by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

February 28, 2008

As her teammates jam, block, and slam their opponents, who fall hard on the wooden track, Megan “Mega Menace” Kriegstein races through the pack, passing blockers and scoring point after point for her team.

Welcome to the women’s roller derby opening exhibition bout at the Morristown Rink on Feb. 23. With competitors like Dee Licious, Jenna Von Fury, Rogue Rage, and yes, Mega Menace, roller derby doesn’t exactly sound like a sport for a nice Jewish girl from a local synagogue. Think again.

Kriegstein is the newest addition to the Morristown Madams, the Morristown-based roller derby team. An associate at the Morristown law firm Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, PC, she served as Hillel president at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, where she was an undergraduate, and vice president of the Jewish Law Students Association at Boston College, where she earned her law degree.

Over lunch at the Creamery in Morristown the day before the bout, Kriegstein, wearing a gray suit and light blue turtleneck, sipped a cup of coffee. She had just finished a big project at work that had kept her up most of the night and forced her to postpone this interview once.

It’s hard at first to square this ambitious 29-year-old attorney with Mega Menace, who skates aggressively, wearing a leather skirt, the number 928 in black on her arm. But she sees no contradiction.

“Professionally, I’m hard working and competitive,” said Kriegstein. “It’s the same in sports.”

She said she “love[s] the challenge, the strategy, and the skills” required, calling roller derby “a hard-core sport” and adding, “I’d like to think I’m tougher than most men.” (Laughing, she said under her breath, “I’ll never get another date now.”) She likes the women on the team, whom she calls “the strongest, most independent, self-sufficient women. That’s what I admire about them.”

The year of her bat mitzva was also the year she took up in-line skating. And when she announced she would be joining the local roller derby, she made her mother proud.

“My mom watched [roller derby] in the ’70s and said it was her favorite thing. She thought it was a great sport and was so excited that I wanted to do something like that,” said Kriegstein.

The Madams are part of the revival of a sport first developed in the 1930s by promoter Leo Seltzer. Played on an indoor track and combining elements of racing and professional wrestling, the sport thrived, sometimes seriously, sometimes as kitsch, until the mid-1970s. Beginning in 2001, a revival began, mostly as an all-women’s sport, mostly in do-it-yourself leagues.

The teams sport punk names like Hellrazors and Dirty Dozen, and skaters generally take an in-your-face attitude reflected in their tattoos; attire, which includes fishnet stockings and micro-skirts; and slogans — the Morristown Madams’ is “cute-n-brutal.”

Today, there are 53 leagues in the United States affiliated with the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, an umbrella organization founded in 2004 that promotes the renaissance of the sport. There are seven women’s roller derby teams in New Jersey listed on a privately maintained Web site.

Established in 2006, the Morristown Madams is the flagship team of the Western Jersey Outlaw League and now has 16 members. Kriegstein joined in January. Although not the first Jewish member of the team, she is the only one right now. Team members range in age from 21 to 40.

They practice two hours, twice a week; some, like Kriegstein, spend extra time working on speed skating.

“I go the extra mile for my clients and for my team,” she said.

Being tough has always been a part of her personality, she acknowledged. “I always liked to play football with the boys, but when you’re a girl, they don’t want to play with you,” she said.

Kriegstein, originally from North Miami, moved to Morristown last May after clerking for a judge and then practicing law for three years in Connecticut. Although she hasn’t yet selected a synagogue or gotten involved in Jewish organizations locally, Kriegstein said the religious and cultural aspects of Judaism are important parts of her identity. She grew up attending both Reform and Conservative synagogues, went to Hebrew school and Hebrew high school briefly, but points to the Jewish friends she had growing up as the bigger influence.

So is there anything Jewish about the roller derby? Kriegstein said she sees plenty of Jewish values in action, from fund-raising for the larger community to the support she gives and receives from her teammates.

And the uniforms? They wouldn’t exactly pass the modesty test of the nearest Orthodox synagogue. Kriegstein dismissed the notion that they, and the derby itself, are sexist. She turns the question on its head, as any good lawyer can do. “You would never question it if men were involved,” she said. “Look at football players: They wear the tightest uniform ever. And they have full contact.”

On the track, her outfit fades into the background and the concentration on her face is palpable as she tries to get through the pack. She engages in plenty of blocking, slamming, and falling as she tries, as jammer, to score by passing an opposing blocker.

“It’s about being tough, physically. If I’m capable as an athlete and I look cute too, what’s wrong with that?”

While most women in the roller derby leave their office personae out of the locker room, Kriegstein pointed out that there are some professional benefits.

“Anyone can meet clients on the golf course,” she said. “How many people can say they’ve picked up clients through the roller derby?”

---

Crash course

The bout: Consists of 60 minutes of play divided into three 20-minute or two 30-minute periods. Each period is divided into “jams” that last up to two minutes. The derby is played on quad (double-axel) skates.

The positions: Blocker, pivot, jammer

Jammer: One per team; they start at the rear and race each other to get through the other players, or “pack.”

Blockers: Up to three per team; they block the opposing jammer from getting through the pack while defending their own jammer from defensive plays.

Pivot: One per team; they line up at the front and help their jammer get through to the front.

The play: During each jam, each team’s goal is to get its jammer to the front of the pack. The first one to reach the front legally is designated the “lead jammer.” The lead jammer scores a point every time she laps a player on the opposing team.

How to win: The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.

• Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com