M.I.A. (M): Thank you for being here with me!
hoRAGEio (H): No problem Mia.
M: So when did you start skating?
H: I started June 2022.
M: And did you start at Queen City, or with another league?
H: I actually started with the Ithaca League of Women Rollers. I was going to be in Ithaca for two months over the summer um visiting my family and working and I had just gotten a car and I was anxious to start so I was like ya know what I’m just gonna do it here and then I will transfer when I move back.
H: It’s a mixture of like two things, one I think is very very normal which is just that I was incredibly lonely and wanted community. I’d been in Buffalo for a year, I had really no friends, I was like I need community. I would like queer community. I would like female community, but really I just want friends of some variety. And then the other part of that was I – and this sounds so concerning but it really isn’t – is that I wanted bruises. I go to the gym I play sports I’m very physically active, but I don’t come home and have evidence of that in my body. I don’t feel like I’ve done things. And I was like you know what I remember when I was a kid and when I did contact sports I’d liked that kind of evidence of having lived a life in my body. It wasn’t even just contact sports ya know it’s like, when you’re a kid and you go climb a tree and you skin your knee it’s like you’re living your life. And I felt like everything was so bubble wrapped in my life I’m like I need to scrape my f*ing knee again like I’m six years old.
M: I really like that answer. And then was Ithaca the only other place you skated for in the past? Do you skate anywhere other than Queen City actively?
H: So yes I skated with Ithaca for two months and really kinda got to the verge of being done with bootcamp and then peaced out on them so, sorry guys! Um, came here went through bootcamp, obviously expedited, cause I had been skating a while, and then so yeah now I’m obviously mainly with Buffalo, on the Dollies, travel, I occasionally will go back and skate with Ithaca cause like I said my family’s there and they are often short skaters so I have played for the SufferJets in tournaments a couple times which has been, So fun to feel like I didn’t just drop and run on them, that they’re getting some return for their investment! And then this year I started skating with the New York Allstars, which is Insane.
M: Do you like it?
H: Yeah it’s ya know it’s kinda very much a drop in drop out kinda setup, we don’t like have training together very much or anything we just do a couple tournaments.
M: Wait, you don’t practice together at all really?
H: Not really, I skated with them at Y’allstars and then when we did our tryouts in Rochester, and that’s really the only times I’ve actually skated with them. The core of theteam is Gotham and then a bunch of the team is from everywhere else, it’s not the most organized team, but it’s a lot of fun. So far beyond my actual level, but an awesome challenge!
M: Well very interesting. What do you do outside of roller derby?
H: I am a medical student, for one more month! Graduating in May and then I’m gonna be a real doctor! HA HA so that’s terrifying. What else do I do? That’s most of what I do these days uh. In theory I play a couple of instruments, I play flute and clarinet. And now that I’ve got some time to myself again at the moment I’ve been enjoying that again. Ya know I watch a lot of theatre, I read a lot… yeah.
H: Wow! What a funny little segue! Yes, my derby name is 100% a theatre reference. It is, I named myself after Horatio from Hamlet because I love Shakespeare. Um actually that was the one thing I knew before I started derby I’d, I’d known about the concept of derby names and I had come up with this like really long list of possible names for myself, and every single one of them was a Shakespeare pun. Because for me, going into medicine was never the plan. I was gonna be in theatre. I was gonna work in theatre I was gonna be an actor or a director or like, a stage electrician, I was gonna do something like that. And then the plan changed and that’s fine it’s been exciting it’s been fun, but I miss it so much and I don- ya know it’s not something that’s easy to kind of just drop in and out of. Like you can go to shows, that’s easy but it’s, I can’t explore that part of myself anymore so I miss that part of myself. So it’s like for me if derby is going to be embracing parts of my life, parts of my persona that I don’t get to be in day to day life, it’s gonna be Shakespeare. (incoming nerd rant but it’s actually very sweet and thoughtful please keep reading) Horatio’s actually a pretty minor character in the play, but he means the world to me. He’s reliable, he’s a loyal friend, he is honest when the rest of the world is manipulative. And he is strong enough to keep going no matter what. “In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story”. Horatio is a selfless friend you can trust with your sanity while you’re alive, and with your legacy when you’re dead, so if you’re going to name yourself aspirationally… And it’s funny I think one of my friends from Ithaca asked me why I chose my name and I told her it was because I love Shakespeare and I’m full of rage and then like a month ago she came up to me and goes so that was a f*ing lie, I’ve known you years now, where’s the f*ing rage?! And I was like oh sorry! :)
M: Beautiful response wow. Is there any significance to your number?
H: My number was just I was like well I’ve got one nerdy thing I’ve gotta have another nerdy thing so I was like well Seven of Nine from Star Trek, that works for me! 709.
M: Love! I love how you found a way to incorporate two very different nerdy aspects of you.
H: And way different levels of thought! Like, I combed through every play that I love, I had so many things, I was gonna be like Lady Disdain after a name that Benedick calls Beatrice in act I scene I of Much Ado About Nothing. I was gonna be Lady Hotspur after someone who has one monologue in one scene of one play. But I was like I can’t seemyself being “lady” , that’s weird, so those were dropped. I put so much thought into that and then my number was just like eh! 709’s cool!
H: I love, just getting to try weird things, and I love how free you feel doing it. I mean that’s, you also get your soul absolutely murdered and you die. But like you just get to, things happen, I genuinely don’t feel like I’m in control ever when I’m jamming like, my body just takes over and shit happens.
M: I will say from watching you, you jam so effortlessly and regardless of if you make a jump or not you always fully commit and I admire that about you.
H: Yeah! I think that’s what I love the most about it is it’s a time where if you don’t commit 100% you are going to die. You are gonna get your shit rocked. And that’s how I, I had literally never put on skates before until my first day of roller derby like, that was how I got through my first season or two was just that I would yeet my body and hope. And like, I did two apex jumps in my first ever game. The lack of self-preservation really helps there. But it just it really feels so free to just be like I can’t think about this, because if I think about it, the hole’s gonna close. If I think about it, I’m not gonna do the jump. If I think about it it’s not gonna work. So I just have to kind of be in my body and trust that it’s going to work even when it doesn’t. And I always surprise myself like there are things I’ve done in games that even watching myself back I’m like I don’t understand how I did that, I’ve never been able to replicate that. I try to practice weird stuff and then in games completely different weird stuff just bubbles up and I’m like, okay! And so it’s just fun being that in the moment and that just kind of, trying to catch myself by surprise cause if I don’t know what I’m about to do, nobody else can either!
M: I like that mindset. What do you not like about jammings?
H: Hammer.
M: AGREED. Next question. (jk real answer below)
H: I mean basically what I mean by Hammer is just those times when you get stuck. There’s nothing worse than, you’re not lead, you have no control, you get hit so hard you have no breath left in your body and you’re just like, death marching behind a really strong wall. You know you’re at that point of exhaustion you can’t even do a studious little lateral anymore, all you’re doing is pushing and you know your team is hemorrhaging points and it’s all your fault – like it’s not but it feels like it’s all your fault – and there’s nothing you can do about it. Because like jamming is, like I used to swim butterfly and jamming is the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done in my life. Doing a hundred fly, I thought that was bad but doing a full two minute jam against a wall that just like has your number; there’s just something so soul crushing about making zero progress and knowing that your team is actively losing because of, what feels like because of you. Like I’m the only one who can score and if I could get out maybe at least I’d force a call off, but I can’t get out. Like you kinda get all the shiny attention but that also means you get all the attention when you’re dying too. It is worth it, but it is brutal.
M: Ever thought of blocking?
H: Yes but not ever primarily. So like I have been trying to do more blocking to get better at it, and to get better track awareness, and I’ve blocked a couple times when I’ve played with the Ithaca SufferJets um and I really I do enjoy the strategy element of it, it’s a very different game. It’s a lot more mental work and a lot less, I don’t want to say less physical work because it’s hard but it’s not hard in the same way. Like I can go back-to- back jams as a blocker in a way that I never could as a jammer. So I very much enjoy it and I’m trying to do more of it, as a side hustle, but I love jamming so much I don’t think I could ever like make the switch.
M: I am glad you feel that way though you’re an amazing jammer I’d hate to see you leave the rotation. What are your goals for this season?
H: Ugh. This is such a tricky one because my life is so in flux right now. So like I said, I’m about to graduate and be a resident doctor and unfortunately that does mean that I’m leaving Buffalo. Luckily I’m not going far I’m just going to Rochester.
H: And that’s where it gets tricky! I’ve thought about it a lot and I know what I want, and I know what is realistic and these are very different things. So, right now my big goals… I think just because of the timing because home team season will end right before I leave Buffalo. So home team kinda has my heart and soul right now, and especially I’ve had three years with the Dollies I love that team and I feel like we’ve been building something so good together, that my main goal right now is just to end on a real high with the Dollies. And obviously that means I want to win the championship. But it also just means I want us to have a really good last couple of games. Um I feel like it’s hard for me to say beyond that. Like I wanna, I’m gonna try and stick with Sirens for as much of the rest of the season as I can, we’ll see how much ya know, 80 hour weeks in the hospital allow me to keep coming, but I’m gonna try. So I feel like my goals really at this point are just really to, find a way to keep making derby happen and work, yeah. I don’t feel like I can have goals much bigger than that at this point until I’ve settled in, until I know what my life’s going to look like.
M: Well my last question is what are your derby dreams if you have any right now anyhow?
H: I mean my derby dreams… I don’t think I can even quantify what they are because again, how derby fits into my life is going to be so tricky for the next however long. But I wanna play at the highest level I can whatever that means. I wanna do everything and play everywhere and be brilliant! It’s certainly always gonna guide like my life moves, like I’m never moving anywhere that doesn’t have derby. To the extent that I can move to places like Buffalo that have really good derby I’m gonna do that. I would love to properly play for the Furies someday, Buffalo has made me so much. We’ll see how much reality checks in but I don’t know.
I gotta say though as much as it’s f*ing with my head to leave, that speaks to how good derby has been for me that like, I’ve moved around quite a bit in my life and like there have been so many places that I have lived that I don’t really have like any residual roots or connections, and so the fact that leaving Buffalo is going to be really hard is like entirely because of derby. And also like it also does help with my next steps because like I didn’t get to choose where I went for residency, you kinda just get assigned, but I knew like the kinda nice part about it is I had a list of about thirteen places I could’ve ended up, and at every single place, I had at least a friend of a friend. Even like the one or two places I didn’t know anybody, I knew I would know somebody within a week of being there. So it makes moving and finding a community a lot less scary because I know there will be people wherever I go because of roller derby. And it’s nice because my life is going to continue to be not under my control for a while, I don’t know if I’m going to get to choose my next move either, but knowing that wherever I move to, I’ll have community through derby. I could couchsurf my way across the country, from California to Maine through derby friends, and I’ve only been in this sport for three years. Derby is so cool.
M: Well, that is quite the interview wow. I appreciate you being here with me and letting me interview you!
Interview conducted by M.I.A.