Clobber, skaters also take a lot of pride in their toughness and athleticism.

Maine’s skaters span the spectrum in how ostentatious they make their derby personas. While fishnet stockings and revealing uniforms are the norm in some corners of the derby world, others eschew these elements in favor of a sportier look.

“It’s a misunderstood sport, but we also all view it a little differently,” said McCaslin, who joined the league in 2011.

In her sparkly, metallic tights and leopard-print kneepads, and baring a pair of Little Mermaid tattoos on her biceps, McCaslin looks the part of the archetypal punk rock rollergirl.

“Some players would never ever wear fishnets in derby, but it’s my signature look. It’s what you want it to be, in some ways,” she says.

While McCaslin isn’t afraid to highlight her sex appeal, she says derby can be an empowering way to find freedom from societally constructed beauty standards.

“For a lot of people this is about body image. So many women hate their bodies, but this allows them to see their body as this machine that just grows stronger and healthier the more you push it,” says McCaslin.

The power, deftness and physical stamina required of skaters means most have a background in other sports, including snowboarding, soccer, basketball and track and field.

“I used to play soccer, and that was physical, but nowhere near as intense as roller derby. It takes a lot of finesse to be able to do everything we do on skates: go fast, hit people, maneuver through the pack,” says Jenkins.

“And it’s a great workout. I’m in the best shape of my life.”

Of course, all of those real hits mean real injuries.

“Bruises happen every practice, like, constantly, all the time,” says Jenkins, who has broken her collarbone twice and seen teammates with broken wrists, sprained or torn knees, and even occasional concussions.

“People think this is just a lot of theatrics and they don’t take us super seriously. We train just as hard as professional athletes, but we don’t get paid, and we run the business, too,” added Sullivan.

“This is not just some cute thing. It’s exhausting and it’s hard. For some reason, we require women to work full-time and be moms in addition to trying to be semi-professional athletes. That’s something we don’t really expect of male athletes,” she said.

In the eight years since MRD’s first practice, derby fever has taken hold in Maine, with new women’s leagues popping up in Bangor, Aroostook County and Rockland. The sport has also expanded to men, with the Casco Bay Gentlemen’s Derby league, formerly known as the Not-So-Jolly-Rogers, skating their first bout last season.

Heather Steeves, aka Hard Dash, now skates for the Port Authorities, but was a founding member of Rockland’s team, the Rock Coast Rollers, in 2011.

Steeves first discovered derby in her early 20s.

“I was at the point where I’d gotten my first real job and I was getting fat,” she says matter-of-factly.

Derby, she says, seemed like just the thing to get her up and moving. She knew about MRD, but Portland was too far to commute from her home in Rockland.

“When I was founding Rock Coast, I thought if I could find just four other people in Knox County, I could make this dream happen. That’s not how it works, by the way,” says Steeves, who played on a travel team in Portland, Ore., for a couple of years before returning to Maine just a few months ago and settling in Portland.

It takes a lot more than just the skaters to make a successful roller derby league. Dozens of volunteers are also needed to serve as officials, scorekeepers, statisticians, announcers, ticket takers, concession workers and more.

In addition, the players themselves are intimately involved in running the league, from the more experienced skaters who coach the junior leagues to the women who plan and promote events, design the website and programs, and on and on.

It’s that shared commitment to a common goal that makes roller derby such a feel-good pastime for many skaters.

“I finally found a place where I feel comfortable. Roller derby is my other family – I have my blood family and my derby family. I have shoulders to lean on and to cry on, and to take my day-to-day aggressions out on, too,” says Smith.

“At the end of the day, a true friend loves a good beat down.”

A genuine sense of camaraderie exists among skaters, even from opposing teams. Skaters say women who would knock each other down without mercy in a bout would do anything for a fellow player off the rink.

“We’re all trying to promote this sport and show it in a positive light, so in that sense we all have one very big thing in common,” says Jenkins of skaters from other leagues.

Beyond just throwing back a few beers with the competition after bouts, derby players have created a subculture that is even international

“If I need something, I know where to net(work). I could find somewhere to stay anywhere in the country. I’ve gone to Berlin and crashed with total strangers. I knew I could trust them because they were derby people. Derby is all about trust,” says Steeves.

For Steeves, the sense of community, the ability to count on people, and to feel like others count on her, has become vital to her existence.

“It’s really hard to find a community of strong women,” she says.

“Derby has changed my life, and that’s an understatement. It’s totally changed who I am as a human being.”

Catch the action

Want to see Maine Roller Derby in action? The Port Authorities and the Calamity Janes will face off against Vermont’s Green Mountain Derby Dames in a double-header at the Portland Expo on Saturday, April 26, at 5 p.m. For tickets or more information visit www.mainerollerderby.com.

The rules

Roller derby is a full-contact sport played on an oval track by two competing teams. The basic rules are simple.

* Each team has five players on the track during game play: one jammer, who scores points for her team by passing members of the opposing team, three blockers trying to hold back the opposing jammer, and one pivot, a defensive player who is responsible for calling the shots to the other blockers. The object of the game is for the jammer to score as many points as possible by lapping the opposing team’s blockers. Each skater passed earns a team one point.

* In order to tell skaters apart, jammers wear helmet covers with a star, while pivots wear striped helmet covers.

* A roller derby game is called a bout. Each bout consists of two half-hour periods of play during which players compete in multiple two-minute bursts of action called jams. During a jam, the pivots and blockers from both teams skate together in a single group called the pack. Once the entire pack is 30 feet from the starting line, an official signals the jammers to skate toward the pack.

* Each jammer attempts to muscle her way through the pack. The first jammer to push through becomes the lead jammer, gaining the ability to end the jam before the two-minute mark. Once a jammer exits the pack, she races around the track and attempts to push through the pack again. After the first pass, a jammer scores one point for each member of the opposing team she laps.

* Skaters receive penalties for infractions such as blocking with elbows or forearms, tripping, charging from behind, blocking above the shoulders and skating out of bounds. If a jammer receives a penalty, game play continues without her, resulting in a power jam for the opposing team.

For a more detailed explanation of the game, visit the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association website at http://wftda.com/.

Do derby!

If you’ve always wanted to strap on some wheels and give derby a shot, Maine Roller Derby holds tryouts every autumn, prior to its fall season.

Would-be skaters don’t need to know how to play, but should be proficient at skating. For questions, or to watch a practice, email [email protected].

If you haven’t been on roller skates in a while, try Derby Lite, a skating class offered by retired MRD players Diane Kibbin, aka Vexacious D, and Lisa Bassett, aka Olive Spankins.

Derby Lite is a friendlier introduction to the sport, without competition or hits, with a strong focus on fitness and fun.

For more information, visit www.derbylite.net.