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A week ago Friday I went to a women’s roller derby bout in Palm Springs, and I have been thinking about it ever since.

In truth, I did not just like it. I loved it.

Part of my anticipation came from memory. Somewhere deep in my past was an old image of women’s roller derby on television — the Cow Palace, speed, collisions, theatrics, a kind of noisy spectacle that seemed part sport and part soap opera.

I had not thought much about roller derby in years, but when I learned there was a bout in Palm Springs, I rearranged my travel plans so I could go.

I wanted to see whether the thing I remembered still existed.

It does, and it doesn’t.

That was the first revelation.

The second was the crowd. The parking lot was packed. Not sort of packed. Packed. We had to park illegally. I am guessing close to 1,000 people were there. I found that deeply heartening. In an era when so much of life is expensive, fragmented, and mediated through screens, here was a local sporting event drawing a large and enthusiastic crowd on a Friday night.

The third revelation was the price: $12.50.

There was something almost startling about that number. These days, attending many sporting events has become a major financial decision. Tickets, parking, food, and all the rest can easily turn an outing into a costly affair. I can barely park my car at some sporting events for $12.50. Yet here was a live event full of action, suspense, noise, and personality for less than the cost of lunch in many places.

And then there was my favorite detail of all: you had to bring your own chair.

Bring your own chair! I loved that instantly.

That detail tells you something. It says this is not a polished corporate product. It says this is local, communal, homemade in the best sense. No premium seating. No club level. No luxury suite. Just come as you are, bring what you need, and join us.

Most moving of all was learning that the women skating were not being paid. They were doing it for the love of the sport. That fact changed the entire evening for me. It cast the action in a different light. The effort, the energy, the bruising contact, the concentration, the teamwork — all of it was being given freely in service of something they believed in.

And what they have built is not trivial. Modern women’s roller derby is now organized under the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, with official rules, sanctioned games, rankings, tournaments, officiating standards, and league resources. In other words, this is not merely the ghost of an old entertainment spectacle. It has become a real and highly organized contemporary sport.

That helps explain the great difference between what I remembered and what I saw.

What I remembered from the old days was hostility, or at least the performance of hostility. What I saw in Palm Springs was hard competition, yes, but also camaraderie. I noticed again and again small gestures of mutual regard — even high fives between competitors. That detail may seem minor, but it stayed with me. The emotional tone of the evening was not bitterness. It was toughness mixed with fellowship.

That, to me, is the real revival.

Not simply the return of roller derby, but its reinvention.

I also discovered quickly that this is a harder sport to understand than it first appears. I found the penalties difficult to decode. I could see that rules were being enforced, but I could not always tell why. Yet that confusion made me more respectful, not less. Beneath the apparent chaos was a real architecture of strategy. The blockers were not merely obstructing; they were thinking, coordinating, and adjusting. The jammers were not merely racing; they were reading angles, looking for seams, and reacting in an instant.

What had once seemed to me like pure commotion revealed itself to be a game of intelligence as much as force.

And then, of course, there was the score: 212 to 75.

Have you ever been anywhere — anywhere — where the final score was 212 to 75?

The event is called a “bout,” and perhaps that word made sense once, back when roller derby traded more heavily on the image of combat. But the word does not quite fit what I saw. This was not a grudge match. It was a disciplined, eccentric, affectionate, highly physical sport with its own code and culture.

I went because of a memory.

I came away impressed by a reality.

What I expected to be an exercise in nostalgia turned into something richer: admiration for a sport that has survived, evolved, organized itself, and found a new life not through money or television hype, but through commitment, community, and joy.

For $12.50, a folding chair, and a little willingness to be confused, it was one of the most interesting sporting events I have been to in a long time.

Sometimes the things that return are better than the things we remember.