The Roller Derby World Cup makes skater Nahyomi Painter-Escudero emotional.
“I get goosebumps when I talk about it, and I kind of get teary-eyed,” she said of the coming event. “I am just one skater from this little place called Harrisburg, from this little team called Harrisburg Area Roller Derby … And my story probably is so much like so many other stories.”
She’s one of at least six Pennsylvania athletes who will head to Innsbruck, Austria, next week to compete in the 48-team international competition, which began in 2011.
Yes, roller derby is that freaking big. A professional sport until the 1970s, roller derby went through a grassroots revival in the early 2000s, becoming an international amateur contact sport with a punk- and drag-inspired subculture. Players usually adopt derby-specific nicknames — which often involve wordplay or pop culture references — and some choose to develop a signature aesthetic using makeup or costumes.
Pennsylvania’s scene boasts over a dozen teams spanning the state, from Erie to Philadelphia.
Most of this year’s World Cup teams represent a country or geographic area. Their rosters feature skaters who live in those places, have lived there before, or have family ties to them. There’s also a handful of “borderless teams” — like Team Indigenous Rising, Black Diaspora Roller Derby, and Team Desi — made up of derby players from specific diasporas.
None of the Pennsylvania skaters headed to Austria will play for the U.S. team, but three will represent Team Puerto Rico, and one each will hit the rink for Team Philippines, Jewish Roller Derby, and Fuego Latino Roller Derby.
“I believe they deserve so much recognition for their dedication and achievements,” Clarissa Christ, the owner of the Pottsville skate shop Rage Parade, said of the Pennsylvania athletes. (Christ has been helping the group raise money for their travels.)
PA Local spoke with five of the Pennsylvania skaters headed to the big derby. Keep reading to meet them.
Stephanie Amengual (Bessie)
World Cup team: Team Puerto Rico
Home team: Bux-Mont Roller Derby (Hatfield)
Stephanie Amengual, based near King of Prussia, goes by “Bessie,” a tribute to her “half Wisconsin” roots. At her teams’ bouts, you can spot her pretty easily by her cow-print leggings.
She learned about the sport in high school, when she watched the Drew Barrymore comedy Whip It, which she estimates has drawn in “like 65% of the derby community.” But she put her own skates on much later, when a friend introduced her to a coach in her local league.
Amengual found roller derby to be the first team sport that clicked for her, and gained friends and a stronger sense of self-confidence from playing it.
The skater, whose father was born in Puerto Rico, had been hoping to join Team Puerto Rico’s World Cup roster since about 2018, she estimated, a possibility that also excited her dad.
She’ll be meeting most of her teammates for the first time in Austria next week, and is pumped to see the sport on the global stage: “There’s just so many not just big countries, but little countries and little collectives that have just as much value … and I’m excited to see just how much skill gets divided amongst all those smaller teams.”
Charlotte Jacobson (Bear Jew)
World Cup team: Jewish Roller Derby
Home team: Wilkes-Barre Scranton Roller Derby (Moosic)
A former journalist, Charlotte Jacobson got into the sport when she wrote a feature story about her local league for the Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice in 2016.
The Scranton resident never felt “super athletic” growing up — and she’d never roller skated beyond birthday parties — but reporting that story piqued her interest in the sport, and she ended up at tryouts the next year.
The community took her in, and she adopted “Bear Jew” as her derby name, in reference to war satire Inglourious Basterds, her favorite Quentin Tarantino film. Eight years later, she coaches for her local league and captains its A-team, the Roller Radicals.
Jewish Roller Derby, a borderless team, first came onto Jacobson’s radar during a tournament in the late 2010s, she recalled, and she started skating with them at stateside tournaments in 2023.
Being part of the borderless team has been meaningful for Jacobson, who isn’t religiously observant but remains connected to Jewish culture and values. Meeting her Jewish Roller Derby teammates in person for the first time was “instant mishpocha,” she said — Yiddish for “family.”
Jacobson is particularly excited to play in a former Olympic venue, and to be competing as someone who comes from a “little small team in Scranton, Pennsylvania” that seldom makes it to major championships: “I love the idea that the World Cup is a place that brings in people from all levels of teams.”
Nahyomi Painter-Escudero (Ms. Take, aka Steak)
World Cup team: Fuego Latino Roller Derby
Home team: Harrisburg Area Roller Derby (Enola)
Nahyomi Painter-Escudero, a swimmer, gymnast, and soccer player as a kid, did pretty much everything except roller skate. But she decided to give roller derby a try in 2018, nudged by her brother.
He later helped her come up with her derby name: “It’s going to be a mistake to hit you,” Painter-Escudero recalled him saying when proposing it. Nowadays, she mostly goes by “Steak,” which she’s considering honoring by getting a tattoo of a grill mark or steak.
She’s formed strong bonds with her teammates, who’ve supported her through milestones like marriage, the birth of her children, homeownership, and promotions at work. The sport has become much more than a pastime: “Roller derby is identity,” Painter-Escudero told PA Local.
When she’s in the game, “I am not someone’s partner, I am not a mommy,” she said. “I am just playing for me. This is my outlet from everyday stuff, from work, from everything.”
Painter-Escudero, who lived in Puerto Rico before moving to Pennsylvania with her family in the early 2000s, initially waffled about throwing her hat in the rink for the World Cup. But at the urging of her “derby wife” Zombae, she ended up sending clips to Fuego Latino Roller Derby and being selected.
“I am just so excited to be first row, watching these top teams compete and just wreck each other in the best way possible,” she said of going to the World Cup.
Diosanny Rivera-Placido (P.R. Nightmare)
World Cup team: Team Puerto Rico
Home team: Dutchland Derby Rollers (Lancaster)
Diosanny Rivera-Placido joined the Dutchland Derby Rollers after seeing a social media post from an old high school classmate.
“She was like a wallflower in high school,” Rivera-Placido said of the classmate. Seeing someone she knew to be meek playing an “intense sport” like derby sparked her curiosity.
Three years later, Rivera-Placido — who was born in Puerto Rico and has lived in Lancaster since she was four — is headed to Austria as president of Team Puerto Rico and a captain of its World Cup team.
Known in the derby world as “P.R. Nightmare” (the “P.R.” stands for “Puerto Rican”), she first played alongside Team Puerto Rico at an exhibition game, and later volunteered to be one of its leaders.
Since the team hadn’t played in a World Cup since 2014 — the impact of Hurricane Maria kept them from making it to the 2018 tournament — she and her fellow leaders had to overcome numerous logistical hurdles to field enough applicants for a 20-person World Cup team. They managed to get 34 applicants after a ringer of sending emails, tracking down old social media and bank logins, and outreach to dozens of teams to find potential skaters.
As a relatively new derby player, Rivera-Placido is a little nervous about the tournament, but she looks forward to observing more experienced skaters, and representing her roots on a global platform: “Being Puerto Rican is such a vital part of who I am and the way I was raised, and … I want to do right by my people.”
Jackie Thomas (Aluyan/Tree)
World Cup team: Team Philippines
Home team: Black Rose Rollers (Hanover)
Jackie Thomas will be making her second World Cup appearance with Team Philippines next week.
Thomas’ derby career started 14 years ago at Free State Roller Derby in Rockville, Maryland, after a friend invited her to watch a bout.
“It just sucked us in right away,” Thomas said of that first exposure. “It was watching women empowered by sport, and it wasn’t just like what you would perceive as an athletic body. It was like everyone could do it.”
Since then, roller derby has become “almost an identity” for her, as well as a way for her to meet new people and travel to “the most random places.” She moved and transferred teams several times before landing at the Black Rose Rollers a few years ago, where she now serves as head coach.
Thomas goes by “Tree” when skating with the Black Rose Rollers, and “Aluyan” — her mother’s maiden name — during her Team Philippines bouts.
Thomas is half Filipino, and being on a team with a lot of people from a similar background — and who are welcoming regardless of “what percentage you are” — has been especially meaningful to her.
“When I found Team Philippines, it was just, like, overwhelming,” Thomas said. “There’s like all these people who are similar to me, who love a sport, have gone through the same experiences … And then you get to play on this world stage, and it’s just so moving.”