ARD SU / NEXTGENRADIO
What is the meaning of
home?
Darrious Varner speaks with roller derby star and author Gabe Montesanti, who found support and connection at St. Louis Skatium in 2016. Montesanti came to St. Louis to acquire an MFA in creative nonfiction writing at Washington University. Estranged from her biological family, Montesanti found her queerness was not questioned on the track, but embraced. Through many broken bones, hard questions and deep personal growth, Montesanti was able to find balance, chosen family and a place to call home.
Roller derby: Broken bones and sense of home
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GABE MONTESANTI: I was recruited at a coffee shop by a woman who had a stack of flyers. She came up to me and she said, “You look like you’re really tough. You look like you could beat the crap out of somebody. You should come play roller derby.”
I’m Gabe Montesanti. I’m number 94 on the roller derby track, and my derby name is Joan of Spark.
I came to the St. Louis Skatium for recruit night. The first night we were not on skates at all, we simply learned about, like, the rules, like, there’s no ball in roller derby.
I’m standing in the St. Louis Skatium, which I very much consider my sacred space, my home.
I’m estranged from my biological family. They had issues with my queerness.
This family here, it’s the opposite of that. You know, their queerness is the norm.
I knew how to fit in, and I knew how to use my body in a way that would communicate, and I felt like I could do all the talking with my body, even though I didn’t know how to skate.
So right now they’re doing a series of contact drills that are two-on-ones. So there’s two blockers and one jammer, and if she gets through, then the drill is over and the blockers have failed.
I’ve been injured several times on the roller derby track. Starting almost immediately when I started playing roller derby I broke my thumb, and I couldn’t write, and that was the whole reason I came to St. Louis in the first place.
Roller derby is my chosen family. And I think all chosen families, all families in general, come with sacrifice, and the sacrifice for this family is dealing with the constant risk of injury.
So I’ll make it. I’ll choose that every time.
I’m standing in University City where I live and standing in Heman Park in front of Centennial Commons at the Heman Park pool, which is where I learned how to walk again after I broke my leg.
I was just skating a practice, and I tripped myself and I fell, and I knew the bone was broken right away. I could hear it crack.
I was a competitive swimmer from age 9 all through college, and as soon as I broke my leg, I just wanted to be buoyant.
I think my definition of home is where I have agency, and Arch Rival has given me the kind of agency that I haven’t had in a long time, and has given me the kind of empowerment I haven’t experienced in a long time.
My professors were starting to hear, you know, you’re talking about this, so much they were saying, write what you know. And so I started writing essays about roller derby.
This is an excerpt from my book Brace For Impact, which was published in 2022.
“This pool pulsing with sound on the rooftop of the worldwide roller derby convention, was the place where all the freaks and Queers and misfits commuted to from their typical place in the margins. I felt at home. ‘Miss Joan of Spark, is that you?’”
I thought to myself, I’d never imagined I would find a little place of Queer heaven like this.
What began as a routine roller derby practice in April 2017 at the St. Louis Skatium led to one of the most traumatic and difficult journeys that Gabe Montesanti would ever have to face.
Monstesanti was practicing a 180 — a spin move that is typically very simple — but she tripped in the process, leading to her fall and traumatic leg injury.
“I knew the bone was broken right away,” Montesanti said. “I could hear it crack.”
Montesanti didn’t want an ambulance. Instead, her teammates wheeled her to a car in a rickety old office chair and rushed her to the hospital.
This accident made her stop and question her priorities. But her teammates carried her through and showed her that this wasn’t just a sport, but a community.
Montesanti’s biological family was not accepting of her queer identity, and she has been estranged from them for some time now. In joining roller derby, she found a place of acceptance, a new home, where you could come as you are and be welcomed with open and loving arms.
She took on the derby name Gabe “Joan of Spark” Montesanti and the rest is history. Her team, Arch Rival Roller Derby, would go on to claim victory after victory, and are now ranked second in the world. They will compete this November for a global title in Portland, Oregon.
Gabe “Joan of Spark” Montesanti, 30, stands in front of the skate rental at St. Louis Skatium on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, in St. Louis’ Patch neighborhood. The South St. Louis locale has been Montesanti’s second home since the beginning of her derby career with Arch City Rivals.
DARRIOUS VARNER / NEXTGENRADIO
‘You look like you’re really tough’
While moving from Bowling Green to St. Louis for grad school for creative nonfiction, a random woman approached Montesanti and her now wife at a coffee shop. She had a pitch to make.
“‘You look like you’re really tough,’” Monesanti remembered the stranger saying. “‘You look like you could beat the crap out of somebody. You should come play roller derby.’”
Montesanti took a flier, inspired by this woman’s compliment and bravado. She went to St. Louis Skatium’s recruit night in 2016 and was hooked right away.
“The rest was history,” she said. “I mean, I started breaking bones and I started making friends and I started falling in love with the sport.”
And break bones she did. Almost immediately she broke her thumb, making it impossible to write, the reason she came to St. Louis. Even with the broken bones, roller derby became her top priority — rising above almost everything else.
“This became my complete obsession, and it almost took over my relationship with my girlfriend and my relationship with my education,” Montesanti said. “I had to really check myself to say, ‘What are the important things in my life and what matters,’ and really hone in on, ‘Okay, I’m here for an education. I’m here to be a partner to my girlfriend, who is now my wife. And roller derby comes down the list a little bit.’”
Gabe “Joan of Spark” Montesanti, 30, blocks an opposing player during a roller derby match in February 2023 at Midwest Sport Hockey at St. Louis County’s Queeny Park.
COURTESY / BOB DUNNELL
Supported through healing
After shattering her tibia and fibula, Montesanti was hospitalized for four days, and, thanks to a titanium rod, was able to start bearing weight after six weeks.
That healing journey was a pivotal time that showed her that despite the risk of injury, the derby team was not only her family, but her home.
“They stayed with me at the hospital,” Montesanti said. “They created a meal train for me. So they were dropping off meals for me when I couldn’t do anything.”
This love solidified that roller derby was the place Montesanti belonged. Her definition of home formed around the team.
“The support from my chosen family made me want to be a better member of the chosen family itself,” Montesanti recounts. She paid it back by finding a way to help other injured players.
Gabe Montesanti holds her skates at roller derby practice on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, at the St. Louis Skatium in St. Louis’ Patch neighborhood. While Montesanti is on the track, she is not skating after breaking a rib during competition.
DARRIOUS VARNER / NEXTGENRADIO
A postoperative x-ray of Gabe Montesanti’s injured leg after surgery in May 2017. The titanium rod near the tibia is screwed in near the knee and ankle.
COURTESY / GABE MONTESANTI
Gabe Montesanti, 30, shows off her tattoo on the back of her left leg parallel to where the titanium rod runs in her leg. The tattoo is inspired by Joan of Arc, who her derby name “Joan of Spark” is based on.
DARRIOUS VARNER / NEXTGENRADIO
“I collected a bank of items after I healed myself, I collected wheelchairs and crutches and shower chairs and things that I didn’t know that I would even need to heal.”
Montesanti not only created the community supply, but also built a spreadsheet to track who she loaned things out to. Derby inspired her to be a better person, she said.
“It makes me want to reach out to people who look like they might be having a bad day,” she added. “It makes me want to say hi to people … it really makes me want to be one piece of a moving unit rather than a singular person.”
All of this led Montesanti to write essays about roller derby and the passion she had for it. It helped her build and find a natural balance between school, her relationship and her roller derby career.
These essays culminated into Montesanti’s book Brace for Impact, published in 2022 by The Dial Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The title took inspiration from a phrase often said on the derby track, including, memorably, by a teammate who goes by Cruella Belleville.
“She said, ‘You really have to get low and brace for impact here, because you’re going to get hit hard.’ And I was just thinking how important of a line that is, both literally and metaphorically,” Montesanti said.
Through all of the bumps, bruises and breaks, St. Louis Skatium and Arch Rival Derby have become a sacred space for Montesanti.
“I think my definition of home is where I have agency,” Montesanti said. “And Arch Rival has given me the kind of agency that I haven’t had in a long time, and has given me the kind of empowerment that I haven’t experienced in a long time.”
Gabe “Joan of Spark” Montesanti (second from left) is pictured along with her Arch Rival Roller Derby teammates in 2022.
DARRIOUS VARNER / NEXTGENRADIO
Gabe Montesanti walks the trails of Heman Park on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in University City, Mo. The park is where Montesanti spent time relearning to walk and swim after her leg injury.
DARRIOUS VARNER / NEXTGENRADIO