Name: Shine-Her
Number: 937
Travel Team: All Stars
Home Team: Moonshine Moxies
Years skating: 1
She moved from rookie to All Star in just a few months, and there’s no stopping her in her second year with HKRD! Get to know this month’s featured skater: Shine-Her!
You were nominated by Gnarly Davidslam, who wants to know how joining derby has changed your life.
Yes, I mean derby has super changed my life! I’ve been playing for just over a year now, which feels like a small amount of time, but in practice, felt very, very long. I feel like I have a whole new family, which Kilty tells us that when we first start, but you don’t really believe it until you’re a year in and you’re like, “Oh wait, these are my people now!” I think it’s definitely helped me find my spot here in Knoxville too because I had moved to Knoxville really shortly before I joined derby, so it definitely helped me find my footing here, and just find friends, and confidence, and a little bit of humility because how many other sports are you able to fall on your face a thousand times and have people cheer for you because you fell down nicely? So yeah, I think it’s a bunch of little things that create one big happy derby feeling.
What brought you to Knoxville?
So I actually moved here for my boyfriend. He was in grad school at the time at UT, so we made the jump over from Asheville. We’ve been here for about a year and a half now.
How does Knoxville compare to Asheville?
Very different! We’re definitely finding our better spots in Knoxville now, but it was a little bit of a hard transition coming from a super small, artsy, little community, stuck in the mountains, to a little bit more suburban living. But we’re liking it, we’re finding our spots, we like our apartment. It’s a good spot now.
Had you played sports as a kid?
Absolutely! I played a lot of team sports growing up, from soccer and softball in the summers to basketball. My biggest sport was volleyball. I played varsity all throughout high school. So lots of team sports.
What volleyball position did you play?
I was an outside hitter.
I keep the books for the middle school volleyball, so (I never played it) but it’s a lot of fun to watch.
It is! When I was in middle school, I started as a middle hitter, but then I stopped growing and everyone else kept growing, so I became an outside hitter.
I mean, you’re not short, by any means!
I am not! But for a volleyball player, I’m short!
Is there anything from volleyball that you can feel translates to derby?
I mean, definitely the teamwork, because in volleyball and in derby there’s a lot of team last-ditch efforts. There’s a lot of Hail Mary plays that are made in volleyball: you have to dive, hope you catch the ball. In derby, you have to run and chase the jammer, and hope you get her, and you hope your team goes with you. So it’s a lot of that, and a lot of trust goes with that. A lot of teamwork in general.
So then how did you discover derby?
Derby’s always been one of those things that was in the back of my mind. Like everybody else, I watched Whip It in high school and said, “Oh, that’s the coolest thing ever!” Not really thinking about it until I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, after I graduated college, and they had a team and I was kind of always thinking, “Oh, maybe one day I can join, maybe one day, that would be so fun, I think I’d be good at that.” But I was working every weekend, so I knew it probably wasn’t the best time to do that. When we moved to Knoxville, I just happened to see on Facebook that oh, there is in fact a derby team, and oh, by the way, we’re doing open call/come-and-meet-us events. My boyfriend was like, “You have to go—you have to go!” Because I had mentioned it so many times. So that’s kind of the long story of, it’s been a slow burn that I finally just bit the bullet and did it.
You usually play as a blocker. What do you enjoy about blocking?
I like being a blocker a lot. I like feeling strong. I feel like a blocker is a great position: when a jammer hits you and you don’t move, you feel so powerful, so I love that. And I like the team effort too, where it’s, you know, three or four on one. You’re really working with your other players to stop someone as a common goal, which is, I think, always fun too, because then when you do something well, everyone’s excited with you. Plus it’s just fun knocking people over!
What have been some of your favorite derby moments?
My first one was probably just the very, very first bout of the year when we were in Columbia [South Carolina]. I had only been playing for a few months, and I was about to have my first bout, and it was the most terrifying experience, but I got to do it with a couple other people who were also completely brand new, and all of us together just kind of looking at us together like, “We’re officially derby players—this is it, we did it, we’re officially derby players!” That was the highlight.
And then another one was my first Brawlers bout. I got MVP Blocker, so that just felt really really good, that all my hard work was starting to pay off. Those are probably my two best.
How did you decide on your skater name and number?
So mine was pretty easy, I don’t have a very fun story. It’s my last name, basically, just spelled a little differently. Spelled correctly, some might say. I knew I wanted to play something with the name Shine, I didn’t really know what, so I turned to my team and was like, “Hey, what would be fun?” And they said, “Ooh, Shinner’s kind of cool, and we could make it Shine-Her because it’s derby and that’s what we do.” So it kind of just became Shine-Her! And my number, 937, is my area code from where I grew up in Dayton, Ohio.
Do you have any goals for this upcoming 2023 season?
Yeah, so I want to become a better pivot. I think that’s something that I definitely have in my wheelhouse that I want to get better at. I think that’d be great, especially as a brace, I feel like I’m usually in the position to be a pivot, so I want to get better at that, which basically just comes down to getting a little bit better at jamming, which is so hard, but I know I can do it.
What is your biggest struggle that you’d like to overcome with jamming this season?
I mean, endurance is always hard. That’s why it’s nice being a pivot, because you don’t have to endure quite as long most of the time, but I think my biggest struggle is the agility that comes with quick, super quick movements. I’m definitely, when I do jam and when I block, I’m definitely a heavy-footed, ‘push push push’ type skater. Sometimes [it] works perfectly when you’re trying to jam, other times it is a complete failure, and I haven’t fully figured out how to get the agility to be able to scoot around people.
What is something that most people wouldn’t guess about you?
I can always go back to my favorite fun fact (which I actually put on the Facebook page this year for derby) was that I was a dancer all through my childhood. I was a dancer and I actually originally went to school for theater, which is nowhere near where I ended up! I feel like that’s one of my super fun facts, that I originally thought I was going to be an actress.
So what do you do now? What is your job?
Now I am a live event producer. So I travel all over the country and put on beer festivals, and music festivals, and food festivals, and wine festivals, and all of these different kinds of one or two day festivals. Lots of travel, but it’s a lot of fun.
What’s been a favorite festival that you’ve gotten to put on or help with?
Ooh…I love doing wine festivals. I got to do one of those last May, which was really fun. That was actually my first festival back at this company after COVID, so it was both a trial by fire, had to kind of throw myself back in it, but it was really enjoyable to be able to pick all of the different wines we got to drink, and all that fun stuff.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I love hiking, that’s one of my favorite things. Love to explore the mountains. I have two cats I like to spend lots of time with. My boyfriend and I are big binge watching people, so we always have some sort of show on in the background, love doing that. I also love to read.
What advice do you have for people who want to play roller derby?
To just give it a shot! I feel like that’s been the hardest thing, is just going for it. And I think that’s more than just starting it, it’s every single practice, there’s definitely a time in my head where I have to tell myself: just try, just do it, you never know, it might look impossible when somebody who’s been playing for ten years does something, but I’m never going to know until I try it. So just getting out I think is the best advice you can give anybody.
Who do you want to nominate for next month, and what question do you want to ask?
I would like to nominate my big derby sis, Sinister Siren. I know she’s had an interesting career with COVID kind of smack in the middle of her derby experience, so I kind of want to know what derby’s like now that she’s transitioned into more of a vet role.
Thank you for a great conversation, Shine-Her! We are so glad that life brought you to Knoxville and that you have become a part of the Hard Knox Roller Derby family! Until next time readers, be like Shine-Her and just give some challenge in your life a shot—no matter how tough it is, you are tougher!