A pair of Guelph junior roller derby players are getting ready to jam on the sport's biggest stage.
Tess Charlton and Katie McLean will represent Canada at the Junior Roller Derby World Cup, being held in Valence, France, in July.
"It's hard to wrap my head around," Charlton, 17, told GuelphToday. "To represent my country with a sport that I love is nuts to me, and I feel honoured."
"It's absolutely amazing," added McLean, 16. "It has absolutely been my passion since I discovered it, and I think it will be for the rest of my life. It's incredible that I get to represent my country."
Not necessarily a mainstream sport, roller derby is quite physical.
Two teams of five skaters take to an oval track, wearing quad-style roller skates. One player per team is designated a jammer, and is tasked with lapping opposing team blockers to score points.
The other team members, known as a pivot or blocker, work together to prevent the jammer from passing through.
Both Charlton and McLean, who compete for the Kitchener-based Tri-City Juniors, fell in love with the sport immediately.
"It was the topic of one of my favourite books at the time," McLean said.
"I talked to my mom about going to a roller rink some time, thinking she'd never let me do derby."
But McLean said her mom directly asked her if she wanted to try out.
Charlton said her mom would take her to derby games, and when she saw an ad for the Kitchener-based Tri-City team in a coffee shop, she got to take in a demonstration and fell in love immediately.
One of the unique things about roller derby is players, coaches and referees are called by their nicknames.
For McLean, she goes by Skatie McPain, a name she "jokingly came up with with my family when I was about 10-years-old after I had just started."
Charlton, or Tornado, got her nickname in the sixth grade.
"I was a messy kid, and my teacher always called me Tornado Tess because of all the messes I made," she said. "It was kind of great timing cause that's the same time I started playing derby, so I was like 'oh, that's the perfect derby name.'"
McLean is a Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute student, and will compete in both the female and co-ed division.
Charlton, who attends Bishop Macdonell Catholic High School, will participate in the female division only.
The opportunity has been a few years in the making. Both tried out about three years ago, when they first started playing.
But since they were new to the full contact aspect of the sport – junior roller derby players are gradually introduced to full contact, after playing with modified contact – they didn't make the team.
"We've both been working really hard for it since then," McLean said.
"The fact that we tried out once, we worked out really hard and now it's just like 'we made it,'" Charlton added.
"It feels great that we get to be there now."
And when they get there, both Charlton and McLean are looking forward to not only competing, but bonding with teammates and meeting derby players from all over the world.
