THE Evolution Rollergirls, Shrewsbury’s all-female roller derby team, are looking for new members.

The rollergirls formed last year out of a group of ladies with little previous experience who wanted to get fit and have fun.

Now, with one team trained up to take part in competitions, they are having a recruitment drive at the Grange Sports Centre in Shrewsbury on August 16, from 8pm to 10pm.

Rollergirl Hannah Hambleton said: “We’ve been going since March 2010. We were set up by our captain Amanda (Tromans-Jones) because she saw people playing roller derby at the Tattoo Jam in Telford. She had never seen anything like it and decided to set a team up from herself.”

Amanda set up a group on facebook to see if there was any interest, said, Hannah, and from there the fledgling group met in a pub to discuss making the team a reality.

“Since then we’ve been training really hard and have grown to about 20 people. It’s taken about 18 months to get everyone up to standard,” said Hannah.

Roller derby is a roller-skating team sport where teams race around a track

Their first debut bout was on Saturday, July 23 in Northampton, but this is just the start.

“We want to grow the team so that we can get better,” said Hannah, “play bigger bouts, have more training sessions and different levels to cater for different abilities. With more team members we can bout more regularly.”

She stressed that no one should be intimidated about joining in the fun. “It is open to everyone, any women of any age, size, shape. You need no prior experience of any form.”

For more information, see the Evolution Rollergirls Facebook group or their website at evolution-rollergirls.moonfruit.com.