McCatchHer if you can: Young attorney enjoys her time with Detroit Derby Girls

Editor's note: This feature first appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of MOTION Magazine. By Taryn Hartman Legal News It's the third jam of the night. The derby hall on the third floor of Detroit's Masonic Temple, where an oval track is outlined in tape on the hardwood floor, is hot and stuffy as Racer McChaseHer lines up behind a pack of teammates with names like Ghetto Barbie, Elle McFearsome, and Jackie O. Noyoudidnt. Close to 900 spectators look on in her first time out on the floor tonight, the star on her helmet designating her as this round's jammer, responsible for scoring as many points as possible for the Detroit Derby Girls' (DDG)all-star travel team as it takes on the visiting Grand Raggidy Roller Girls in the two-minute jam. For each member of the opposing team that she passes, she'll rack up a point for the DDG, playing in a premiere league in a sport that, despite recent attention from the Michigan-shot film "Whip It," still remains relatively underground. Grand Raggidy will do everything they can to stop her, although nobody's throwing punches like the one Racer, as Princess Slaya, took from director Drew Barrymore's character Smashley Simpson in the 2009 film. Throwing an elbow or deliberately grabbing or pushing an opponent is forbidden, but the sport is still full-contact and many of the women have the injuries to prove it, even as they're suited up accordingly in knee and elbow pads, and wrist and mouth guards. When the whistle blows and Racer takes off, she makes it look easy. She glides in and out of and around the pack on her way to a blistering 30 points, tying the national record for the most points scored in a single jam. When opponents try to take her out, they're usually the ones who end up falling. By the end of the first 30-minute half, she's racked up 68 points, and the DDG have held Grand Raggidy to just 14 points to their 147. In a second-half jam, fresh out of the Scion Sin Bin after drawing a penalty, Racer hip-checks a Grand Raggidy blocker, a hit that calls to mind another Detroit skater, Red Wing Johann Franzen, as she rolls by without losing her balance for even a moment. She ends the night with a new league-record 94 points as Detroit skates to a 230-37 win. Racer McChaseHer is Amy Ruby, a 2008 graduate of Cooley Law School, captain of the DDG travel team, president of the organization, and its biggest star. "That's definitely one of my favorite things that happens, when somebody comes to put a hit on you and they fall," the 28-year-old says from an armchair in a Woodward Avenue coffee shop, three weeks after the bout. "As a jammer, you have everything going in your favor. You have the momentum, you have the speed, you know where you're planning to go. They don't know where you're gonna go, so when they go to make a hit for you, the best is when they wipe out." Ruby's roller derby success came almost immediately after she joined the league four years ago, thanks in large part to a lifetime of speed roller skating experience, and stardom quickly followed. Her first game saw her score 75 points at a time when the league record was 71 or 72, and she took home that game's MVP title. "I don't know how you couldn't like something like that," she remembers now. At her first tournament with the travel team, she became the only skater to ever be voted tourney MVP while competing for a non-championship team. "I had been skating in derby for less than a year, and now I'm at this tournament where people are like, 'Oh my God, you're so great!' What do you say to these people?" she asks incredulously. "It was just this interesting thing." A self-professed rink rat, the Pinckney native and her older brother got involved in speed skating early on, and at 8 years old Ruby won her first national title. She still competes on inline skates and traveled to the sport's national competition in Lincoln, Neb. over the Fourth of July weekend. After earning her BBA at Adrian College in 2003, Ruby spent a year working at a Montessori school, teaching Spanish, and debating between a JD and an MBA. Law school won out when she found a third-grade writing assignment in which she'd professed that she wanted to be a lawyer, and another from the following year where she wrote about being a judge. "I thought, 'I want to go back to school, I'm not ready to find a real job yet.' Apparently, five years later, I'm still not," she says. Ruby skated past the bar exam on her first attempt, but her instant-success MO seems to have temporarily screeched to a stop when it comes to a full-time gig. She's currently navigating the "super-frustrating" employment landscape that plagues new lawyers across the country while doing independent estate planning and helping friends file business paperwork. Her role as the derby league's president often requires her to draw on her BBA and law school experience, most recently while lobbying to hold the DDG league-championship bout at Cobo. "I was going to see to it that we played at Cobo, no matter what," she says of the match between her Devil's Night Dames and eventual champs D-Funk Allstars. "To be able to see 3,000 people in there, to me, was one of the greatest accomplishments. We did that in six weeks." But derby doesn't pay by the billable hour, and Ruby's work as president is done on a strictly volunteer basis. "On my résumé, it says that I'm involved in roller derby," she says. "Why? Partially because you're going to find out anyway" -- confirmed by a quick Google -- "and the other reason is because there's leadership that has shown through. I don't know if it's working in my favor or not, because I don't have a job to ask, 'Did that deter you or entice you?'" At Cooley, Ruby's trial skills professor became a derby fan and regularly attended bouts. And when it was time to choose her derby name, the then-law-student considered a number of legalese monikers including Mia Culpa (it was taken), ProseCutie, Toxic Tort, and Sybil Disobedience before drawing on her skating background and deciding on Racer McChaseHer. She wears number 2.8 as a lighthearted estimation of the time it takes her to accelerate from zero to 60. Nearly 80 women strong, the Detroit Derby Girls are made up of four home teams -- the D-Funk Allstars, Devil's Night Dames, the Detroit Pistoffs and the Pistol Whippers -- who spar during the league's regular season from November to May; skaters from these teams make up the travel squad and B-team Motor City Disassembly Line, both of which compete around the country, traveling as far as San Diego and Tampa. The league is a member of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association, the parent organization for the more than 300 roller derby leagues in major cities like New York, Chicago, Denver, Dallas and Los Angeles, but also Fort Wayne, Ind.; Nashua, N.H.; Fayetteville, Ark.; and Sioux Falls, S.D. The sport has also gone international to places like London, Australia, and New Zealand. The league recently held its annual tryout for new members, taking 22 out of 37 hopefuls in the second-largest recruiting class since the league's inception in 2005. Ruby attributes much of the league's success to the recent attention from "Whip It," which was set in Texas but shot locally featuring real derby girls from around the area. "That was crazy," Ruby says, wearing a T-shirt from the film. "It's still strange to even think that that really happened." It didn't mark the end of her acting career -- Ruby can currently be seen alongside three of her teammates touting Red Pop from the Detroit Opera House rooftop in a Pure Michigan commercial promoting Michigan-made products. Following the June 3rd bout, Ruby is the last woman to leave the floor after being surrounded by a group of autograph-seekers and fans sporting red T-shirts emblazoned with "Racer McChaseHer: Home of the Big Smack" under an illustration of the McDonald's arches. "There are so many girls that are just interested in doing it kind of for the fun aspect, and that's fine," she says of her sport. "But don't think that you're gonna be this good if you're only gonna put in this much effort," she adds, gesturing with a small space between her thumb and index finger. Ruby channels the words of a professor from her second year of law school when describing the time and effort she pours into roller derby. "She said, 'I don't have to teach, I make enough money in my regular job. I teach because I love to teach, and I teach because I want to be here and I want to help make you be better students, and I know that I'm taking time away from my kids and my family, so don't make it a waste of my time to be here.' "And I think that was one of the things that I took with me through everything," Ruby continues. "I would go to practice when I was studying for the bar exam, and it was a treat to be able to go to practice because you're taking time away from studying. And so if I'm going to be here and not be studying when I really should be, I better put it all out there." Ruby says the same sentiment applies when her skates come off. "I think I need to reverse back and do that with the job thing," she says, "Because now the derby thing is so fun." Published: Tue, May 31, 2011

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