Play all audios:
This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own. If you are over 60, you might remember the Philadelphia roller game team, the Warriors.
(Roller games is an offshoot of roller derby, except roller games was more theatrical than roller derby. The Roller derby discussed here has no relationship to today’s roller derby.) The
Warriors skated in Philadelphia from 1967 to 1976 and then again for several months in 1981. If you watched The Roller Game of the Week Sundays on Philadelphia’s WKBS Channel 48 or WPHL
Channel 17, you might remember one of the Warriors’ top skaters and general managers, Buddy Atkinson, Jr. Last month he died of cancer. He was 78, and living in Florida. “Buddy was a great
coach and a great friend,” said former Warrior star Judy Arnold who doubled for Raquel Welch in the 1972 roller game movie, Kansas City Bomber. “He never yelled at us, instead he helped us.
He cared about the whole team and not just the top people. He said you need the whole team or you won’t have a great team.” When the Warriors moved from Honolulu to Philadelphia in the fall
of 1967, Atkinson was confident that they would fill arenas. In a 2007 interview with this writer, Atkinson explained why he felt good about the move. FIND OUT WHAT'S HAPPENING IN
ARDMORE-MERION-WYNNEWOODFOR FREE WITH THE LATEST UPDATES FROM PATCH. “My parents (Buddy Atkinson Sr. and Bobbie Johnstone) skated for the Philadelphia Panthers,” said Atkinson. The Panthers
were a Philadelphia roller derby team that formed in the fall of 1948 and disbanded in the mid ‘50s. According to Atkinson, the Panthers drew large crowds. FIND OUT WHAT'S HAPPENING IN
ARDMORE-MERION-WYNNEWOODFOR FREE WITH THE LATEST UPDATES FROM PATCH. “When we (the Warriors) first got to Philadelphia in ’67, we had very good TV ratings, but at first the crowds were
small,” said Atkinson. “After a few months, we often sold out at the Philadelphia Arena.” The Philadelphia Arena, which was located at 46th and Market, was able to hold 9000 spectators. (See
the link https://collaborativehistory.gse.upenn.edu/stories/peak-years-arena for more details about the Philadelphia Arena.) In August 1983, a fire destroyed the Philadelphia Arena. The
Warriors also skated games at the Philadelphia Spectrum and in surrounding cities. ”We both loved skating so much,” said his widow Dru Atkinson in a recent phone interview. They both skated
for the Warriors. During games, the announcers referred to her as Dru Scott. “Being on the team with Buddy was wonderful,” said Dru Atkinson. _Fans remember Buddy_ “I first saw Buddy, Jr. on
TV in the fall of '67 when the Warriors moved to the Delaware Valley from Hawaii,” said Gary Powers, Executive Director and Curator of the National Roller Derby Hall of Fame (HOF). “He
was big, strong, intelligent, and pure talent as Warriors' coach.” Powers remembered that Atkinson would skate for other teams if one of their skaters were injured. According to
Powers, Atkinson skated for the San Francisco Bay Bombers in the summer of ’71, when their key star Charlie O'Connell was injured. In the mid ‘70s, Atkinson trained and mentored young
new skaters. Twenty years later, he trained a new generation of skaters in Orlando, Florida to compete in Roller Jam, TNN’s roller derby revival, which only lasted for two years, 1998-2000.
“When I first met Buddy in 2007, I was floored by his knowledge of the game and its history,” said Powers. “He famously said, ‘if 'one can make someone fear them on the track,
they've won the battle.' He talked about how even the hint of a move could throw an opponent off balance. Buddy was a straight-shooter and could be brutally honest about former
colleagues in private, but he would never 'bad-mouth' anyone in public. He was Roller Derby royalty ... At the time of his death, he was reviewing a book I've written called
'Roller Derby's Other Outfit: An Unauthorized History of Roller Games' covering the NSD (National Skating Derby) and its relationship with the original Derby.” Long time
Warrior fan Joe Nardone added: “Buddy was one of my all-time favorite male skaters.” Nardone liked that Atkinson was not a pure “white shirt” skater. In Roller Games and Roller Derby, the
terms red shirts and white shirts were used instead of good guys and bad guys. Visiting teams were always the villains and were the red shirts, while the home teams were always the heroic
white shirts. Nardone remembered that Atkinson was not the typical white shirt skater. He jokingly referred to him as skating pink when on the home team because he often pulled a lot of
dirty tricks on the track. Powers concluded: “Although the sport was a big part of his life, as it had been for his parents and uncle (Tommie Atkinson), his wife and three children were most
important to him. Two of his three children, Sean and Ali competed in roller derby." The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch? Register for a
user account.