Kelli KrushHer, Roller Derby Girl
Most evenings Kori McKenzie puts her headset down on her desk, walks out the door of Delta Education in Nashua, New Hampshire, where she works as a customer service rep, and heads to her Nashua home. But some nights Kori transforms herself into Kelli KrushHer – roller derby girl.
As Kelli, she pulls on fishnet stockings, tiny frilly red panties, and a black tank top. With cement-like hair gel she spikes up the blonde skunk stripe running down the center of her hair and paints the tips red for her “cockadoodle-do”. She laces up her black quad skates with the lime green and orange wheels. And Kelli KrushHer looks over her opponents and swaggers, “I’m gonna crush ‘em and knock ‘em all on the ground like bowling pins.”
Kelli KrushHer plays in the New Hampshire Roller Derby league for the Skate Free or Die Rollergirls. She is one of the energetic and untamed women who formed this extreme sport team in July 2007. The Rollergirls played their first public scrimmage on August 2, at the JFK Coliseum in Manchester, New Hampshire after over a year of practicing and building the team.
Looking at the 28 year old Kelli, you can hardly imagine her knocking others down like bowling pins. Her thin and delicate 5’ 6” frame weighs in at a mere 116 pounds. Her hazel eyes and broad smile belie the hard-hitting strong and powerful woman she is. Missing from her skin are any tattoos, unusual on a team decorated with ink artwork. “I’m known as the clean slate,” she says in reference to her lack of tattoos. The only mark on Kelli’s body during a scrimmage is her number 33 in washable ink on her upper arms.
Before there was Kelli, Kori was a speed skater and dance skater who learned to roller skate and ice skate at two years old. She was born in Exeter and since age two has lived in Nashua. “Skating is a passion,” she says. “My single mother would bring my sister and me to the playground across the street from our house, and we ice skated on ice patches by the see saws and swing sets.”