The Fort Wayne Pains: A bruised and beautiful memory
Thirty years gone, but the wheels keep spinning in our hearts
If you grew up in Fort Wayne between 1970 and 2000, you remember where you were the night “Apocalypse Nancy” clotheslined three Detroit Diesels in a single jam. You remember the smell of stale popcorn and fresh violence at the old Memorial Coliseum. You remember your mother clutching her purse and screaming words you didn’t know she knew.
You remember the Fort Wayne Pains.
For three decades, the Pains dominated the regional roller derby circuit with a combination of athletic prowess, theatrical villainy, and what one 1987 sports columnist described as “aggressive disregard for both the rules of derby and the Geneva Conventions.” They were Fort Wayne’s team—our team—and we loved them with the kind of irrational devotion usually reserved for religions and college football.
The Glory Years
The Pains burst onto the scene in 1970, when founder and captain “Mean” Marlene Kowalski decided that Fort Wayne needed “something with wheels that isn’t just another goddamn Chevy.” Marlene, a former factory worker at International Harvester, recruited her team from local bowling alleys, union halls, and—according to persistent rumor—at least one biker bar in New Haven.
The original lineup was legendary: Marlene herself at pivot, flanked by “Bruisin'” Susan Delacroix (a dental hygienist who reportedly never lost a teeth-counting contest), “Chainsaw” Charlene Murphy (no relation to any chainsaws, but the nickname stuck after an unfortunate lumber yard incident), and the fan-favorite jammer, Dizzy Donna Koehler, who once completed an entire bout while concussed and later claimed she’d thought she was at a PTA meeting.
“My mom took me to see them when I was seven,” remembers lifelong Fort Wayne resident Tom Burkhart, now 54. “I watched Apocalypse Nancy pick up a girl from the Toledo Terrors and just… carry her off the track. Set her down in the penalty box like she was delivering a package. I decided right then that I would never, ever make Nancy mad.”
The Rivals
Every hero needs a villain, and every villain needs a slightly different villain to fight with. The Pains’ primary antagonists were the South Bend Benders, a team that embodied everything Fort Wayne wasn’t: pretentious, well-funded, and possessed of uniforms that matched. The Pains-Benders rivalry made the Maumee River run red with spilled Faygo and broken dreams.
“Those South Bend bitches thought they were so classy,” recalls former Pain Margaret “Marge of Destruction” Henderson, now 68 and running a yarn store on Broadway. “They had choreographed entrance music. We had a boombox that only played one side of a Styx cassette. But we had heart. And elbows. Mostly elbows.”
Other notable rivals included the Indianapolis Inflictors, the Toledo Terrors, and the briefly-lived Muncie Menace, who folded after only two seasons when their entire roster got better-paying jobs at the Ball jar factory.
The Characters
It wasn’t just the skating—though the skating was something to behold, like watching figure skating if the figures were all depicting various forms of assault. It was the personas. In an era before WWE made theatrical athletics mainstream, the Pains were already perfecting the art of the entrance, the taunt, and the grudge match.
There was “Sister Mary Malicious,” whose nun’s habit concealed knee pads that could dent steel. There was “The Widowmaker,” who insisted she’d earned her name through derby alone, though nobody asked too many questions. “Reckless” Rebecca Zimmerman would enter the rink riding a tricycle, which she would then weaponize during particularly heated jams.
And then there was “Apocalypse Nancy.”
Nancy Delgado joined the team in 1984 and immediately became its dark heart. Standing 5’11” and possessing what referee “Blind Justice” Jerry Schmucker described as “the perfect combination of balance, speed, and controlled sociopathy,” Nancy was less a roller derby player and more a force of nature with eighties hair.
“Nancy once blocked a girl so hard her helmet flew into the crowd and knocked over a man’s nachos,” remembers fan Linda Gerhardstein. “Nancy skated over, picked up a nacho, ate it, skated back. The crowd went insane. The nacho guy? He got the helmet bronzed. Still has it.”
The Coliseum Experience
Attending a Fort Wayne Pains bout was less like going to a sporting event and more like attending a tent revival for people who worshipped violence. The Memorial Coliseum would pack with 7,000 screaming fans, their bloodlust matched only by their enthusiasm for watered-down beer and pretzel-adjacent snacks.
The crowd was gloriously democratic: factory workers sat next to teachers, grandmothers next to bikers, all united in their desire to watch women in shorts beat the hell out of each other on roller skates. Kids would make signs with markers their parents definitely told them not to use. “DESTROY THEM NANCY” was a popular one, as was the more economical “KILL.”
The halftime shows were their own bizarre spectacle. Local bands would play—badly—while the team mascot, a bedraggled man in a foam thermometer costume (get it? Pains? Temperature? The logic was never explained), would lead increasingly dangerous t-shirt tosses into the crowd.
“I caught a shirt in 1993,” says Brian Hoffer, 51. “It was size XXXL, had a hole in it, and possibly bloodstains. I still sleep in it.”
The Decline
By the mid-1990s, roller derby was dying nationally, and Fort Wayne was no exception. Attendance dwindled. The team’s van, dubbed “The Pain Train,” broke down with increasing frequency. Several founding members retired to pursue careers that offered health insurance and a lower likelihood of hip replacement surgery.
The final bout was held on November 12, 2000, a foggy Sunday that felt prophetic. The Pains faced the Indianapolis Inflictors one last time, and though the Pains won 178-156, everyone in attendance knew they were watching something end.
“Apocalypse Nancy scored the final point,” remembers Gary Hutchinson, who attended every home game for eighteen years. “Then she took off her helmet and just stood there at center track. The whole crowd stood up. Nobody said anything for what felt like forever. Then someone started a slow clap, and… yeah. I’m not crying, you’re crying.”
The team held a wake at Calhoun Street Bar & Grill afterward. By all accounts, it was exactly as raucous as you’d hope.
The Legacy
Today, Fort Wayne has revitalized its downtown, attracted new businesses, built a fancy ballpark. But something’s missing. In the corner booth at Cinema Center Bar, old-timers still debate whether Apocalypse Nancy could have beaten anybody in any sport. In antique stores, you can occasionally find vintage Pains merchandise: t-shirts, pennants, and those weird foam fingers that were shaped like fists.
There have been periodic attempts to revive the team. In 2015, a group of young women tried to relaunch the Pains as a modern flat-track team, but they lasted only one season. “It wasn’t the same,” explained founder Crystal Morrison. “We had safety equipment and a code of conduct. That’s not the Pain way.”
Former team members have scattered. Marlene Kowalski passed away in 2018, reportedly while arm-wrestling someone at a family reunion. Apocalypse Nancy owns a physical therapy clinic in Leo-Cedarville. Sister Mary Malicious became an actual Catholic nun, which surprised exactly no one who knew her.
But on certain nights, when the weather’s right and you’re walking past the Memorial Coliseum, locals swear you can still hear it: the thunder of eight wheels on hardwood, the crash of bodies, the roar of a crowd that wanted nothing more than to watch their hometown heroes dish out beautiful, brutal justice to anyone foolish enough to step on their track.
The Fort Wayne Pains may be gone, but they left us with something important: the knowledge that our city, for three glorious decades, had the toughest, meanest, most gloriously violent group of women ever to lace up roller skates.
We were the Pains. And brother, did we make sure everybody else felt it.
“We were legends,” Apocalypse Nancy told a reporter in 2019. “Or maybe just legendarily insane. Either way, hell of a ride.”
