ST. PETERSBURG

Alex Whitmore's doctor doesn't understand why she plays roller derby.

Time after time, injury after grisly injury, the orthopedist has begged her to stop, to think about what she's doing to her body.

But he knows it's no use. The first words out of her mouth are always the same:

"When can I skate again?"

She's gone to see him so many times that he can't imagine what could possibly keep pulling her back into a sport that's left her with a broken leg, a cracked collarbone, a fractured eye socket and more sprains than she cares to count.

But for Whitmore and her Deadly Rival Roller Derby teammates, the Slayground is far more than a track.

It's a therapist's office. A proving ground. A stage. A retreat.

An oasis.

The Slayground doesn't look like much. It's an old warehouse at 4033 35th St. N that still looks like an old warehouse.

That's on the outside. On the inside, surrounded by graffiti-covered walls, sits one of only a handful of banked roller derby tracks in the country.

The sport first started on banked tracks in the 1930s. The track was raised up on stilts, so the top was several feet higher than the bottom. If you wiped out at the top of a banked track, it was a long way down.

Today, Deadly Rival Roller Derby is one of only eight leagues nationwide that uses banked tracks. That puts the women who compete in the St. Petersburg league in an elite group.

Roller derby is like ballet with shoulder pads. Imagine combining the finesse of speed skater Apolo Ohno with the tackling of linebacker Lavonte David and the fearlessness of gymnast Simone Biles, everyone skating as if they were trying to merge onto Interstate 275 on a 30-degree incline.

The women work hard to keep the Slayground open. They hold yard sales and car washes and charge admission at bouts to pay off the warehouse's mortgage, to keep the league going.

Monthly dues only cover a portion of cost. When they can't raise enough money, the rest comes out of their pockets.

• • •

Whitmore's derby persona, Suzie B. Catastophe, is her polar opposite.

Off the track, Whitmore is quiet and a little timid. She's 27, the mother of an 8-year-old boy, a pharmacy technician making her second run at a nursing degree. A derby injury kept her from completing clinicals the first time around.

Her patients are always telling her what a sweetheart she is.

But that's not who she is at the Slayground.

"Here, it's like my alter ego," she said. "It's my chance to put myself out there. It's my chance to be my most loudest, proudest, most out there, social person."

Her patients have never seen Suzie B. careening through a pack of blockers, barreling into anyone in her way.

For many players, creating a derby persona boosts their confidence on the track. It's like flipping a switch. Becoming Miss Diagnosed or Red, White and Bruiser helps them get in the zone.

When she started seven years ago, Whitmore's anxiety and depression were running rampant. She needed an outlet for her pent-up thoughts and aggression.

Years of roller derby have helped her shed nearly 100 pounds. She's gained confidence. Her mental health, she said, has gotten better and better.

Now, she lives by the words of renowned derby girl Bonnie D. Stroir, a retired San Diego Derby Doll:

We ruin our bodies to save our souls ... And for some reason, that makes perfect sense.

• • •

Julie Taylor — aka Country Bumpskin — winds around the track so gracefully it's as if she was born on wheels. Her long legs propel her forward, her arms whip back and forth, giving her more and more momentum on each lap.

She's a 49-year-old grandmother and homemaker who never played sports in her life. But here she skates like a teenager with endless stamina. She lets the centripetal force carry her around and around, her short blond hair poking out of her helmet all the time.

"It just feels so good," she said. "You're pushing yourself."

In roller derby, everybody has to block and score. Taylor can do both with ease.

She can skate 12 laps in two minutes, her body never letting on that she needs to undergo an MRI.

A few weeks ago, during a drill, she fell facedown on the track. The pain in her neck has made sleeping at night impossible. Yet that hasn't kept her from coming to practice three times a week.

Her teammates are a big part of that. She didn't like girls growing up. She always found herself hanging with the boys.

But at the Slayground, she's at peace with everyone.

There have been other changes. Two years ago, she would shy away from crowds and try to blend into the background. Getting up in front of people wasn't her thing.

But Country Bumpskin doesn't mind the attention.

During bouts, Taylor's shyness fades and Country Bumpskin's laser focus takes over. She blocks out the crowd and her mind turns to the game, scanning her opposition and deciding when to strike.

"It's all about the adrenaline rush," she said.

• • •

There's more than enough going on in Sherri Howarth's life.

She's a stay-at-home mom with two daughters and a son. She stresses about her parents' health and bills. Every single day, it feels like another worry finds its way into her already frenzied mind.

"Everything piles up," she said. "But you come here and skate your heart out."

The petite 50-year-old found herself as RoJo Revolver. In just five months, she graduated from the "advanced fresh meat" group to skating on the bank with the elite team. It's an accomplishment she can hardly believe herself.

Week after week, she came back to the Slayground and felt like a better version of herself. Here, nobody judges her.

"There's no 'you can't do it' here," she said. "It just doesn't come into play."

On wheels, she feels free. She doesn't worry about falling and breaking a leg. That could happen just as easily going down the stairs at home, she said. Here, she doesn't let her mind wander into dark places.

"It's easy to wake up and be afraid all the time," she said. "But you have to live every day and just be happy.

"This is therapy."

• • •

Officially, Michelle Bocchino, 34, is the designated trainer, league co-owner and travel team captain of the Deadly Rival Roller Derby.

Unofficially, she's their Yoda.

She's known as M. Pyre Wrecker around the Slayground.

Her life revolves around roller derby. She jokes it's the second job she doesn't get paid for.

In her six years of skating, she's heard all the misconceptions about roller derby, endured all the doubts:

It's probably staged.

They're just skating around in a circle.

It's not even a real sport.

That last one hurts the most. She tells people they don't know enough about the sport to make those judgments. But it doesn't matter how many times she explains that the violence the women experience in roller derby is akin to what males experience in full-contact football. Some people don't get it.

"I wouldn't spend so many hours of my life doing this if I didn't think it was a real sport," she said.

She has sacrificed much for her sport.

She has two non-derby friends left. "The only ones," she said.

When she's not working at an ad agency in Clearwater, she's at the Slayground. She spends so much time coaching others that she has no idea whether she's getting any better herself.

But it's worth it.

Bocchino never thought she'd be the captain of a derby team, much less the owner of a sports league, the one in charge of the organization and its finances.

She's created a space where women can come and fall in love with the sport like she has. Here, they grow. They find and define themselves. They realize what they're capable of.

"There's nothing that would make me stop skating," she said. "I'd miss it too much."

Contact Hannah Jeffrey at hjeffrey@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8450. Follow @hannahjeffrey34.