It’s not every day that a girl can wear underwear outside of her clothes in public. But that’s exactly how Bowling Green sophomore Megan Coker was dressed last Tuesday night at the Skatebox, a roller skating rink on Three Springs Road.

“Any excuse for me to wear panties — awesome,” she said.

Not only were her polka-dot panties layered over her tights, she was also decked out in a white helmet, wrist guards, elbow pads, knee pads, a mouth guard and, of course, roller skates.

Coker and about 25 other similarly dressed girls were practicing for Bowling Green’s new roller derby team, the Vette City Vixens.

Roller derby is a women’s sport that involves five members from two teams trying to get their “jammer” past the opposing team members as many times as possible in two minutes, said Jenni Johnson, a Bowling Green senior, who helped start the team.

Johnson first witnessed a roller derby game, called a “bout,” about a year-and-a-half ago.

She said she started talking about getting a team together about six months ago with her friend Meghan Nacke, a 2005 Western graduate.

They had a meeting on July 25 where about 50 girls showed up, Johnson said. Now, they have about 27 regular members who practice every Sunday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. and Tuesday from 8:45 to 10:45 p.m. at the Skatebox.

But the girls don’t come out just to skate around the rink in their underwear.

Rink Ragan and Tucker Davis, both from Bowling Green, coach the Vixens. Johnson met them at Spencer’s Coffee House in Bowling Green where Johnson works.

“They would always say, ‘How’s roller derby coming?’” Johnson said.

When she asked Ragan about coaching he said he had to think about it. He said skating is one of his passions, and that he has skated since he was a child.

“I wouldn’t have accepted half-heartedly,” he said, so he enlisted the help of Davis.

Davis, now also known as “Tuck Norris,” his roller derby nickname, said he’s been obsessed with roller derby for the past six weeks.

Like many of the girls he coaches, he never skated other than at a birthday party he went to when he was younger. But he got his roller skates three weeks ago and has been skating on the linoleum floors in his house ever since.

Now, both men lead conditioning, sprints, stretches and moves like the Drunken Sailor, Hercules, In and Outs and the Ditch, which resembles doing wall sits without the wall while coasting around the rink.

It’s all part of a training regimen they’ve put together with help from the Evansville, Ind. and Nashville roller derby teams, as well as a 90-page manual from the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.

They’re getting the girls prepared for what Ragan calls the “constant, fast-paced, strategic game” of roller derby. This includes helping them pass the basic skating skills outlined by the WFTDA so the Vixens can become an official team.

Bouts consist of two minute “jams” over the course of an hour, Johnson said. The girls switch out throughout the bout and each team has a pivot who leads the pack, three blockers in the middle, and one jammer, who starts about 20 feet behind the pack.

The objective is for a team’s jammer to pass the other team’s members, skate completely around the rink and then catch up with the back of the pack, she said. From then on, the jammer earns points for passing members of the opposing team.

Mixed in with the skating is a fair amount of pushing, ramming and falling.

Edmonson County sophomore Amy Payne said she made sure to wear short sleeves to show off a wheel-shaped bruise on her upper arm after landing on another girl’s skate during practice.

“It’s tough, but it’s a lot of fun,” she said.

Kristina Arnold, an art professor at Western, heard about the Vixens from Kate Hudepohl, an anthropology professor, who is participating in the roller derby.

Arnold, who played street hockey while she was in college, came to practice about a month after the team got together, she said in an e-mail.

“It feels a lot better to fall on the smooth rink than it did on the asphalt,” she said. “It’s also fun to go fast on wheels.”

Hudepohl, who used to watch roller derby in the 70s, read about the league in the newspaper this summer, she said. At her first practice she fell about four times and “totally skinned” her left knee, but she loved it.

Many of the girls are improving, Ragan said. The team started with a handful each of good skaters, mediocre skaters and skaters taking baby steps.

He said his slogan is, “trust the process, and good things will happen in the end.”

Johnson said the team is looking forward to some scrimmages tentatively set for January.

Davis said he’s seen improvement in every girl at each practice.

At the end of last Tuesday’s practice, he yelled to the girls, “I think y’all are doing bad-ass.”