Published on September 15th, 2015 | by Andy Frye
Between Jams: Susy Pow
Susy Pow just moved to Colorado for the beautiful scenery and to join the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls, where she now plays for the travel team, The 5280 Fight Club.
Pow started derby in 2009, first with Newcastle Roller Derby League in Australia and then Charm City. She also played in the first World Cup for Team Australia, plus was a part of Team Maryland, Team Atom, and is a founding member of Team OOPR. She has lots to say that’s all good. Just don’t check her math.
(Photo by Jules Doyle.)
Yep. Susy Pow is my real name (It’s Susan, actually). I have some great nicknames though. Pow Pow, The Dingo, Sozzle, Charm City call me Sozy, Team MD call me Other Pow, Boston’s announcers call me The Powster.
I’m from Australia, which explains my brilliant accent. Being an Aussie in the US is a daily experience in hilarity, patience and playing along because yes, I’ve never heard that thing about the knife.
Almost every day one of my teammates messages me “very serious” questions about kangaroos, dingos, drop bears, and spiders.
I just moved to Colorado and I love it. I can see the great outdoors from my desk. I am constantly astonished by the beauty and variety of terrain the US has to offer and pretty freaking stoked that roller derby allows me the opportunity to see so much of it.
My new teammates at Rocky Mountian are the bees knees. I watched two of my teammates kill it on The Amazing Race in 2013 and these awesome nerds got to keep a Hydra for a whole year!
While moving I missed RollerCon. What I love about RollerCon is that the whole thing is serious balls-to-the-wall roller derby backed up by poolside shenanigans. It’s like 6 days of after parties with real talk, 1,000 of my favorite people and 3,000 people I’ve never met.
One of the first valuable lessons I gained from playing roller derby is turn up to practice early, leave your shit at the door and get ready to work hard. If practice is harder than playing, you’re on the right track. Jamming is hard work… It’s 75% mental, 15% agility and 35% physical strength.
Possibly the most fun thing about roller derby is treating gravity like it’s optional. Jumping the apex is something I try to pressure people into doing when I coach. Realizing that you can do the scariest thing ever on roller skates while four people try to knock you down is probably the most liberating thing.
I have also officiated. Life as a referee is pretty weird but really, really gratifying. When you jump into somebody else’s skates for an hour, you realize so much about your own body movement and how it translates into penalties (womp womp). If there were three more days in the weekend, I would totally jump at the chance to ref on the reg.
My longtime shirt number, Top 5, comes from the Nick Hornby book “High Fidelity”, which is about this idiot comic romantic dude who owns a semi-failing record store and spends his days failing at love and enumerating every damn thing in his life. It’s high up there on my desert island all-time top five favorite novels.
I’m a big music fan. The Australian hardcore punk scene was the first sub-culture I got involved in but if you heard me singing in the shower today I’d be changing up the lyrics to Taylor Swift. But don’t tell anyone.
Non-roller derby people I know might describe me as a cat enthusiast.
I have a big personality and I don’t take myself too seriously. My best friend has video evidence of me prancing around her living room with her 6 year old daughter in a fairy costume.
I used to start each day by singing “Walking on Sunshine” to serenade my cat Scrabble. And yeah, one time Scrabble went missing and I accidentally “stole” someone else’s similar looking cat for almost 24 hours.
If I wasn’t a roller derby player, I’d make a damn good self-aware robot.
Latest posts by Andy Frye (see all)
- Between Jams: Gnar Gnar Jinx - November 19, 2015
- Between Jams: Whitney Griffin - November 17, 2015
- Between Jams: Photographers Speak - November 3, 2015
About the Author
Andy Frye Andy Frye writes about derby for Fiveonfive and has written for a variety of other sports publications. As LeBron Shames, he skates with the Chicago Bruise Brothers.
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