By Lillian Wood
Chaffee County’s roller derby team, the Ark Valley High Rollers, first formed in January 2010. Since then, they’ve recruited many new players (playfully referred to as “fresh meat”), and are now 18 strong and ranked 188 out of 284 by the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). When they became a sanctioned WFTDA team, one of the team’s jobs was to mentor new teams. Last fall, they were invited to visit their mentees, the Bogotá Bone Breakers in Bogotá, Colombia, to play a mock sanctioned bout, the last step in the Bogota team’s journey to becoming a sanctioned WFTDA team. For ten days in June, nine girls from the High Rollers travelled to Colombia to play the Bone Breakers. The South American team’s newfound status as a sanctioned team now allows them to play internationally and they are eligible for ranking by the WFTDA.