On game nights, the Romp n’ Roll in Glenshaw, Pa., fills up with roller derby fans twirling their Ragin’ Rags, a blood spotted parody of the Terrible Towel, proudly from the track’s perimeter.It is this crowd that motivates the body-slamming ladies of the Steel City Derby Demons to excel.The tough girls of the Steel City Derby Demons, Pittsburgh’s roller derby team, hope to extend their winning season during their home bout on April 21.“I just loved it from the start, ‘cause it was something about hitting girls on skates,” Zoe O’Reilly said after practice at the Romp N’Roll April 14.Known as Whiskey Mick in the rink, she is a “full”-blooded Irish skater with a blonde Mohawk.“I can wear a flippy skirt; I can hit really hard, and we’re running this from the ground up ourselves,” she said.The Demons tear up the track with their varsity team, the Steel Hurtin’, and their two junior varsity teams, B-Unit and the Blitzburgh Bombers. At their next home game, the Steel Hurtin’ and the B-Unit will take on the Ithaca, N.Y. SufferJets and the Blue Stockings, respectively.While the SufferJets will be debuting their first season unranked with the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) as an official league team, the Pittsburgh Steel Hurtin’ is ranked fourth on the East Coast. The girls will be battling their way to regionals and then nationals.The game of roller derby is a chaotic and brutal team sport, which is part of the appeal for the Demons.“There’s a huge amount of pride I take in myself for being able to knock girls three times my size down and to be successful and be part of a team,” Elsie Thudd, a petite but fast-skating brunette from the Blitzburgh Bombers, said during practice at the Romp N’Roll on April 14.The girls fall down frequently as the team plays a practice bout.After the whistle blows, girls with stars on their helmets take off and attempt to shove through a hoard of opponents that are trying to block them from lapping the track. Derby is a contact sport, so there is body slamming during each frenzied round.The girl with the star on her helmet is the “jammer,” and the point of the game is for her to pass the blockers on the other team. Simultaneously, her teammates stall the opposing jammer’s progress. For each passed blocker, the jammer receives a point with up to five points in a pass.A round can last for up to two minutes, but can be called off at any time by the “lead jam,” or the fastest jammer to lap the track during the first round.The Demons, who range from pint-sized and fast to solid and strong, are not about to let an opposing jammer dance circles around the track.While part of the roller derby identity is cute uniforms and clever nicknames, these girls are serious athletes as part of the WFTDA league and train to know the ins and outs of the game for success.Athena, a derby veteran since 2006 and member of the Steel Hurtin’, was on one of the original Pittsburgh teams, the B**ch Doctors.“I like the competition and the aggressiveness of it: the hitting, the strategizing … It is all women, so I really like that,” Athena said during a practice at the Romp N’ Roll April 14. “It seems to empower a lot of women. They become different people.”In the absence of a referee in practice games, the girls can play violently.There is an audible smack of flesh as girls fall to the floor left and right, some on their knees and some full body. Teammates scream to each other in constant communication over the frenzied noise of skates and tumbling teammates.The girls give it their all to block the jammers by creating walls of defense, grabbing each other’s hips and full out body slamming girls off the track. The competition is fierce with curses escaping some girls’ lips.In a normal bout the girls would be judged by a referee and could receive time in the penalty box for punching, kicking or elbowing.“Technically, the refs don’t see everything. It’s like hockey,” Jamie Mulvihill, “J-Bomb,” a coach for the B-Unit, said during practice on April 14.However, the WFTDA rules of roller derby leave a lot open for interpretation.According to these rules, the players cannot put their hands on the opposing team in any way or throw elbows or kick. Otherwise, the legal target zones are from the neck to the mid-thigh, allowing the girls to target these areas by body-slamming, tackling and hip checking as creatively and roughly as they can to knock out the other team.“It’s weirdly empowering to know you can get punched in the face and keep skating,” Mick said.“They respect you enough to hit you as hard as they can,” Kati Fishbein said.Since practice makes perfect, the teams practice two to three times a week, and some girls put in even more hours on the side to build the organization from the ground up.Fishbein, also known as “Thudd,” balances the team with being a full-time student and working two full-time jobs.“[Derby] is like a fly buzzing around your head. It’s always there, just not always immediately in front of you,” Fishbein said during practice on April 14 about her derby time dedication.The entire team is built around a grass roots effort. The girls are responsible for playing the game, promoting the team and keeping up the cost of maintaining it.“We make this happen. We make this move forward,” said Fishbein, who also manages the team’s online social networking on Facebook and Twitter and contributes to the monthly email newsletter.