Mad Rollin’ Dolls Gallery
At least 21 of the 139 skaters in the Mad Rollin’ Dolls, Madison’s flat-track roller derby league, are UW-Madison graduates, students, faculty, or staff. The Madison league is a leader in national roller derby culture, helping to refine the rules of the sport to make it more welcoming to transgender athletes. Read the article, “A Rink of One’s Own.”

The Dairyland Dolls are the Mad Rollin' Dolls (MRD) all-star travel team, and they are currently ranked 43rd of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association's 323 competitive teams.

The Dairyland Dolls comprises skaters from MRD's four home teams: the Reservoir Dolls, the Vaudeville Vixens, the Unholy Rollers, and the Quad Squad. When not in Dairyland-Dolls blue, Lips Macker (Jennifer Macke Grutzik '09, left) plays for the Reservoir Dolls, and One Hit Wanda (right) plays for the Vaudeville Vixens.

One of the most important team members is the one who doesn't wear skates. Pretty Reckless (Jenni Hart '04) is the head coach of the Dairyland Dolls travel team and the Reservoir Dolls home team.

The two main positions in roller derby are blockers and jammers. The jammer is responsible for scoring points, and the blocker is responsible for stopping her.

At the conclusion of each bout, fans form a line around the track to high-five the players. At this bout, the Dairyland Dolls narrowly lost to Ann Arbor.

For One Hit Wanda (Alisha Raabe '14), who plays for the Vaudeville Vixens and the Dairyland Dolls, learning to skate on roller skates was easy. She grew up as a figure skater, competing all the way through college with UW-Madison's figure skating club.

"I didn't really expect [roller derby] to fill my life like it has," says Lips Macker (Jennifer Macke Grutzik '09, center). "Then once I got here I realized these are really cool people. And the work we do outside of roller derby: we volunteer in the community, and that's really enriching. It exceeded my expectations."

The teams compete for a championship trophy called, for obvious reasons, "Leggy."
Published in the Summer 2017 issue
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