February is our birthday month! Yes, we are those people who carve out weeks to celebrate. Don’t judge us (pretty please). We’ve been around for a while now, 11 years to be exact, so we thought we’d share the story of how RollerFit came to be.
Our fearless founder and Director of Fun on Wheels, Stacey, has a lifelong relationship with roller skating. You may already know that it all started back when she was 4 years old at a fateful Mums and Bubs skating class, but did you know it was her Dad, Stephen, who took Stacey Skates to weekly classes at Skate Plus throughout the 90s. She basically grew up on 8 wheels from that point, moving into competitive artistic skating and competing at the National level in Figures, Freeskating and Group events till she was 17. Skating stayed in the family too with Stacey’s Dad supporting the sport by becoming an official for NSW Artistic Skating (what a legend) and her brother was also a competitive speed skater at the National level too. Stacey joined in on the speed skating action for a little while as well, competing in both inline and quad speed skating. On top of all the competition and training, Stacey pretty much lived at the rink in Campbelltown where she worked and taught skating classes as a teenager. The creation of RollerFit makes so much sense now, doesn’t it!
Before there was RollerFit, our founding boss as business skater started RollerPromotions. If you haven’t heard of RollerPromotions, it is all about getting talented and experienced roller skaters gigs at special events and promotional work. RollerPromotions was born in 2009 with the crews’ first gigs at Purple Sneakers in Sydney and there’s been plenty more since. The RollerPromotions crew has grown over the years, and they’ve had lots of fun dressing up in some costumes, donning loads of glitter and showing off how fun it can be to live life on 8 wheels.
So where does RollerFit come into Stacey’s story of a lifelong skate love? Well, back in 2011 Stacey was teaching a bunch of friends how to roller skate in the Inner West of Sydney. More and more people started joining in, and then she had her lightbulb moment. Decided she wanted to create a way for people to try roller skating and get hooked on the fun and community aspect of it all, something that took a little bit of skill from the various kinds of roller skating so people could find their skate passion. These unofficial classes continued for around 8 months before RollerFit became official. Stacey says that the officialness of RollerFit started in February 2012 when she secured her first indoor venue in Alexandria and got the first batch of rental skates. Our rentals have received plenty of love and have started so many new skaters out on their skating journey. Not long after, RollerFit in Sydney found a new home in Mascot where it really started to thrive. Sadly, the Mascot venue closed and got turn into apartments, but that didn’t slow our roll.
Over the years the RollerFit community has grown as our venues expanded across the east coast of Australia. We cannot thank all our RollerFit skaters enough for this! The Central Coast was RollerFit’s first venue outside of Sydney and Melbourne was our first interstate venue. Fun fact: Amy who runs RollerFit Victoria attended her first roller skating class in Sydney in RollerFit’s first week of official operation! We’ve gone onto open venues in QLD spearheaded by the effervescent style icon and roller mum of our hearts, Nicola. Our newest skate adventure kicked off in the last couple of years in the ACT thanks to RollerFit’s darling duo, Matt and Amelia, aka Two Wheelers. Heck, we almost forgot to mention that we even have our own skate studio and shop on Darkinjung Country / Central Coast which opened in November 2021. As the venues have expanded, so has our coaching lineup. Some of our coaches have been around since the beginning and some are newer faces. We are sending every single one of our coaches past and present lots of gratitude, hugs and kisses.
We’ve also mixed up the RollerFit timetable, bringing rhythm skating and roller dance to Rollerfit about 6 years ago. A handful of our coaches discovered their passion for roller dance overseas and brought back all the knowledge they could soak up to teach you all how to get on down to boogie town and find your flow. Over the years our Rollerfit instructors have learnt from so many incredible skaters around the world, but we would be remiss not to give a special shoutout to our good friend and teacher Tony Limtiaco, aka T-Roll. Black and yellow might be his signature colours, but we think he’s pure gold. If you’re a rhythm skating and roller dance enthusiast don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn from the Venice Beach OG the next time we bring Tony to Australian shores.
As the skate community has grown over the years, the RollerFit team has dreamt up many ways to get everyone together at a bunch of different roller skating events. Discos are a RollerFit staple, and we’ve been hosting them since the beginning. You might even remember the wild times at our UNSW Roundhouse discos or maybe you’ve got your roll on at one of our special Tempe discos. Who could forget the 3-day skatestravaganza that was RollerFit x Moxi Skate Fest back in 2019 with special coaches from across Australia and the Moxi US team including the powerhouse Michelle Steilen, a.k.a Estro Jen. The RollerFit Retreat made its debut in 2022 with a focus on roller dance and a little bit of skate park fun with over 120 skaters making their way to Darkinjung for a weekend of wheely good times. We’ve also hosted and helped out at plenty of community outreach skating programs over the years because we think roller skating should be something for everyone. You can bet your strong skater booty that we’ll be hosting more roller skating events in the future so always keep an eye on our socials for announcements.
So much has happened in the last 11 years and we just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported RollerFit. We are so excited to keep on rolling with all our skaters and welcome so many new ones to the RollerFit community this year. As always, we’ve got lots of good skate times lined up in our calendar, so make sure you follow us to keep up to date on all the fun we’ve got planned for our eleventh year!
