Photo credit: Real Time Events
Words: Dan Millea, Helen Lindley
A decade. It doesn’t feel that long! Roller Derby is so fun you don’t notice the time flying past as fast as some of those amazing jammers.
April 14th marks our 10 year anniversary and what started out as a small group of friends with a vision practising in a tiny hospital hall has grown to a league of over 40 with an A and a B team. Over 100 people have skated with us over the years and as we say at WWC “once a Cat, always a Cat”. We are not a team in it for the golds, we are in it for the joy of the sport and that mindset has produced a close-knit team of people that support and build each other up.
Our goal has always been to be a friendly and fun team that will hit you hard on track and then hug you afterwards. We want to provide athletic opportunities for women in Wakefield and we are keen to assist our local community and national charities through fundraising and events.
This year also marks our 5th time competing in British Champs, this time around we are in the Tier 3 East Division, and in June we will be holding a scrim open to the public to watch as part of the Long Division event in Wakefield. We also continue to recruit for new members to make our team even stronger, look out for more details on open days over the summer.
We are a league with big ambitions for our future and for UK roller derby as a whole and we are excited to see where the next decade takes us!
“I started with the wakey wheeled cats when we were just a few months old in 2009. There were about eight of us rolling around a tiny tiny hall in Fieldhead hospital. It was about a quarter of the size of a normal sports hall, we’ve been lucky to find a permanent home at Lightwaves. We’ve had wins and many losses over the years but the spirit of the team has always stayed the same. We all train and play because we enjoy the camaraderie and sportsmanship of the game.” – #31 Lookin Fur Trouble!?
Many thanks to everyone who has been involved in any way in our 10 years as a league. Skaters, refs, NSOs, paramedics, fans, partners, parents, kids, dogs… WWC take our helmets off to you.
