Rena Garcia is about as tough as they come.

The daughter of a Marine, Garcia helps coach the Sacred City Derby Girls, a Sacramento-based roller derby team. Complete with a large tattoo on the left side of her neck and one on each forearm, Garcia and her bulging biceps would make her an intimidating opponent in any game, not to mention roller derby, one of the toughest contact sports around.

“It’s a very empowering type of sport. I’ve never felt this way in any other sport I’ve played,” Garcia said. “It shows you exactly what you’re capable of.”

But Garcia’s strength comes from more than her tough exterior. As a new Auburn resident, the part-time Pizza Express employee owns her own clothing business, Leppard Lady Fashions, and regularly uses her position as a Derby Girl to make a difference in her community.

Along with 33 other teammates, Garcia is making a visible mark on the greater Sacramento area. This year, the Derby Girls were named the Leukemia Lymphoma celebrities of the year.

“One of the things that attracted me to roller derby and the league in Sacramento was that they are doing things like the Noise for Toys each December, work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Special Olympics, the Mustard Seed School and food drives,” said Gabriell Garcia, president of Sacred’s league. “Sometimes you feel like you can’t make a difference yourself, but being together with everybody it seems like you’re making a stronger difference.”

This Saturday, the team will be using their sport to support victims of the 49 Fire. Aside from providing a party bus from Auburn to their Oct. 17 bout in Roseville, the team is using the night to donate $5 from every bus ticket sold to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund for Auburn’s victims.

Rena Garcia said that this type of charitable giving is trademark in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, a community typically known only for the toughness of their sport. In reality, Garcia said the roller derby association is an organization made up of more than 400 leagues, or local skating groups, that spend much of their time investing in charity work of their choosing, aside from the time they put into their aggressive contact sport.

Currently ranked 11th in the Western Region of the roller derby association, most of Sacramento’s Derby Girls attest to how the tough sport nurtures their femininity, increases the value of their lives and expands their place in local community.

“It’s your own individual expression of femininity while you go out there and kick butt on the track,” Gabriell Garcia said. “We’ve been through divorces, deaths, sicknesses, injuries. If someone gets injured, we make sure they have groceries and cook them dinner … it can be tough for 50 women to get together, but when you have a common goal it all seems to work out.”

Garcia joked that her hopes for derby’s future involve world domination. But her jest might not be so far off, what with the number of leagues tripling each year, and roller derby newly finding its place in 13 countries outside the U.S. The release of

Drew Barrymore’s recent coming-of-age movie, “Whip It,” has also greatly increased the sport’s exposure.

“This is something I used to watch on TV,” Rena Garcia said. “Anything with roller skates is fabulous for me. I was in martial arts when I was younger, and I thought ‘wow, I can do martial arts, hit people and skate? This is fabulous!’”

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Good to know

Roller derby is a full-contact sport with aggression similar to that of football or hockey and NASCAR. The goal of the sport is for the team’s blockers to block the other team’s players in order to help their point-scorer to get through the opposing pack. At the same time, players work to keep the opposing team’s point scorer from getting through.

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Sacred City Derby Girls vs. San Francisco SheEvil Dead

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17. Doors open 7 p.m.

Where: 889 Riverside Ave., Roseville.

Tickets: $10 in advance, and $15 at the door. Children 6 and under free. Party bus tickets are $25, with VIP seating included. Tickets are available at The Limelight, Dimple Records, R5 Records and The Beat, or online at brownpapertickets.com