By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

The surface of the roller skating rink at Community Park gets a little dusting from the nearby hillsides of Southampton.

In fact, “It’s pretty grippy,” said “Graves,” who coaches the Undead Bettys roller derby league that skates its home bouts in Antioch, and its away games throughout California and into Nevada.

But the skaters weren’t bouting Saturday morning. Instead, Graves was leading another California Grass Roots Derby Open Scrimmage.

That’s a fancy name for a friendly get-together of skaters from leagues throughout Northern California. And Benicia is a convenient mid-spot for skaters from as far south as Silicon Valley, the neighboring county of Sonoma, Ukiah to the north and Sacramento to the east.

“There used to be hockey,” Graves said of the park’s rink, but the derby skaters haven’t seen any hockey players since they began to roll on the rink’s concrete surface.

There’s no charge to the skaters, Graves stressed, or to anyone who wants to see what the new version of roller derby is about. Graves springs for the tape he uses to outline a derby arena-sized perimeter, and if no one shows up to help referee, the skaters use an honor system to call their own penalties.

“This is for fun and for practice,” he said. It’s also a chance for men to see what the newly revived sport is like. This year, the Undead Bettys added a men’s team to its roster.

The first two teams fielded by the league are for women skaters — the Undead Bettys for A-level skaters, and the B team called Damned Skaters. The men’s team is the Skaters Grim.

The men who have been skating with the league either have been referees or coaches. Others don skates and cruise around the audience during bouts, holding signs that invite curious or new fans to ask them questions to get the rules explained.

For more than a decade, the sport has had a new set of ever-evolving rules. That’s because some determined women in Texas decided to take what had been a faded televised novelty event with scripted endings and make it an actual competitive sport.

They took colorful names and uniforms for their teams and themselves; some chose to skate on flat tracks, often at existing arenas and sporting centers, and others built — or coerced spouses to help build — banked tracks that can be disassembled for moving from one spot to another to accommodate leases lost to higher-paying tenants.

Like the sport itself, Graves’ coed scrimmage sessions are “grassroots,” he said.

He promotes the scrimmages on Facebook, including on the Undead Bettys Facebook page, as for “Men, women, or whatever, as long as you have a great attitude. Just a casual scrimmage like if we were getting together to play basketball or soccer in a park.”

Mouth guards, black or white jerseys, quad skates and cool Derby names give this sport an edgier, more punk image than basketball or soccer.

For instance, the Undead Bettys League founder is Cemetery Mary, who picked a zombie theme and lime green, royal purple and black colors for the league.

Her A team has such skaters as Blood Thirsty, Sew Evil and Nasty Drew. The Damned Skaters include Candi Razor, Loca Anesthesia and Evil Eye Cherry. Even members of the non-competing crew — the Zombie Control Unit — have Derby names, like Ewen Jected and Mortis R.I.P.

But that’s part of Derby fun, just like Graves’s scrimmage.

At the end of the practice session, all the skaters gathered for a group photograph. Even spectators were invited to join them in a resounding, pro-Derby cheer.

The goal is to make each participant a better skater, whether it’s someone who skates for his league, or someone on a competing team, Graves said.

“Some have closed scrimmages,” he said. “This is all-inclusive. It’s to get derby out there, and get people to play.”

“We often don’t scrimmage against another team.”

He said he believes these sessions benefit anyone who shows up to practice.

They also give spectators a chance to see skaters practice the fundamentals of jamming and blocking maneuvers the skaters need to master before the next bout.

And unlike practice sessions among team members, getting a chance to skate with competitors gives them all something new to experience.

“This helps them to grow quickly,” Graves said, “and to build a bigger derby community in Northern California.”

The Undead Bettys return to bouting next month when they face the Bay Area Derby Girls Oakland Outlaws at 7 p.m. Aug. 10 at the Antioch Indoor Sports Center, 1210 Sunset Drive, Antioch.

Tickets are available on brownpapetickets.com and www.undeadbettys.com, and are $12 for adults, $8 for children 3 to 12.