Inside Denver’s quick, competitive — and quiet — sensory-friendly roller derby

Aug 28, 2026

NEWS

DENVER — Fans gathered for another Saturday at the Rollerdome, and the unassuming, single-story brick warehouse in south Denver came alive with the sounds of roller derby. Well, not all the sounds.

At this special sensory-friendly roller derby bout, the announcers’ commentary didn’t fill the room. It hummed quietly through headphones passed out to spectators before the game. Fans could choose to tune into the game, listen to another channel that offered music or opt out the additional sound entirely.

Rocky Mountain Roller Derby, the Denver league that hosted the Aug. 15 event, limited ticket sales to 100 people, a significant decrease compared to the Rollerdome’s typical 365-person capacity. They dimmed the lights at the warehouse and encouraged fans to wave their hands rather than clap.

“It's still roller derby, so there's still a lot of hitting, knocks and some exciting moves, but it's a lot more, I think, accessible for many, many people in the community who otherwise might find roller derby to be a little bit too much,” said skater Matty Roberts (derby name: Zero Fox).

Roller derby bouts — the sports’ term for competitions — are typically cacophonies of cheers, claps, shouts and whistles. It’s a full contact sport, with speedy jammers trying to break through the opposing team’s squad of blockers to score points. Bouts get rowdy.

For neurodivergent skaters like Valkyrie Rivas, known as Showtime in the rink, that chaotic environment can feel overwhelming and debilitating.

“When I am in a place with a lot of sound and visual stimulus, it triggers my auditory processing and visual processing disorders. So everything becomes more difficult to hear, to see. It can be very panic inducing. It can cause me physical pain,” said Rivas, who was diagnosed with autism at 17 years old. Rivas has skated roller derby for 15 years and joined Rocky Mountain Roller Derby about two years ago.

Rivas said they shared these concerns with friend and league member Kristy Rowe (derby name: Harper Bizarre) over dinner, and Rowe helped Rivas curate and organize the league’s first sensory-friendly roller derby event last year.

“We created this bout hoping that we could be more inclusive to neurodivergent skaters who oftentimes experience roller derby as extremely overstimulating … and they can't engage with it in the same way that everyone else does, which is like fun, happiness and curiosity. So we really wanted to bridge that gap,” Rivas said.

The league designed the lower-capacity, lower-light, lower-volume bout to make roller derby accessible to more fans as well. Rivas recalled a family with an autistic child traveling from out of state to attend last year’s sensory-friendly event because they found other derby events inaccessible.

While some people travel across state lines to experience the unique bout, Jeremiah Peck ended up at the event when a friend had an extra ticket. It marked his first roller derby experience, and he was pleasantly surprised to stumble across a sensory-friendly event.

Though Peck has ADHD and doesn’t mind stimulating environments, he said he often seeks out sensory-friendly events for his partner, who is easily overstimulated. Events with sensory accommodations for neurodivergent audiences are not unheard of in Denver, he said, but he has to be intentional about finding them. He said sensory-friendly sporting events are much more rare, in his experience.

Several sports venues in Denver, like Ball Arena and Empower Field, offer free “sensory bags” to guests, which include noise cancelling headphones, fidget tools and other resources.

“I think [it] just opens up the sport and makes it just a thoughtful viewing experience for all kinds of different people on the neurodivergent spectrum,” Peck said about the event’s accommodations.

Due to injury, Rivas watched from the sidelines for this year’s event, but they said skating in the inaugural sensory-friendly bout last year meant the world to them.

“The first thing I could notice was that I could sense my breathing, and my mind and my body felt free and at peace. There wasn't a need to regulate while I was skating. I could just concentrate on the game that I had loved for 15 years, but never in a way that I had experienced it before,” Rivas said.

Rocky Mountain Roller Derby is a sanctioned league within the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, and is open to female-identifying and non-binary athletes. The sensory-friendly bout — played between a “black” and “white” team made up of league members — didn’t count toward WFTDA rankings.

Rocky Mountain Roller Derby is one of two major leagues in Denver. They share the Rollerdome as a practice and competition space with the other large league, Denver Roller Derby. Colorado has six sanctioned flat-track leagues across the state and even more local leagues not affiliated with the WFTDA.

Roller derby has had several renaissances since event promoter Leo Seltzer — who spent time hosting dance marathons in Denver during the Great Depression — founded the sport in Chicago in 1935. The modern era of roller derby, which launched in 2001 in Austin, Texas, has a strong DIY culture and punk aesthetic. Feminist and queer empowerment are central to the sport’s identity.

“Roller derby has always been a more progressive sport, but it's not immune to still being a microcosm of the macrocosm of everything that is happening in the world right now … We struggle with racism, ableism, and just generally trying to be more inclusive,” Rivas said.

Rivas referenced the Colorado Shiners, the state’s first BIPOC-only roller derby league, which disbanded after a few seasons, in part due to receiving unfavorable practice times at the shared Rollerdome.

“But I think we're in an era of roller derby where that's finally coming to our awareness that we are catering more towards white women than we are to including everybody and making it a sport where people can truly belong,” they added.

Josephine Derouen (derby name: Blaze) started skating in Denver derby leagues at 15 years old and has been with Rocky Mountain Roller Derby for a year and a half. Derouen, 24, who also deals with sensory processing issues, agreed with Rivas about the inclusivity gaps in Denver’s roller derby scene.

“I think we're lacking in a lot of inclusive ways,” Derouen said. “But it's part of the reason why something like this [sensory-friendly bout] is so important because it's recognizing those areas where we're less inclusive and moving towards that.”

Type of story: News
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