Hilary Rosensteel, better known as Rosie the Rioter to fans of the Charm City Roller Girls, offers sage advice to those who think this might be the life for them.

•"No. 1, you have to like to sweat. It is a sport. Roller derby definitely draws a lot of people for different reasons, a lot of creative types. But there's also people who have never played sports before. I think people leave sometimes because they don't like sweating."

•"You really have to like skating. There are people who love sports, but if you don't like rolling and you can't adapt to it … If you're gonna be a derby girl, you gotta like skating."

•"You really need a good attitude. I've seen lots of people leave because they can't work well with others and they don't like the requirements. You have to be a team player, and to be a team player, you really need a good attitude, because not only on your own team are there 15 people, but there's like 100 people in the league right now. You really need to try and learn to get along with people."

•"You really need to be willing to give up a lot, if not most or all, of your free time. With any sport, whether it's professional or amateur, to be good at it, you really do need to give a lot of your time. Especially if you didn't grow up skating and you're not a speed skater. We are an all-volunteer organization, so you have to be willing to volunteer some time to make all this awesome stuff happen."

•"You have to really just be aggressive. You have to be kind of an aggressive person in general, and you have to have that desire, and want and need to win and be competitive. I've seen people who have left derby because they didn't want to get hit, they didn't want to skate that hard, they didn't like that they were mean. You have to want it, want to just get out there and eat somebody's face for breakfast."

Chris Kaltenbach