Kelley Hughes and Jill Jacobs, friends for nearly 20 years, sat on the floor behind the serving counter at Itty Bitty Coffee Shop, crying. They had fallen and couldn’t get up.
It was early one morning last summer. Two customers sitting at a table barely noticed the commotion.
The crying soon subsided and was replaced by laughter — laughter that had precipitated the tears and knocked the women down. What was going on? Neither Hughes nor Jacobs want people to know, except to say the moment was worthy of seventh grade BFFs — a flip comment by Hughes followed by slapstick humor and a quip by Jacobs.
“It was totally stupid,” said Hughes, owner of the popular coffee shop in Harpswell Center. “You had to be there.”
These friends know how to fall down, and how to pick each other up. Their shared past includes surviving a historic fire in downtown Brunswick in 2011 that destroyed their businesses — Hughes’ Wildflours Bakery and Jacobs’ Bounce Cut & Color hair salon.
But talking about another chapter in their relationship — their involvement in competitive roller derby — is more illuminating. That exploration lasted six years for Hughes and left an indelible impression on Jacobs.
Falling down — and knocking down opponents — is part of the roller derby menu.
Hughes began her roller derby adventure in 2013. An exercise class called Derby Lite, at Happy Wheels Skate Center in Westbrook, sucked her into the sport. Derby Lite is roller derby without physical contact.
The “real” roller derby is almost impossible to play without a lot of physical contact — blocking players who are trying to score points by lapping their opponents.
Hughes enjoyed the class so much that she tried out for a team in the Maine Roller Derby league, beating out women 10-20 years younger to make the squad. She recruited Jacobs to do the same a year later.
“Good thing we’re not getting old,” Jacobs said.
The derby experience illuminated a part of Hughes’ personality that might surprise her Itty Bitty customers. “I like to hit people,” she said, before explaining when and why.
“It was very satisfying,” Hughes said. “Saying ‘I like to hit people’ out of context is a problem. But in context, in roller derby, it was satisfying because you get points and you win the game, in part, because of that.”
Near the end of her six-year career, she competed as the “jammer.” The jammer is the only skater who can score points for their team, according to the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. They score points every time they pass an opponent — and when it comes to a wall of blockers, passing often means hitting.
“I never considered myself competitive until I played that sport,” Hughes said. “And then, mostly I ducked a lot. I can do that really well.”
To get through a line of blockers, a jammer can duck to squeeze between or under them, initiate contact, or simply outrace them.
Hughes spent more than her share of time in the penalty box, “probably for inappropriate hitting,” she said. “That was fun stuff.”
Jacobs, who is primarily a baker at Itty Bitty, said of her friend and boss, “She was a great jammer, man. Through the blockers, go all the way around and pass them again and get points. She looked for holes and ducked through. They couldn’t see her.”
Although Jacobs also made the team, she didn’t follow through to competition. She was starting another business at the time and couldn’t commit to the bouts, but she became Hughes’ biggest fan.
For Jacobs, skating still had a lasting impact. “Derby Lite, for exercise, was the hardest, most humbling challenge for group exercise I’ve ever done in my life,” she said, describing the difficulty of learning to fall safely while skating forward or backward.
The class was “part of the journey that made me get in touch with how my body works,” Jacobs said. She has since become a certified personal trainer.
In addition to her work as a personal trainer, baker and hair stylist, Jacobs has also owned a Montessori school. Hughes has been a special education teacher; a social worker and administrator for the Abused Women’s Advocacy Project, now called Safe Voices; and the owner of Wildflours, a gluten-free bakery she operated in Brunswick for almost 15 years before selling it and opening her Harpswell shop.
Hughes and Jacobs know about taking risks, falling down, getting up and maintaining positive energy. Hughes emphasized that point with her roller derby moniker — all players are required to have one.
She was not Kelley Hughes, the jammer, on the roller derby program. Her derby name was Iris Kit.
As in “I risk it.”
