Durban Roller Derby: Meet Chocovivious- where sweet meets savage

Durban Roller Derby (DRD) is a sports league founded in 2012 by Michelle Murray and Cara Munroe. The league currently consists of a handful of members hailing from Drummond, Durban North, Waterfall and Glenwood. In a monthly series, the Berea Mail will chat to members of the league to find out more about this empowering sport.

GLENWOOD resident, Natalie “Chocovicious” Hendricks said the use of derby nicknames is one of her favourite aspects of the sport- it embodies the alter ego players adopt on the track.

“It’s like being a superhero. You can be someone on the track that you wouldn’t be in real life. It’s such an awesome way to get your frustrations out and inhabit this ‘bad ass’ attitude on track,” she said.

Her nickname, Chocovicious is a play on an old childhood nickname.

“My nickname, since I was 13, was Choco, because I love chocolate. There have been variations of that and one of the main ones, which my friends call me, is Chocolicious. So I took that and adapted it for derby. A few of the more serious athletes just use their real names, but I love the nicknames, it’s one of my favourite things about the sport,” she said.

While the sport is predominately women-led, Hendricks said there is a men’s league as well.

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“There’s a women’s flat track association and a men’s. It is predominately a women-led sport, but it’s very open and inclusive. There are a lot of transgender athletes in both the men and women’s league,” she said.

Yet the majority of athletes in this electric sport are women.

“I think when the resurgence of the sport happened in the 1990s in Texas, it was women who led that. It spoke to a lot of women in the sense that athleticism isn’t something that’s encouraged in girls a lot. When they are younger they start doing well in sports, but when they start hitting puberty and teenage years, it’s not encouraged so much anymore. People are always so much more concerned about girls getting hurt than boys, especially when it comes to more dangerous sports. Derby is an alternative sport, I think it spoke to a lot of people on the fringes of society, and I think that’s why it spoke to a lot of women. The alter ego aspect of the game also gives women access to the’ bad ass’ part of them that as women we have always swallowed down- to not be mean or hit each other. I think derby gives women access to that part of them,” she said.

Reflecting on her own life, Hendricks says roller derby empowers women to express themselves in a world where women often swallow their anger.

In case you missed it: Support Durban Roller Derby team’s online fundraiser

“I have a hell of a temper and as a woman, I’ve grown up watching boys around me be treated differently when they lost their temper to the way I was treated when I lost my temper. It was always that much worse because I was a girl. It was never a good way for a girl to behave, but for boys- boys will be boys. For girls, there is always this extra responsibility to be good, pure, meek, and mild,” she said.

She was inspired to take up the sport after seeing the film, Whip It. “I’m not a sporty person. I had never played sport in my life, but when I saw the movie Whip It, I thought, ‘that is something I can do,’ and suddenly in my 40s I decided I was going to play a sport and make it a contact sport on wheels! It’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” she said.

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