Sioux Falls Roller Dollz announce closure after 20 years

The Sioux Falls Roller Dollz are shutting down after 20 years, ending one of South Dakota’s most durable volunteer-run sports groups and closing a lane that helped build roller derby in the state. The announcement on Tuesday, June 16, marked more than the loss of a team. It removed a recruiting pipeline, a practice space, a fan base, and a local home for skaters who built their own league from scratch.

Founded in 2006 by Jayme Nelson, known as Pain Maker, and Elizabeth Nelson, known as Queen Elizabitch, the Dollz grew out of a fast-moving push to bring flat-track derby to Sioux Falls. The league says the founders started recruiting in September 2006 with MySpace bulletins, flyers around the city, a logo, shirts and a search for a venue. Their first recruiting event drew close to fifty interested women, an early sign that the sport could take hold far from the country’s derby hotbeds.

That initial surge lasted for years. The league’s site says skaters ranged from age 18 into their 40s, including moms and even a grandma, and the Dollz built a roster that stayed close to full for long stretches. All members were unpaid volunteers who paid for their own skates, gear, insurance, uniforms and dues, and they were also expected to volunteer at charity events. The league said it promoted positive body image for girls and women and kept its events family friendly, which helped give the organization a place in Sioux Falls well beyond the bout schedule.

The end of the Dollz also shows how fragile volunteer sports can be in smaller markets. The league hosted Bacon Fest fundraiser events and Zombie Walk Sioux Falls for years, turning derby into a platform for fundraising and a recognizable part of the city’s calendar. When that kind of operation folds, it is not only competition that disappears. So do the bench depth, the officiating tree, the fundraising muscle and the path for future skaters in South Dakota who might have found their start with the Dollz.

The team’s place in the wider sport was established, too. Flat Track Stats shows the Dollz’ WFTDA affiliation history beginning around January 1, 2009, and lists their last bout as March 23, 2024, against Brookings Area. There are no scheduled next bouts now, a final data point that matches the emotional one: after two decades, Sioux Falls has lost one of its most visible links to the modern women’s derby movement, which WFTDA traces back to Austin, Texas in the early 2000s.