Roller derby may seem like a novelty sport — and on some levels, it is — but it is also attractive for the same reasons that other contact sports provide a thrill.

It demands strength and strategy, involves bodies in motion and features nail-biting competition.

It’s dangerous, despite the helmets and pads: These women are on wheels, rolling around a track trying to either push through or block a circuit, and they sometimes spin out or tumble to the track as the action whirls around them.

Players go by names like Slam Musubi, Biggie Brawls, Faye-Tality and Miso Rowdy; most are tattooed, and there’s plenty of adrenaline to go around. But this is truly a sport, with sanctioned rules and safety principles (believe it or not), and players who demonstrate a hunger to win — “jammers” who push past the opposing team’s blockers, circle the track and earn the points necessary to put their team on top.

Unlike the staged games seen on TV in the past, Women’s Flat Track Derby Association games don’t allow throwing elbows, hitting or tripping. But there’s still plenty of contact and speed.

This weekend, Honolulu’s Pacific Roller Derby league hosts a “Battle of the Islands.” The hometown Hulagans take on Hilo’s Honey Badgers on Friday and Waimea’s Rough Roller Girls on Saturday at the Palama Settlement gym.

After the Hulagans match starts things off on Saturday, the round-robin event continues with challenges by teams from Hawaii island, Kauai, Maui and Oahu. Look for Hawaii’s Echo City Knockouts, the Garden Island Renegade Girls, Maui Roller Girls and Oahu’s Aloha City Rollers.

Only one team will come out on top.

The battle is set up to attract spectators, with hot food, cold drinks and merchandise available, including T-shirts sporting the Hulagans logo: a mock-snarling, helmeted derby girl.

Roller Derby is a family affair, with many players bringing their kids, and youth under age 12 are admitted without charge.

Quinn Fisher, aka Quinn-Tin Tear-Into-You, has played for two years and serves as the Pacific Roller Derby league’s media rep.

“Anyone can join,” she said, even someone who has never skated before — though by its nature, the hard-driving game attracts physical players who are ready to push hard, roll fast and stop on a dime.

As we spoke, during a scrimmage practice at the Papakolea Community Center, returning league member Tadbit Nasty (aside from Fisher, players introduced themselves by their team nicknames) rolled by, testing some newly handed-down skates that she would use.

Tadbit said she’d been in the league for three seasons before leaving because of her work schedule, but “roller derby was always in the back of my head.”

The team sport demands a lot of its players, though the evening, child-friendly practices make it easy to get started. “It’s hard to half-commit,” Tadbit said.

Would-be competitors work their way up through a series of qualifications, determined by tests on the track.

It can take months, perhaps a year, before a player is deemed ready to play in competition, Fisher explained, moving from “fresh meat” classes that teach skaters how to “fall small” and safely on up through the “all-star” level, when a skater is deemed skilled enough to compete.

By the time a skater is ready to compete, she has learned roller derby strategies, such as “juking” : when a jammer feints back and forth behind her opposing team’s blockers, using her feet and hands to fake players out, moving quickly to find an opening and pushing through, shoulders first.

Meanwhile, the players are building the kinds of bonds that can only be created from doing push-ups and drills together, knocking each other down and picking each other up.

“You get what you put into it,” Tadbit said. “It’s badass. … Women sometimes put themselves in a place where they have to be dainty, but roller derby isn’t that.”

While away from roller derby, Tadbit played another contact sport — rugby — but said the friendships team members develop with roller derby are beyond compare.

“You never want to leave,” Tadbit said, despite the bumps and bruises — or maybe because of them, along with the thrill of this competition on wheels.