Who rules the roller-derby rink? Will it be "Rat City"?

A few short months ago, these women were throwing elbows, shoulders and hips at one another, competing as rivals on a tight oval track in front of nearly 2,000 bellowing spectators at a Sand Point hangar.

But today, these Rat City Rollergirls are hitting the road as teammates, preparing to take on the toughest competitors their sport has to offer.

"It's scary not knowing what you're really up against," said D-Bomb, also known as Devon Tamaccio-Hendrick, 26. "But it's really exciting to get ready to go into a huge competition like this."

In Tucson, Ariz., this weekend, these Seattle-area skaters compete against 19 other roller-derby teams in the "2006 Dust Devil," the first national tournament of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association.

Although their sport traces its roots back to the 1930s, this organization of all-women, skater-owned teams was born in 2004 and only last summer met to craft the standardized rules which make this weekend's event possible.

"This is something that is going to go down in history, and we're going to be a part of it," said Drew Blood, who by day is Britta Lyle, 30.

The "Rollergirl" phenomenon — with leagues operating in more than 30 cities — has even fostered a popular show on the A&E Television Network, although some real-life rollergirls say the TV version is overly scripted and doesn't accurately reflect the sport's character.

In a rollergirl "bout," the competition and the contact is genuine, with plenty of theatrical touches to boost its appeal as a raucous spectator sport. Skaters with evil-sounding names and tough-girl attitudes wear abbreviated outfits and jostle for position as hard-driving music and blazing lights crank up the energy level.

"I love the contact. I love being on my skates and able to hit girls. It's fun," said D-Bomb.

A recent fundraiser at Bellevue's Skate King helped the Rollergirls amass $10,000 toward the trip through pledges and sales of cookies, cupcakes, candles and autographed team photos. The skaters, unpaid, are staying up to four to a room to stretch those dollars as far as possible.

The 15-skater "Rat City" squad headed to Tucson includes top competitors voted in by members of the four local teams, the league-champion Derby Liberation Front plus the Throttle Rockets, Grave Danger and Sockit Wenches.

"I'm pretty confident in us," said Captain Diva State, aka Celia Rehburg, 25. "These ladies are amazing. It's the best of the best."

Even so, they don't want to belittle or underestimate the competition. "We're doing our best to not do any trash-talking and to just focus on our game," said Drew Blood. "We just want to go down there and prove ourselves."

The history of roller derby dates to 1935, when promoter Leo Seltzer created an event in which skaters circled a track thousands of times, a skating variation of Depression-era dance marathons.

Most roller-derby incarnations since have more closely resembled the form popular on TV in the 1950s, in which two teams circle a track, and a "jammer" from each team scores points by lapping skaters on the opposing team.

Zoe "Whiskey Mick" O'Reilly, a skater and spokeswoman for Tucson Roller Derby, predicts this weekend's event will be followed by others around the country. "This is the next step in the evolution from a niche sport to something much bigger," she said. "We're here to stay."

Seattle's Rat City Rollergirls take their title from a longtime nickname for White Center, home of the Southgate Roller Rink, where the group held its initial turnouts.

Even though all the competitors are adults, in the sisterhood of skaters, they often refer to one another as "girls," rather than "women."

"Rollergirls just sounds better," said Darth Skater, aka Sue Schmitz, 36, co-captain of the traveling team. "And I think probably deep down we're all kind of kids at heart and we all like to think of ourselves as girlie girls regardless of whether we're out there with pads and hitting the crap out of each other."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com