Beyond the Fishnets: Female Empowerment through Roller Derby

As an adolescent and young adult who defined herself as a bookworm and aspiring scholar, I was hardly interested in sports growing up. Though outgoing and extroverted, I enjoyed creative pursuits such as writing fiction, playing the piano, and performing on stage in school theatricals and shied away from sports. As a child, I enjoyed riding my bike, roller skating, climbing trees, or sprinting short distances over the playground, but, at school, I was not adept at team sports. I was usually chosen last for teams, teams often captained by boys. Team sports on the playground and in gym class were dominated and controlled by boys, and they were usually the same boys who taunted and bullied me for running, throwing...