Sports
Rookies & vets: D.C. Rollergirls
Local roller derby league offers support, competition
Davinia Forgy (Gaymer Grrl, left) and Ella Holman (Ella Fistgerald) of the D.C. Rollergirls. (Photo by Pablo Raw)
In the final edition of the long-running Blade series on the rookies and veterans who make up the LGBT-inclusive sports teams in the area, we take a look at two LGBT skaters from the D.C. Rollergirls.
The Rollergirls are one of several women’s flat track roller derby leagues in the region and just a few months ago they won the 2016 Best of Gay D.C. award for best LGBT sports team.
This Sunday, Dec. 18, they will host a rules clinic and scrimmage in their practice space in Hyattsville, Md., and will follow that up with three boot camps in January. The training sessions and recruitment efforts are all part of the buildup to their upcoming league season and their travel team’s schedule.
The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association has long been a frontrunner in establishing parameters for an inclusive sports community. In 2015, organizers broadened their discrimination protections for gender identity to include transgender women, intersex women and gender-expansive participants.
Davinia Forgy is one of the rookie players benefitting from the governing body’s trans guidelines as she finds herself with a new opportunity to be called an athlete.
Known on the track as Gaymer Grrrl, she didn’t play any sports growing up and her extracurricular activities included marching band and gaming. She could often be found deep inside Call of Duty, Halo and Metal Gear Solid 5.
“Gaming is an escape from reality for me,” Forgy says. “It’s a place where I can turn my brain off and play out a story.”
A former student at the University of Maryland and now working in implementation at a software company, Forgy heard about the Rollergirls through a friend and attended a boot camp in the spring of this year. She ended up falling in love with the sport.
At the Rollergirls boot camps, the veterans do the bulk of the training through drills, exercises and preparing the rookies for the mental mindset needed to be successful in roller derby.
“The veterans are so positive and are always offering encouragement. They don’t ever want to hear you say, ‘I can’t,”’ Forgy says. “Both on and off the track, the roller derby community thrives on the idea of female empowerment.”
The Rollergirls are trained for both blocking and jamming and Forgy has found herself enjoying the demands of jamming. The parallels between gaming and jamming may be one of the reasons that she is hooked.
“”It’s five on five and I really enjoy that you are moving, pushing and breaking up walls,” Forgy says. “The mental game and strategy is similar to a multi-player online battle arena. You have to constantly think about what is going to happen in the next five seconds. The same things apply in roller derby.”
Ella Holman has always been drawn to the sports community. Growing up in Boston, she was a three season athlete and her sports included soccer, basketball, tennis and lacrosse. While attending American University, she played four years of club rugby.
After graduating, she considered continuing with one of the local rugby clubs but while watching a roller derby match, she found herself intrigued by the sport. At her first boot camp in 2014 she was surprised by the many aspects of a sport that was new to her.
“I was used to the body contact, strategies and working as a team from all the other sports I had played,” Holman says. “It took me a while to adapt to the technical skills, skating components and the falls in roller derby.”
Holman works for a nonpartisan nonprofit and skates as Ella Fistgerald. After three years with the Rollergirls, she is enjoying sharing her learned knowledge of technical skating, maneuvers and strategy along with her love and passion for the sport.
“Our skaters come from all walks of life; some have just moved here and some are just looking for a change,” Holman says. “A catchphrase in our sport is ‘derby saved my soul.’ We want to foster whatever each rookie is looking for.”
The sport itself has evolved over the years and there are junior leagues popping up for girls from 8-17 years old. Both the adult and youth governing bodies share the notion that there is room for everyone.
“A lot of the derby leagues are 15 years old now and there has been a generational shift,” says Holman. “It used to be all fishnets and sparkles, but now it is more athletic and inclusive. It feels like all the traditional assumptions are gone and I am excited to see where it goes next.”
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are expected to compete in the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that open on Friday.
Outsports.com notes eight Americans — including speedskater Conor McDermott-Mostowy and figure skater Amber Glenn — are among the 44 openly LGBTQ athletes who will compete in the games. The LGBTQ sports website also reports Ellis Lundholm, a mogul skier from Sweden, is the first openly transgender athlete to compete in any Winter Olympics.
“I’ve always been physically capable. That was never a question,” Glenn told Outsports.com. “It was always a mental and competence problem. It was internal battles for so long: when to lean into my strengths and when to work on my weaknesses, when to finally let myself portray the way I am off the ice on the ice. That really started when I came out publicly.”
McDermott-Mostowy is among the six athletes who have benefitted from the Out Athlete Fund, a group that has paid for their Olympics-related training and travel. The other beneficiaries are freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy, speed skater Brittany Bowe, snowboarder Maddy Schaffrick, alpine skier Breezy Johnson, and Paralympic Nordic skier Jake Adicoff.
Out Athlete Fund and Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood on Friday will host a free watch party for the opening ceremony.
“When athletes feel seen and accepted, they’re free to focus on their performance, not on hiding who they are,” Haley Caruso, vice president of the Out Athlete Fund’s board of directors, told the Los Angeles Blade.
Four Italian LGBTQ advocacy groups — Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano — have organized the games’ Pride House that will be located at the MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan.
Pride House on its website notes it will “host a diverse calendar of events and activities curated by associations, activists, and cultural organizations that share the values of Pride” during the games. These include an opening ceremony party at which Checcoro, Milan’s first LGBTQ chorus, will perform.
ILGA World, which is partnering with Pride House, is the co-sponsor of a Feb. 21 event that will focus on LGBTQ-inclusion in sports. Valentina Petrillo, a trans Paralympian, is among those will participate in a discussion that Simone Alliva, a journalist who writes for the Italian newspaper Domani, will moderate.
“The event explores inclusivity in sport — including amateur levels — with a focus on transgender people, highlighting the role of civil society, lived experiences, and the voices of athletes,” says Milano Pride on its website.
The games will take place against the backdrop of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s decision to ban trans women from competing in women’s sporting events.
President Donald Trump last February issued an executive order that bans trans women and girls from female sports teams in the U.S. A group of Republican lawmakers in response to the directive demanded the International Olympics Committee ban trans athletes from women’s athletic competitions.
The IOC in 2021 adopted its “Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations” that includes the following provisions:
• 3.1 Eligibility criteria should be established and implemented fairly and in a manner that does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance and/or sex variations.
• 3.2 Provided they meet eligibility criteria that are consistent with principle 4 (“Fairness”, athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with their self-determined gender identity.
• 3.3 Criteria to determine disproportionate competitive advantage may, at times, require testing of an athlete’s performance and physical capacity. However, no athlete should be subject to targeted testing because of, or aimed at determining, their sex, gender identity and/or sex variations.
The 2034 Winter Olympics are scheduled to take place in Salt Lake City. The 2028 Summer Olympics will occur in Los Angeles.
Sports
‘Heated Rivalry’ stars to participate in Olympic torch relay
Games to take place next month in Italy
“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie will participate in the Olympic torch relay ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics that will take place next month in Italy.
HBO Max, which distributes “Heated Rivalry” in the U.S., made the announcement on Thursday in a press release.
The games will take place in Milan and Cortina from Feb. 6-22. The HBO Max announcement did not specifically say when Williams and Storrie will participate in the torch relay.
The Washington Capitals will host Pride Night on Saturday, Jan. 17, when they host the Florida Panthers at Capital One Arena. A special ticket offer featuring a Pride-themed Capitals rainbow jersey is available at washcaps.com.
Fans are invited to a pre-game Block Party at District E beginning at 5 p.m. The event will feature a performance by the band NovaKane. Specialty happy hour food and beverages will be available, as well as giveaways. There will also be a presence by several local LGBTQ+ community organizations.
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