Central New York Roller Derby
Utica/Rome, NY, United States of America
In late 2007, a small group of women in and around Utica, NY began talking about playing roller derby. None had any significant prior skating experience. Some had never seen a roller derby game and this was at a time when you still had to really search to even see it on YouTube! Through mutual friends, they were introduced to members of Assault City Roller Derby in Syracuse NY, and began to make the snowy trek once a week to practices in Syracuse. Soon more local women started asking about the sport. By December 2007, there was enough local and regional interest to begin hosting their own practices and Central New York Roller Derby was born.
The decision to call our league Central New York Roller Derby was made because we wanted our league to be geographically diverse, representing the region from Albany to Syracuse along I-90 and from the Adirondacks to the Cooperstown area. We are comprised of members who have a drive to skate hard, block harder, and represent this area the best we can in the sport of roller derby.
CNYRD started competing in April 2008 and held its first home bout in July 2008 to an enthusiastic crowd at the Utica Memorial Auditorium skating as ‘The Asylum City Lunatics’ against our forerunners Assault City. Since then we have been lucky enough to host bouts during our subsequent seasons at John F. Kennedy Civic Arena in Rome and also travel to compete against teams all over the Northeast US and Canada.
Since our inception we have spawned an all-star travel team (the CNY All Stars) and a B level travel team (the Wonder Brawlers). Due to the growing love of roller derby in our area, there is also a men’s league, the Quadfathers, and a junior league, Central New York Junior Roller Derby.