Marcelle Irvine is the EHS assistant principal. Each day she has a lot to do and she said “I do a lot of different things, so I run a lot of meetings with a lot of the teachers, I also go into the teacher’s classrooms I give the teachers feedback on how they’re doing. I teach them new instructional strategies. I work very closely with the principal or help sometimes with discipline, so I’m kind of all over the place.”

Irvine is on a roller derby team she plays for the Rocky Mountain RollerGirls. She started after playing rugby but she couldn’t anymore because she was injured and she said “So I used to play rugby. I’m a little tough, and I need an outlet to be able to hit people that sound really awful. I can’t play rugby anymore because I broke my neck two and a half years ago, so I broke my neck snowboarding. So I had to get surgery and I have a metal plate in my neck now, so they won’t let me play rugby anymore”

Irvine got into derby as an outlet, “So I needed to find another sport that I really would enjoy, and where I could be a little bit tough, and some of my friends from rugby had joined roller derby and so I thought that would be a fun one to choose.” She is on the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls, but there are two Denver leagues. There are about fifteen women on each team and four teams.

The type of training Irvine does is very long, “We practice twice a week for two hours each, and then we scrimmage on Mondays for two hours. So we play for six hours a week and we kind of break it up with doing skill practice and working on footwork and skating. Then we also do some fitness training during practice as well. One of the things that you really have to do in roller derby is having a strong core.”

Rocky Mountain Roller Girls touts itself as one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. According to its website, flat-track roller derby is a full-contact sport that combines all of the action from hockey with the speed of racing.

If you are interested in signing up, you can go to the RockyMountainRollerGirls.com or Denverrollerderby.com

There is also a junior league for girls who are under the age of 18.