Jamming and blocking her way around a roller derby rink, Bonny Patrick looks every bit the part of her nickname — the Sweet Assassin.
Surprisingly, she didn’t take up skating until 14 years ago, when she turned 49 and was looking for a new hobby.
“It was that or ride a motorcycle … and road rash didn’t seem very attractive to me,” Patrick, known as Bon to her friends, said.
Instead, she took up a fast-paced, full-contact sport.
She started by finding a local roller-skating club.
“I literally went from hugging the wall to skating in 10 weeks,” she said. At the end of that time, she passed a minimum skills test for roller derby that required skating 25 laps in five minutes or less.
A cool-sounding moniker is part of the roller derby appeal. Patrick worked with IT systems for 23 years for Sedgwick County, first for the sheriff’s department and then the district attorney’s office. She credits a local attorney with suggesting Sweet Assassin, a name that juxtaposes Patrick’s outgoing, fun demeanor with her drive.
Her teammates often just call her Sweet. To complete the persona, her jersey number is 187, the penal code for murder.
About six years ago, Patrick ramped up her roller derby game and started participating on regional teams such as the Usual Suspects — a Kansas City-based team she joined last year — and TBD, which stands for Team Bad Derby. The Usual Suspects claimed a championship in Kansas City last month.
Her retirement last year freed up time to join more teams, including out-of-state and ones where she can find more diversity and inclusion as a woman of color.
Bonny Patrick
“I go wherever I can skate just because I love the sport. It’s very fun.”
In roller derby, each team puts four blockers and one jammer on the track. The jammer, who wears a star on her helmet, has to pass the other team’s blockers and make a full lap to score points. The blockers play defense and try to keep the other team’s jammer from scoring. Patrick has played both positions but tends to play the jammer more often.
Patrick estimates she’s participated in more than 400 games. Her favorite league is USA Roller Sports.
“It’s faster and it feels more competitive,” Patrick said. Plus, she likes the fact that USARS is open to all ages and has mixed-gender teams.
She spends a lot of time on skates, with nightly practices Tuesday through Thursday, two sessions on Saturdays and one on Sunday at the Roller City rink near 32nd Street and South Meridian. The roller derby season runs from January through October.
She also skates between 126 to 175 trail miles a month, which means she’s clocking miles outdoors. A board member of the National Association for Justice Information Systems, Patrick skated the famed Las Vegas Boulevard when she attended the recent NAJIC conference in Sin City.
A former runner, she didn’t count on roller derby being a mentally intense sport. It requires fast thinking while zipping around in circles to prevent or score on opponents.
It’s also physically challenging.
“At 63, I never thought that I would choose a sport where I would be bent down and hunched over like I was sitting on a toilet. But it’s a workout, and I really do like it.”
And she’s not ready to hang up her competitive skates anytime soon, as she plans on “giving it another two years,” at least.
Patrick said she’s always been active. At the 45th reunion of her Wichita South High School graduating class, a former classmate remarked that she didn’t remember Patrick as being athletic. The next day, Patrick showed up in her high school letter jacket.
Recently, she’s taken up inline skating and plans to compete in her first inline competition with the Team United speed team in February. Inline skates have their wheels arranged in a single row, while the quad skates used in roller derby have two front and two rear wheels.
Patrick likes the challenge that speed skating presents since it requires her to push herself to keep bettering her time and distance, she said.
“I’m hoping to conquer the inlines. I like competing against myself.”
Contact Amy Geiszler-Jones at algj64@sbcglobal.net.
