Team Jewish Roller Derby laces up their skates

Adelaide's Alex Knopoff has traded library books for roller skates, becoming the first person outside North America to compete for Team Jewish Roller Derby at next month’s Roller Derby World Cup in Austria.

The 28-year-old Communications Manager once earned an award in primary school for borrowing the most books from the library and struggled in PE class. "I was very bookish. I had to be forced to play sport. It was the only subject I didn't do well in in school."

Yet from 3-6 July, she'll be lacing up her quad skates in Innsbruck, Austria as one of the "jammers” for Team Jewish Roller Derby at the Roller Derby World Cup—the sport's equivalent of the Olympics.

Roller derby is a full-contact sport played on an indoor oval track. Two teams field five players at a time, competing on quad roller skates. The objective is simple: one player from each team, called the jammer, tries to lap members of the opposing team to score points, while the other four players—blockers—use legal physical contact to stop the opposing jammer while helping their own. Games are aerobically intense and often unforgiving.

Knopoff’s unlikely path into the sport began with a movie. In 2009, she watched the comedy Whip It, a film about a teenage girl struggling to fit into a small Texan town when she discovers roller derby. At the age 13, Knopoff loved the film, but never expected the sport to exist in Australia – let alone that she'd one day compete at the world's highest level.