Skater Profile

Skater Profile: Suzy Hotrod of the Queens of Pain

by: Thomas Gerbasi

The Heart and Soul of Suzy Hotrod
by Thomas Gerbasi

If you’ve ever seen Suzy Hotrod skate, odds are you’ll never forget it. Blessed with a charisma that matches her talent, the jammer for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby All-Stars and the Queens of Pain has the kind of presence that appeals to all demographics – from your 70-year old grandfather to your teenage daughter.

So what’s the secret?

Is it the fire and flair that accompanies each jam?

The warpaint under her eyes for every match?

The flaming helmet?

Well, Suzy has her own explanation.

“This is just me, and my daily life is not that far off from my derby life,” she said. “I don’t have a dual-personality – this is just who I am. I played in bands for years, and I’m comfortable with performance, so I don’t feel any different at the practice rink than I do in the game. I like spontaneity and I like to thrive at what’s thrown at me - I can be quick-witted like that and for me it’s natural. If other people respond to it, that’s cool because I’m just doing my thing. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but I’m polite, I practice really hard, so if people like it, then that’s great.”

Above: Suzy Hotrod jams at the 2009 WFTDA Championships. Photo: Joe Rollerfan

Sounds easy enough, but on the track, there’s nothing simple about success that has seen the New Jersey native win league MVP awards in 2006 and 2009 while earning recognition as one of the nation’s top jammers. And in the midst of her sixth season with the GGRD, she appears to be getting even better, as evidenced by her team-record 84 points last Saturday in Queens’ win over Brooklyn.

Yet as she puts it, “I’m not a kid who gets straight A’s without studying,” so her continued excellence comes down to the barest of essentials – she simply works as hard as she can. That type of work ethic can wear on you, especially if you’ve been doing it for six years while juggling a day job and, in Suzy’s case, a busy music performance schedule in punk bands such as Lady Unluck and Kissy Kamikaze. Amazingly, she doesn’t feel burned out.

“I think I’m the exception because this is my whole entire life,” she said. “If I didn’t do it [derby] I’d be burned out and depressed.”

Yet with such a hectic schedule, something eventually had to give, and for Suzy, it was her time playing music – at least for now.

“I quit my band because I didn’t have enough time because of skating,” she admits. “I don’t miss it because I’m full still. I know who I am and it’s like the paint’s dry on this one – I know I’ll always play music. I can’t skate forever; my body can’t physically do that forever, but I can play music forever. I love music, I listen to it every day, I read books about it, I watch TV about it, but it wasn’t difficult at all to step away because if I want to do it, I’ll do it and go back, and if I don’t, I won’t.”

Above: Suzy Hotrod jams vs the Brooklyn Bombshells in July, 2010.  Photo: Chris Chin.

And music’s temporary loss is derby’s gain, much to the chagrin of future opponents who have to contend with her unique brand of jamming. For the uninitiated, look at it like this: if her GGRD All-Stars teammate Bonnie Thunders is ice, then Suzy Hotrod is fire. Thunders skates around opposing blockers as if she has an electric force field surrounding her. Suzy, while able to pull off the juke and dash with the best of them, prefers to go through blockers on the inside of the track, a high-impact strategy that thrills fans and makes her the focal point of whatever team she’s on. She’s comfortable in that spotlight, but she also makes it clear that it’s far from a one-woman show on the track.

“I think we’re all expected to perform the same no matter who we are, at least from the bench coaches and from each other,” she said. “We know it’s a team; it’s not Suzy and the Queens, it’s the Queens team and it’s everybody. I think I have responsibilities to perform in the game, but I expect the same out of me that I do of everybody else.”

Above: Suzy works with Kandy Kakes against Providence at the 2009 WFTDA East Regionals.  Photo: Brian Macke

At the same time, as the sport’s mainstream profile grows, there will be an added focus on the league’s jammers, as the US culture is based on a love of scoring – whether it’s the home run, the touchdown, or the knockout – so those athletes have to be ready to be the frontwomen for the league, ready to answer questions not only about themselves, but about the league and the sport, while also dealing with the misconceptions that are left over from the early days of derby.

“It’s about educating people too,” said Suzy. “The average person doesn’t really know what it [derby] is, or maybe they’ve kinda heard about it, and that’s a positive and a negative. We have this ancestral 'roller derby' that people are pop culture-familiar with, and they have that one blip in their brain but they don’t know much more than that. So we have a responsibility to educate if we have the opportunity, like spinning questions in a way where we can include a lot of information about what we do and clarify the vague ideas that people may have. If people have a vague idea, that’s better than no idea; it doesn’t matter. If they come and think that we’re gonna wrestle, I don’t even care. They’re there and they’ll see what it is. But it’s a growing pain for sure. People don’t understand that it’s not on a banked track, they don’t understand that we don’t flip over chairs and stuff, but if they know enough to actually walk in the door, for us, that’s a big win for us. And I can’t say that anybody would walk away not interested. If people expect certain things, that’s cool with me. If we fought [during bouts], then I would fight (Laughs); I would do whatever I had to do.”

Above: Suzy works the inside line against Manhattan in May, 2010.  Photo: Brendan McMullen

Needless to say, Suzy is far from a shrinking violet when it comes to bringing entertainment value to the track or dealing with the media. The way she sees it, it’s part of the job.

“Athletes don’t get out of the spotlight any more than a movie celebrity does,” she said. “Athletes, a lot of times, do the same types of junket-type things and it’s important. If people enjoy talking to me or want to talk to me, I’ll always talk to them. I don’t have a need to run out and seek it, but if it comes my way I’m naturally comfortable fielding it. I’m not somebody who runs around constantly taking pictures of my own head (Laughs), but if other people want to take a picture of me, I’m not gonna say I’m uncomfortable with it – it’s fine, I love it, and it’s great.”

Of course, not everyone is as comfortable under the glare of the bright lights, and the league has gone to great lengths to prepare skaters for the eventuality that there will be interviews, photo shoots, and other media obligations. And being in the media capital of the world, the oven is a little bit hotter, especially if you aren’t an athlete who’s been groomed for this type of thing since grade school.

“When they jump in, they (rookie skaters) don’t only learn how to skate; they take a press class and understand the facts about who we are and what we do, because the thing is, in New York, you’re representing the whole country,” Suzy explains. “Why? Because some magazine writer is not gonna fly across the country when they can walk right over here and talk to you [in New York].”

Oddly enough, despite being the consummate pro on and off the track, until derby came along, Suzy was far from active on the athletic scene. In fact, her previous athletic endeavors ended in her freshman year of high school.

“I was athletic in my younger years, but I completely lost interest in high school and was totally turned off to sports,” said Suzy, who previously ran track and played basketball. “I didn’t like the people that played, they weren’t my friends, and I didn’t understand the whole fascination with being like ‘Al Bundy, high school football superhero.’ It was really lame to me. And this sounds a little weird, but I didn’t want to have to play sports in college on a scholarship because I thought it would totally ruin college for me.”

And once she found the marching band, the die was cast.

“This [band] is a class?” she laughed. “I would much rather do this than math, absolutely.”

Above: Suzy in action against Manhattan in May, 2010.  Photo: Tom Igoe.

After putting down her track shoes and high-tops, a degree from the School of Visual Arts and jobs as a photographer and photo editor followed, along with guitar playing gigs in various bands, leaving little time for athletic pursuits, not that she was thinking about them at the time.

“I wasn’t physically active for a long time,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about hopping on a treadmill or lifting weights.”

But like most things, fate has a way of working its way into the picture, and through a friend in one of her bands, she found her true calling.

“My friend Cecilia said, ‘My friend Karin started this thing called roller derby.’ I had just finished college, and I had a lot more time, so I said ‘I can’t skate, but I’ll go check it out. I didn’t think I could actually do it.”

[Note: Cecilia became C.C. Bullets of the original Manhattan Mayhem, and Karin became Chassis Crass of the original Brooklyn Bombshells.]

Admitting that her previous skating experience consisted of rolling around at birthday parties (“five dollars in the card and brown skates parties,” she chuckles), she still went all in, and eventually the Punk Priestess became a Derby Queen.

“Once I pick something, I just never, ever quit it,” she said. “Sometimes to my demise, but I’m the last man standing. If it’s something I’ve decided on, it’s 110 percent, it absolutely has to be.”

But when you give that much to something, something else has to give. For her, it was music.

“I wasn’t giving 110 percent anymore,” she said. “I’m going to do derby – derby’s everything to me.”

And while the popular phrase is “Derby saved my soul,” in Suzy’s case, it may be more than a catchy statement.

“I’m not into crazy drinking anymore and I’m not into going out until four in the morning,” she said. “But I am into working really hard and sweating, and falling asleep at 11 because I worked so hard. It was fun to play in a band, but how rewarding was it to be out all night and not even being able to function the next day because you were out until six in the morning? It’s more of an empty feeling.”

That’s not the case with derby.

“It’s so rewarding,” she said. “All the work that goes in shows a very concrete reward. There are people there and they’re not people I begged to go there, and it’s really fulfilling. Sometimes when you play music, you put in effort and get very little in return. There are a thousand bands, so why go see you, and it’s really a tough hustle. In this, you put in a lot of work and there’s actually this humongous return, which is really rewarding.”

When she talks about roller derby, the intensity and passion you see on the track travels over the phone line, and it’s clear why she’s one of the best in the game. She simply won’t settle for anything less than her best effort, and she’s enjoying every minute of this ride. So don’t ask her about tomorrow – there’s too much to get done today.

“For me, I haven’t done anything as good as I do this, so whatever happens doesn’t matter,” she said. “Hopefully it just keeps growing. I’ll be here either way no matter what, so I don’t really want to predict the future.”

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Watch Suzy Hotrod score a Queens-record 84 points on Wednesday night, July 21, on NYC life (Channel 25 / 22), at 11:30pm

Suzy Hotrod and her All-Star teammates take on the All-Stars of Madison, Wisconsin's Mad Rollin' Dolls on Sunday, July 18th, at 11am, with a textcast available on line at www.derbynewsnetwork.com/live

The Queens of Pain next play at home on Saturday, August 7th, vs. the Bronx Gridlock at Hunter College (68th Street and Lexington Ave.).  Tickets are available at www.ggrdtix.com.