Since 2009, the Vette City Roller Derby has been a fixture at the Skate Box on Three Springs Road.

“What’s cool about living in a college town is that we have new people coming in all the time,” said Kristina “Rembrat” Arnold, a roller derby skater and past chairwoman of the board.

Now the league, which numbers more than 30, not including officials and nonskaters, isn’t sure if it will even have a home. The Skate Box was sold Thursday to former owners Gerry and Lena Baggett of Tennessee for $750,000 at a Warren County master commissioner’s sale. Its previous owner, Cory Bodemann of Louisville, reportedly missed several payments to the Baggetts on a promissory note last year. The Baggetts have 30 days to close the sale.

“The Skate Box has an uncertain future,” Arnold said of what the Baggetts plan to do with it. “Mostly I wonder what the teenagers and young children who are skating there will do if it disappears.”

The league – made up of the traveling team Vette City Vixens and the Vette City Hot Broads, which features newer skaters and those who have been away from the league for a while – has been practicing at Ralphie’s Fun Center in Glasgow and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Neither has the regulation rink the roller derby needs or enough room to hold the 200 or more fans the bouts draw.

“The floor (at Ralphie’s) is nice. There’s a wall that is 2 feet from the edge of our track, and we’ve been hitting that wall pretty regularly,” Arnold said. “(At Holy Trinity Lutheran Church) it’s a single-size basketball court, which makes it 14 feet too short.”

The size needs to be 75 feet by 105 feet, just larger than an NCAA basketball court, as well as sanctioned by the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, Arnold said.

“For it to be sanctioned by them, there can’t be columns,” she said. “That’s because officials are trying to skate that space as well.”

The size of the court isn’t all that matters though.

“A lot of the problem is that people don’t want roller skates on their floors. The surface has to be skateable,” Arnold said. “We can skate on anything hard. We can’t skate on turf, AstroTurf or grass. There are leagues in California that skate on asphalt, but we need a roof.”

Kim “Kimmicals” Wright, co-head nonskating official, has been helping search for a new place. She is concerned, particularly since full-time practices start next month. The group practices three times a week from January to October and hosts about five home bouts a year. She has been in touch with the Bowling Green Visitors Center, Western Kentucky University and Warren County Parks and Recreation for help, but full schedules and unsuitable locations have prevented them from working out.

“We canceled our February and March home games,” Wright said. “We are trying to make them away games depending on the other teams’ schedules and their availability.”

Having ample practice and bout space can help the team get ready for one of their biggest accomplishments.

“We’ve been invited to our first international tournament this season in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., called the Beach Ball,” she said. “It’s in June.”

Wright said the league members are “keeping our hopes up.”

“We’re going to keep practicing. We are resilient and not giving up. We’re working with what we’ve been given,” she said. “We’re trying to reach out to the Bowling Green community to let them know this is happening. A lot of people don’t know the Skate Box (was) even selling.”

Mike Bryant of Bowling Green hopes that the matter of where the league’s home becomes is settled soon. He has followed the Vette City Roller Derby for three years.

“Our church (Holy Trinity Lutheran Church) sponsors the Vixens and Hot Broads. Our pastor (Andrew Toops) has been saying we need to go support them,” he said. “It’s good clean fun. The wife (Janet) and I are not huge massive sports fans, but for some reason we’ve gotten to know the skaters. Other couples say they have date nights. We have skate nights.”

Roller derby is more than a sport, Arnold said.

“We call it a family. We’ve seen our teammates get married, divorced, have children. We’ve been there for spouse deaths, parent deaths, graduations,” she said. “We have a large family of retired skaters and officials. We keep up with each other on Facebook, those that are far away. It’s been an amazing group to watch grow up.”

The skaters also include Skate Box manager Debbie “Mama Smurf” Staley as a part of the family and wonder what will happen to her if the skating rink is no more.

“Mama Smurf loves the Skate Box. She loves the clients,” Arnold said. “Mama Smurf has put her heart and soul into that place.”

Losing their home is “pretty sad,” Arnold said. Despite the fact that the skating rink could use some updating, it was still home.

“It feels like saying goodbye to an old friend – like an old friend who needs a trip to the doctor, but still an old friend,” she said.

— Follow features reporter Alyssa Harvey on Twitter at twitter.com/bgdnfeatures or visit bgdailynews.com.