Associated Press (AP.org) - The real, roller derby a smash hit with teen girls

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When she looks out across a banked wooden track where a couple dozen girls in crash helmets and roller skates are pushing, shoving, slipping and falling, Rebecca Ninburg sees a lot more than just kids having a raucous good time.

"That's the future right there. That's the next generation," says Ninburg, better known in the roller derby world as Demolicious, co-founder of the Los Angeles Derby Dolls skating league.

As if to make her point, 8-year-old Little RegulateHer, one of the stars of the Junior Derby Dolls, bursts out of the pack and, in a scene worthy of the film "Whip It," goes on to lap every other skater on the track.

After jamming her way past her much bigger opponents for five quick points ("I'm little so they don't see me coming," she explains later), the 4-foot-6-inch whirlwind stumbles, takes a hard face-first fall, gets back up and goes around again.

Roller derby, once a comical exhibition dismissed by athletic purists as not much more than pro wrestling on skates, has made another comeback. Only this time it's a legitimate, female-empowering sport for little girls, and there's nothing fake about the blocking and bumping. Or the pushing, shoving and occasional clobbering. As well as the bumps and bruises that go with it.

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