enlarge Jill Brady/Staff Photographer

Those guardrails of the long-ago roller derby are gone. Now the skaters circle inbounds on the wooden Portland Expo floor, as Jones N., left, does for the Port Authorities.

enlarge Jill Brady/Staff Photographer

Between the action of the event and the mind-numbing music, Roller Derby in Portland keeps fans attentive.

enlarge Jill Brady/Staff Photographer

In a game against the Rhode Island Riveters, the Port Authorities are, well, riveted to the action while awaiting their opportunity. That’s Olive Spankins, right, and Patty O’Mean, second right.

enlarge Jill Brady/Staff Photographer

Patty O’Mean, left, makes contact with a Rhode Island skater. Roller Derby combines theatrics and sport. “It’s a serious sport and we work hard at it,” says Maureen Wissman.

enlarge Jill Brady/Staff Photographer

The element of theatrics remains in the names and some attire of the skaters. That’s Jacked Rabbit, center in the fishnet, and Killer Quick, right, of the Port Authorities.

UPCOMING BOUTS

MAY 17: Connecticut Stepford Sabotage at Port Authorities

JUNE 7: Providence Killah Bees at Calamity Janes

JUNE 28: Calamity Janes at Hudson Valley (N.Y.) Horrors

All home bouts at Portland Expo, 6 p.m.

The line snaked outside the ancient Portland Expo on a foggy Saturday night in April, the same night figure skaters Sasha Cohen and Todd Eldredge twirled across the ice of the Cumberland County Civic Center a mile away.

Fans on Park Street gathered to see skaters of a different ilk, local women such as Kathy Yattaw who prefer four wheels to a steel blade, fishnet stockings and padded helmets to sequined dresses, and nightclub grunge to the elegant spotlight.

Welcome to the world of roller derby, which at first glance seems as if cast members from the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" stumbled into the Star Wars bar and after tossing back a few, decided to improvise a NASCAR skit, only with roller skates instead of stock cars.

"The girls dress up to be a bit scandalous, but it's still a family event," said 27-year-old Derek Logan of Boston as he waited to buy a ticket outside the Expo. "It never gets too rowdy."

Oh, but it does get raucous, as Yattaw discovered an hour later in her derby debut, arms upraised in triumph, face aglow, many in a crowd of 995 chanting her name amid the type of goosebump-raising scene that normally requires a buzzer-beating basket or walk-off home run.

"To do derby is to dig deep and find something in yourself you don't necessarily find in day-to-day life," said Yattaw, a manager at O'Natural's restaurant in Portland's Old Port. "You have to be truly athletic in order to do this."

If you remember roller derby from a rabbit-eared Philco TV, with Joanie Weston and her San Francisco Bay Bombers wheeling around a banked track and knocking opponents over railings, some updating is in order. That incarnation died decades ago, in part because of its cartoonish qualities.

"What we might call old-school derby was more along the lines of pro wrestling," said Maureen Wissman, a member of a local roller derby team, the Port Authorities. "A lot of it was staged."

Wissman, 30, works at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service. She has a degree in philosophy. But her passion is roller derby, where her nom de guerre is Killer Quick.

"I have never loved or cared about anything in my life as much as I do about roller derby," Wissman said. "That sounds like hyperbole, but it's true."

Derby's resurgence in Maine is 2 years old, a grass-roots revival spurred by a documentary called "Rollergirls" about a team from Austin, Texas.

"When I saw it I said, 'That's it!'" said Amber Olesen, aka The Mom Bomb and captain of the Port Authorities, who hosted a bout at the Expo against the Rhode Island Riveters in April and the Long Island (N.Y.) Rebels on Saturday night. "To be aggressive and active and form these amazing friendships -- and they still had families and day jobs. I watched the show and decided I had to move to Texas."

Instead, Olesen joined the growing movement in Maine, one that has now includes a roster of 38 women between the ages of 21 and 38.

Maine Roller Derby, the umbrella organization for the Port Authorities, is owned and operated by the skaters, all of them women. Their contests are played under the rules of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA).

Flat track means no banked turns. At the Expo, the women skate counterclockwise around an oval track marked by thin rope taped to the gym's wooden floor.

Each team sends out five skaters: a pivot, three blockers and a jammer, the latter distinguished by a bold star she wears over her helmet. As in football, action is intermittent, with jams of up to two minutes allowing jammers to score a point for each opposing skater she laps.

To continue the football analogy, think of jammer as ballcarrier, blockers as interior linemen and pivot as free safety, the last line of defense.

Rival jammers start 30 feet behind everyone else, and the first to fight her way through the pack and pass the opposing pivot...