Come & try roller derby! Dirty River Roller Derby is looking for new skaters, referees and non-skating officials. This event is free of charge and open for everyone. You must be at least 16 to attend but otherwise there is no age limit! You’ll get to try the skates and other gear, and you don’t need to know how to skate or have any background in sports to attend. Everyone is welcome! Wear comfy sports clothes and bring a water bottle with you.
What: Roller derby open skate! When: Sunday 28th of August at 2 pm and Monday 5th of September at 6.30 pm Where: Ilpoisten palloiluhalli, Lauklähteenkatu 15, Turku Price: 0 €! It’s free! Sign-up form: https://forms.gle/TetWHT5NujH3PoKz6
Our next beginners’ practices starts later this autumn! Questions? Ask here or send us an email: beginners@dirtyriverrollerderby.com – we speak English!
Would you like to try a new hobby in a supporting environment? DRRD’s beginner practices are here and you can sign up now!
What: Beginners practices start on Apr 13th at 7.30 pm Schedule: Wednesdays 7.30-9 pm Where: Ilpoisten palloiluhalli, Lauklähteenkatu 15, Turku What do you need: Your own gear (more info below) Cost: 70 € which includes a membership fee for the whole year
You don’t need any previous experience in roller skating. We’ll start from the very basics and help you develop your skills at your own pace. After signing up we’ll send you a more detailed info letter about the gear you need if you already haven’t received it.
Come & try roller derby! Dirty River Roller Derby is looking for new skaters, referees and non-skating officials. This event is free of charge and open for everyone. You must be at least 16 to attend but otherwise there is no age limit! You’ll get to try the skates and other gear, and you don’t need to know how to skate or have any background in sports to attend. Everyone is welcome! Wear comfy sports clothes and bring a water bottle with you.
What: Roller derby open skate! When: Wed 16 March at 8 pm and Sunday 20 March at 2 pm Where: Ilpoisten palloiluhalli, Lauklähteenkatu 15, Turku Price: 0 €! It’s free! Sign-up form: https://forms.gle/6YkzF8XUngvoaDUL6
Our next beginners’ course starts later this spring! Questions? Ask here or send us an email: beginners@dirtyriverrollerderby.com – we speak English!
You don’t need to know everything or anything about roller derby: the most important thing is that you’re willing to coach. We are looking for different persons with different strengths and interests. Let’s find a suitable role for you together! As a coach you can be there for us on game days and help us succeed. You can also plan and run practices if that’s your thing! Or are you a PT or physiotherapist and want to use your expertise to help us get our off skate practicing to a new level?
DRRD has currently one competitive team which aims to play scrimmages and games of different levels in 2022. If the SM series or Division 1 are restarted at some point, we will consider taking part in those as well.
Fill in this form and tell us a little about yourself! The deadline is 28 February 2022. If you want to come and watch our practices and get to know us and our sport a little bit before filling in the form, send an email to martta.malila@dirtyriverrollerderby.com.
What: Roller derby open skate! When: Sunday 3 October at 2-4 pm Where: Ilpoisten palloiluhalli, Lauklähteenkatu 15, Turku Price: 0 €! It’s free!
Come & try roller derby! Dirty River Roller Derby is looking for new skaters, referees and non-skating officials. This event is free of charge, but you must be at least 16 to attend.
You’ll get to try the skates and other gear, and you don’t need to know how to skate or have any background in sports to attend. Everyone is welcome! Wear comfy sports clothes and bring a water bottle with you.
To ensure covid19 safety, please DO NOT attend if you are having even mild symptoms. Keep your distance and maintain good hand and coughing hygiene.
During the Summer Olympics a while ago, a lot of discussion went on about the inclusion of trans people in sports. A lot of these discussions have been focused on trans women and trans feminine people in women’s sports. Dirty River Roller Derby states in its guidelines explicitly that we support trans players, and do not allow transphobia or trans misogyny. Excluding trans women and trans feminine people from sports is not only harmful to trans people, but to all women, especially black and brown women (cis and trans) who are often the target of transmisogyny.
Roller Derby from its origin is intended to be an inclusive sport, and even though the sport has not always been successful on this front, it has always been at its root. Dirty River Roller Derby intends to be a place where we include all kinds of different bodies into sports, this includes trans bodies. We want to be a league where people who haven’t felt welcome or able to play sports can engage with roller derby and its community. There is no one type of body that can play roller derby, all kinds of different bodies can engage in this sport, and by being inclusive to different bodies we hope to make it possible for people to imagine themselves on the track. DRRD is always trying to create an atmosphere of acceptance and love of difference.
Within DRRD we will endeavour to continue looking at our own praxis and prejudice, specifically regarding trans people, especially trans women and trans feminine people. We are driven by our values which everyone of our members agree to comply with. Trans women and trans feminine people are underrepresented in our league, and we will try to examine the reasons for this and continue these conversations internally. We encourage other sports leagues to have these conversations or keep having these conversations as well.
The Coaching Department at DRRD has been actively working with the topic of harassment and bullying and how to prevent them for a long time. The Department has, however, been especially active in this regard during the past year, since the study about harassment and bullying (in Finnish. A summary of the key points is available in Swedish and English also) in our sport by SUEK/Luisteluliitto was published.
As one concrete action, all Finnish-speaking members of our Department have now taken or will take the Et ole yksin online training which aims at creating a safe environment for sports and offers guidelines on how to prevent and tackle bullying and harassment. More info: https://etoleyksin.fi/ (in Finnish and Swedish).
The Coaching Department at DRRD used the training as a starting point for a critical discussion about our own activities. We also suggested various concrete actions to other actors within our league. Some examples include surveys on practices and well-being as well as opening a low-threshold feedback channel for our members. All our league activities are guided by our official bylaws, our strong core values as well as the Code of Conduct approved by our membership.
We would like to challenge all derby leagues in Finland to boost their work against bullying and harassment. Let’s share good practices, learn from each other, admit it when we mess up and roll together towards a brighter future!
We have our very own merch shop with exclusive items coming up that you don’t want to miss! You can already add drrd.mycashflow.fi to your bookmarks as the shop will open during this spring.
As we all know, year 2020 seemed pretty normal at first. In late February, both DRRD teams, the A and the B team, played a game in Peltola. In March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit Finland at full force. DRRD immediately cancelled all practices and we were able to return on skates only in June and to full contact only in August. In November all practices were cancelled again due to the worsening situation in Varsinais-Suomi.
DRRD A vs HRD B in February 2020. Photo: Marko Niemelä.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, DRRD got two new transfer skaters from Hamburg in August 2020! Here’s what one of them, Randa Lena, has to tell about her experience in joining our league during such a weird time.
“I joined DRRD in the second half of 2020, the year of Covid-19 and also the year of the 10th anniversary of the league. Coming right out of German Lockdown with only a few weeks of non-contact training during summer, I was quite happy when I heard that Dirty River had just started full contact training.
It was a joy to play real Roller Derby again, not only in practices, but also in the 10 year anniversary scrimmage the league held on September 12th in Kupittaa. According to my new teammates, they originally planned to celebrate the 10th anniversary with a big tournament and many international guest teams that weekend. Unfortunately this was not possible, like so many other events that should have happened, but didn’t.
To celebrate at least on a small scale, we played an intraleague scrimmage and were even able to have some audience there! Of course, we made sure the audience was separated from the team all the time, to reduce the risk of infection.
Even though it was not the big tournament it should have been, being able to play publicly against other people in a setting that very much felt like a real game, was a great experience after all those months. There were not many players, we barely got two full line-ups, but it was fun and very challenging.
In the evening we had a little get-together, this time privately, in a small club house the league had rented. Again, the group was small, but it was a very nice evening where I got to know some of the league members a little better.
Unfortunately, the golden age of real Derby didn’t last long. The coaching department sensibly decided to go back to non-contact training in October when the second wave of the pandemic rolled over Europe, including Finland. Even though the coaches got very creative to make practice still fun and special (e.g. football on skates), the undeniable highlight of that time was the Spooky Skate Event, where beginners and advanced players dressed up in Halloween costumes for skating around the sports hall and eating spooky snacks together.
The winner of the best costume prize at our Spooky Skate Friday. Photo: Marjo Lundén.
Understandably, many members of the league were not comfortable with coming to regular practices and meeting people despite the non-contact training, which made it much harder to really meet everyone. I got the chance to spend time with some people at the Moomin World in Naantali, though, where we raked leaves and carried wooden planks to raise funds for the league. League fundraising isn’t something we do in Germany. Seeing that DRRD does it on a regular basis is a new and exciting thing for me, and also gives me the chance to look behind the curtains of some places and events in Finland, which I probably wouldn’t be able to do if I weren’t part of this team.”
As Randa Lena mentioned, DRRD also turned 10 years in 2020. We were supposed to celebrate it in a lot of different ways, but had to cancel most of those plans. But hey, how about an 11th anniversary party next autumn?
DRRD’s 10th anniversary logo, design by Hanna-Leena “Kille” Partanen.
Nobody knows what 2021 has in store for us, but we know already that the year has started with the pandemic still going strong and many restrictions still in place. Many are already so tired of this pandemic, but we at DRRD are keeping our hopes up for a better year. DRRD has existed for 10 years now. And you know what? There will be a time when this phase was indeed just that, a phase, a short phase in our history. This is not the end of anything, it’s a phase. Isn’t that a comforting thought?
DRRD 10 YEARS! Now is your chance to order some cool merch with our brand new 10th anniversary logo. T-shirts, tank tops, long-sleeved shirts and beanies are available. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance! Order via this form: https://forms.gle/yt6zK5ESsFucA5Tk6
Now is your chance to order some cool merch with our brand new 10th anniversary logo. T-shirts, tank tops, long-sleeved shirts and beanies are available. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance! Order via this form: 
