Category: Skater of the Month

Skater of the Month: Betty Vedder

Rocky Mountain Rollergirls are very excited to announce our February skater of the month: Betty Vedder! She has been with us six months and has quickly established roots within the league. She jumped right into handling finance and insurance for our junior league, becoming a well-structured and much needed disciplinarian in such a high demand position. In addition, she has supported our partnership committee, becoming a great asset to the success and foundation of our team’s success. Talk about a busy woman!

Betty has made daily correspondence in our group messages as well as bench side at practices and scrimmages fun with a great deal of energy. Her witty sense of humor and silliness has set the tone of how much we can enjoy time together and allows everyone to participate in good times. However, while silly on the sideline or in a social setting, beware for her on the track because she has no problem dropping her shoulder into you to obtain lead jammer.

A force to be reckoned with, Betty loves to jam and takes the track in a fierce four wall with her home team, Sugar Kill Gang. Welcome to RMRG, Betty, we are happy you are here and to recognize you for being February’s Skater of the Month!

Skater of the Month: Coyote

January’s Skater of the month is Coyote (formerly Wild E. Coyote). Coyote’s 2016 came to a disappointing end 10 minutes before it was supposed to when a major knee injury took her out of Fight Club’s fourth WFTDA playoff game, just before the final whistle of the team’s season.

In the months since her injury, Coyote has been hard at work, seemingly rehabilitating in record time. But she hasn’t just been working hard in the gym — she’s also been working hard for RMRG. As a member of our training committee, Coyote has been helping to set the tone for the 2017 season, even running practices despite not being able to skate yet, and helping out wherever she can. She’s heavily involved in other committees as well, taking on a new role as one of Rocky Mountain’s WFTDA league reps and helping to set the rosters for our 2017 travel teams as a member of our Evaluation Committee.

In addition to doing countless things for the adult skaters at Rocky Mountain, Coyote finds time to serve as the Head Coach and Trainer for the Rocky Mountain Rollerpunks — a job that she clearly loves, despite the 7:00 AM practice time!

We can’t thank you enough for all that you do, Coyote. And we can’t wait to see you back on the track…no doubt sooner than anyone would have expected!

Skater of the Month: Winona Fighter

To kick off 2017, we would like to honor a skater that been around since the inception of RMRG. Winona Fighter, #8, starting rolling in August of 2004
when all of Roller derby was in its nascent stage. We never thought it would happen, but she’s decided to hang up her skates, for now, to pursue other things
in life.

Here’s the story of Winona’s first day at Derby from Jayne Manslaughter, one of RMRG’s founders (now retired):

“Westword had for some reason posted our practice times–we weren’t even really doing recruiting. So we were at the rink practicing and she showed up, got skates and started lacing them up on the side of the rink. She didn’t talk to us and we didn’t talk to her. We just watched her lace up the skates and speculated about why she was there. Apparently, at some point, I got up the nerve to skate over and ask ‘Are you here for roller derby?’ We figured she was at least cool as she had on a Ramones t-shirt. And the rest is history!

Although derby has radically changed from those innocent days of 2004, we here at RMRG have been lucky to have had an ‘old schooler’ in our midst for so long. We could
always count on Winona to speak her mind and tell us how it is, and we appreciate her derby wisdom and down-to-earth outlook on the track and off. And talk
about adaptable – though the game has been continually changing since the beginning, very few players can say that they have been able to maintain
top-level skills and WFTDA playoff rostering for over 10 years, while maintaining a can-do attitude and pushing others as to the same.

We’d be remiss not to mention another major contribution of Winona’s to RMRG – her fabulous photography work! Almost all of the head shots of RMRG players
on this site are her work product. She knows how to make all of us look good and put our best faces forward!