Rolling with Nashville’s Junior Roller Derby team

Every other Friday for This Is Nashville, I hop out of my host chair and into the passenger seat to ride shotgun with fellow Middle Tennesseans. For this edition, I hitched a ride with members of the Nashville Junior Roller Derby team — co-captains Brigid “Queen B” Davis and Abby “Mighty Duck” Duckworth and their executive director Lea Davis, aka “The Queen Mother.” We checked out a few of the many practice sites they’ve used over the years. 

Roller derby is not for the faint of heart. It is an exhausting game that requires true grit. Picking yourself up after being knocked down is hard enough — now, try that while wearing skates.

Overcoming obstacles is nothing new to Nashville Junior Roller Derby skaters Brigid “Queen B” Davis and Abby “Might Duck” Duckworth. Neither are the bumps and bruises that come with learning the sport. According to Abby, they have bruised up “24/7.”

No matter the pain they endure while playing this game they love, they have an uplifting outlook on what they go through.

“We don’t call them bruises, we call them derby kisses,” says Lea “The Queen Mother” Davis, the team’s executive director.

In 2023, roller derby is not the game that would air on television after professional wrestling back in the ’80s. In fact, it’s hard to catch any game (or bout) on TV these days. That’s something that Brigid takes umbrage with.

“I think a lot of it being a female dominated sport and it being mainly women in the start of it,” she says. “We are (a) real sport, not just the glam and sparkles and whatever.”

Brigid channels her frustrations while she’s on the track, which may explain why she loves knocking boys off their skates.

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Lea “The Queen Mother” Davis, Brigid “Queen B” Davis, and Abby “Mighty Duck” Duckworth of NJRD pose for a pic after a shotgun ride.

Abby, a seven-year veteran of roller derby, is familiar with being knocked down. She recalls a player named “Tonka” who introduced her to the rougher side of the game.

“I just got pummeled and I went across the whole room,” claims Abby.

It is moments like that which makes these co-captains tough as nails. They both possess the ability to play any position on the track, but they’ve found themselves playing the unglamorous position of blocker. Taking a team first mentality, they gladly accept that and do whatever it takes.

Brigid explains, “(the team) is really jammer heavy, so I do a lot of blocking because of that. But my most happy position is jamming.”

The jammer is like the snitch from the Harry Potter universe. All eyes on them, all the time.

The bond that players of the NJRD squad have is as unbreakable as their will. Good luck to anyone who gets in their way.