The Space Between

By Kayden Mulrooney

Shelly “Fancy Beans” Glorioso finds empowerment through roller derby after escaping an unhealthy relationship with her ex-husband. In deciding to leave, she put almost 500 miles between her and her 9-year-old daughter.

The name of Fancy's daughter has been changed to "Sarah" to preserve privacy. Her name in any subsequent photos has been blurred for similar reasons.

Shelly "Fancy Beans" Glorioso takes the stage as bingo announcer for a Vette City Roller Derby fundraiser at White Squirrel Brewery in Bowling Green, Ky. The team is a non-profit organization that relies on contributions from the community.

When Shelly “Fancy Beans ” Glorioso found her way back to roller derby, she rediscovered herself.



Fancy alleges that her ex-husband was emotionally and sexually abusive to her during the span of her relationship. She reported frequent actions that eventually built into something much larger. She described herself as a passive participant in her own abuse and did not speak up out of fear of not being believed.

“These micro-interactions happen 10 times a day, 15 times a day, and you're just smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller,” Fancy said. “You just disappear completely until you’re just not even there.”
The nurses in the NICU called Sarah "small but mighty" during her stay in the hospital. Fancy got the phrase tattooed on her collarbone shortly after Sarah was born.
Fancy had her daughter Sarah at 22 weeks pregnant.

She suffered from pre-eclampsia, or “persistent high blood pressure that develops during pregnancy,” which can result in premature birth. Sarah was born at a little over one pound, got diagnosed with failure to thrive, and spent three months in the neonatal intensive care unit. Her ex-husband’s family threatened to take Sarah away if Fancy did not live with them. She said they required her to pay them rent or face eviction, which would separate her from her daughter.

Fancy made the difficult decision to leave her situation, and her daughter, behind.

Fancy made her way back to her hometown of Bowling Green in 2020. A friend told her to show up to an open skate one evening after nearly fifteen years off from roller skating. Before she knew it, Fancy was donning her skates for roller derby practice every Wednesday and Sunday.

Sarah is 9-years-old and visits her in the summer, while Fancy drives to Michigan every six to eight weeks to see her daughter.
“
I don't want her to see me live like this the rest of her life, thinking this is what it is to be a woman. I'd rather her think that I abandoned her than to live like this.

Shelly "Fancy Beans" Glorioso

Fancy and her husband Jason spend time together working on their respective art projects in her apartment in Bowling Green, Ky. After years of feeling out of control, she takes pride in decorating her space as her own. "I have curated all of my garbage, and it makes me very happy," Fancy said. "I love this apartment so much."
Vette City Roller Derby was founded in 2009 and attracts skaters from a multitude of different backgrounds. For many members of the adult team, VCRD is an escape from the dullness of everyday life. Fancy works from home as a research administrator. It is eight hours of Excel spreadsheets and staring at a computer screen. Once she logs out for the day, she is free to do whatever she pleases, which typically includes something roller derby related. Fancy can count on one hand how many VCRD events she has missed.

“We all have these like lives and jobs and stuff. And then we put in mouth guards and go hit each other in fishnets,” Fancy said.

In the three years Fancy has been competing in roller derby, Sarah has never seen her mom play.

Fancy plays as a blocker in a bout against the Southern Indiana Roller Derby team in Corydon, Ind. Her favorite position to play is brace because she likes to talk to other skaters during a bout and she is good at skating backwards.

Roller Derby Glossary
Bout
A roller derby game. 15 skaters from each team compete in two back-to-back 30 minute halves. Each half, skaters will particpate in multiple two-minute "jams" to score points for their team.
Blocker
The four skaters on the track whose main goal is to form a "pack" to stop the opposing team's jammer. They also create openings in the pack for their own jammer to get through and score points.
Jammer
The skater who scores the points. They wear a helmet cover with a star on it to differentiate them from the other skaters. A jammer scores one point for every blocker they pass after getting through the pack.
Pivot
A blocker with added abilities. They wear a helmet cover with a stripe and can score points if a jammer successfully "passes the star" on their helmet to them.
Lead Jammer
The first jammer to push past the pack. Once in the lead, they have the power to call off the jam at any time by gesturing from their hips to their head until the whistle blows.
Penalties
If a skater receives seven regular penalties in a bout, they are removed from the game. Common penalties include illegal contact on another skater, illegal positioning in the jam, and unsafe gameplay.
The VCRD team spends ample time together in their skates, but also in their sneakers. They’ve become intertwined in each other's lives from the moment they joined the team and spend time together often outside of the roller derby track. The team is made up almost entirely of women, with non-binary, transgender, and other queer identities also in the mix. Roller derby is a safe space to be themselves away from society’s critical gaze.

They win together. They lose together. And they lean on each other when the road gets tough. 

“I'm empowered because I have a gang of badass bitches,” Fancy said. "It's the community that empowers me, not the fishnets.”

The Vette City Roller Derby team celebrates a win against Southern Indiana Roller Derby on Saturday, April 12. When Fancy first joined the team, she got injured. The VCRD team showed up to her house and took care of her after meeting only a few times for no other reason than Fancy was their teammate. "I don't even have words for the feeling of belonging that you get," Fancy said.

The Vette City Roller Derby team practices in a Toys for Tots warehouse when it is not being used for holiday activities. They previously practiced in a local skating rink, but the new managers raised the rent prices until it was no longer affordable. They cannot host other teams due to the lack of proper facilities, so the team travels out of state for bouts every few weeks.

Heather "Slip Happens" Drake (left) talks with a teammates kid after practice while Fancy catches up on her text messages. When Sarah visits Bowling Green, she comes to open skate at the warehouse to practice with her mom.

“
I miss the shit out of Sarah. There is no effective way to let people know how much I miss her, or what it feels like to miss her. So I just say I miss her. It feels inadequate sometimes, but those are the only English words I know to describe it."

Shelley "Fancy Beans" Glorioso

The VCRD team travels thousands of miles to compete in the sport they love. Take a look at past bout locations, including the nearly 500 miles between Fancy and her daughter.

Fancy met Jason "Mr. Fancy" Coleman after he messaged her on Facebook Messenger. They dated for three months before Jason asked about choosing a wedding date. Fancy said "April Fools," thinking he was joking about getting married so soon. The couple got married on April Fools day of 2024 in the living room of Fancy's apartment. "I hope I make him as happy as he makes me," Fancy said.

Fancy has taken up a hobby of screen printing roller-derby themed shirts for her teammates. She places them haphazardly all over her house as they dry. "Screen printing is a very resource-heavy hobby. I'm so fortunate that I have all the time and money to do this," Fancy said. "Not only do I get the satisfaction of making something, I get to give it to someone else and make them happy."

Roller derby culture promotes skaters alter-egos as way for them to break all the rules of traditional femininity, something Fancy calls the “Catwoman narrative” in her sociology master's thesis about roller derby. Fancy doesn't buy into this narrative. To her, there is no difference between “Fancy” and Sarah’s mom. She is just a person playing a sport she loves.
“The cultural focus on skaters as “everyday women” who, at night, transform into aggressive sexual deviants on wheels constructs a strategy of understanding derby skaters as variations of Catwoman—the sexy and dangerous by-night-only villain who, by day, is mildmannered Selina Kyle...the Catwoman narrative genders stressful activities of daily life for women and constructs a wholly different person with a different name and sometimes a different biography to relieve that gendered stress.”
— Shelly "Fancy Beans" Glorioso, “And maybe that’s feminist in a way?”: Feminisms and Feminist Identity in Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby Revival

Fancy takes apart her skates to clean them a day before traveling to Bloomington, Ind. for a bout. She has to be very careful not to lose any of the tiny pieces during the process.

VCRD traveled almost four hours to Bloomington, Ind. for a bout against the BOOMington Blockheads on April 27. The VCRD team started out strong, but the Blockheads prevailed in the end with a 161-113 win. As the Blockhead jammer rounded the final corner toward the pack, she slowed, extended a hand to the VCRD jammer, and pushed her ahead to score a few final points for her team as the clock ran down. On the track, there is a competition to be won, but each skater still shares a common goal in the end.

"We just want roller derby as a whole to succeed," Fancy said.

Mr. Fancy reunites with Fancy after a roller derby bout in Bloomington, Ind. He works as a server at Mellow Mushroom and can't always get time off for Fancy's bouts, but he tries his best.

The VCRD girls may have lost this bout, but next time they’ll be ready. For now, it's back to the warehouse for practice on Wednesday. Fancy will be preparing for the team’s next bout on May 17 in Ann Arbor, Mich. where Sarah will watch her mom play roller derby for the first time.
Fancy sports her Vette City Roller Derby jersey at a bout in Bloomington, Ind. on April 27. Her chosen number, 713, is in honor of Sarah, who was born on July 13.
“
I think roller derby has been more about reclaiming something that was taken from me. It's not about finding a version of myself that I didn't know was there. It's about reconnecting with a version of myself that got stolen from me.

Shelley "Fancy Beans" Glorioso

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