#6 Charm City Defeats #8 Carolina, 127-100

By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Wed May 27 2009 5:11pm

RALEIGH, NC -- A pitched and occasionally heated battle between two well-matched Eastern Region powerhouses ended with a victory for Baltimore's Charm City Roller Girls over the hosting Carolina Rollergirls, 127-100. The loss moved Carolina to 1-2 in the 2009 campaign while Charm City improved to an impressive 8-1 on the year.

Read the play-by-play from Frenzy Lohan and Slack Kerowhack in DNN's archived boutcast. Coverage of this bout was kindly sponsored by Black Eyed Susan Skate Shop.

Charm City stepped out in front early with a textbook 4-0 for their impressive first-year rookie Just Carol, who followed a killer CCRG pack of Reckless Ndangerment, Joy Collision, Dolly Rocket and Coach Ballbricker to shut out Carolina's Holly Wanna Crackya and her pack of Ms. Anthrope the Mordant, Princess America, Trudy Struction and Bianca O'Blivion . After a tie 4-4 between DVS for Carolina and Lady Quebeaum for Charm City and another 4-0 win for the terrifyingly fast Joy Collision over Deviled Legs, Charm had a 12-4 advantage.

But Carolina would strike back hard in the fourth jam with an enormous crowd-pleasing jam for Kitty Crowbar over Minnie Piledriver -- Minnie was hammered by Carolina's DVS and Kelly Clocks' Em to set up two grand slams for Kitty, who ended with a big 14-2 that put Carolina in front 18-14. Things continued to go Carolina's way with a 6-0 for Princess America over Just Carol and suddenly Carolina's early 8 point deficit had turned into a 8 point lead at 26-14 about 9 minutes into the bout.

Charm City's Pistol Whip took the lead right back with a massive 17-0 over Kelly Clocks'em as the pack got too strung out for Carolina's blockers to build any effective walls, making it 31-26 for Charm City, but for the middle third of the half, it suddenly became a low-scoring dogfight.

The Baltimore girls were still clinging to the lead at 36-34 with ten minutes to play in the half, but Charm City exploited a power jam situation to the hilt when Carolina's jammer Princess America got herself a trip to the box on a major back block. The visiting pack of Dolly Rocket, Pistol Whip, Reckless Ndangerment and Mistress May Eye slid perfectly to all-offense, making way for Just Carol to put up the biggest jam of the bout with a 20-0 that gave Charm their first real separation of the game at 56-34 with 7:40 in the first half.

Jammerless woes mounted for Carolina when Princess America got out of the box in the following jam only to quickly pick up a fourth minor and head right back, leading to more offensive-blocking fun for Charm City and a 14-0 for their jammer Pistol Whip -- and suddenly a close bout was verging on blowout at Charm City 75, Carolina 34 with 5 minutes to halftime.

Fortunately for Carolina, they stopped the momentum by coming out ahead in the half's final three jams -- an 8-0 and 3-0 for Holly Wanna Crackya bookended a quick 4-0 for Charm City's Joy Collision -- and the half ended with a 33 point lead for Charm City at 79-46.

Second Half

Charm City came out in the second half still hitting on all cylinders and stretching the lead to its largest margin at 43 points, 91-48 three jams deep into the half. A strange sequence began at that point. It started with a momentarily frightening apparent injury when Carolina jammer Holly Wanna Crackya went down hard and awkwardly in turn 3 and called the jam from the floor but seemed unable to get up under her own power. The teams quickly took the traditional knee and the EMTs rushed over, but Holly shook it off surprisingly quickly and was back up to skate off without their help.

However, Charm City's bench seemed to incorrectly think that an injury timeout had been called, and when the next jam started in the requisite 30 seconds from Holly's call-off, they hadn't gotten their jammer on the track yet, giving Princess America a much-needed 2 minutes to work alone.

That jam would prove to be by far the most chaotic of the bout, though, as the Charm City pack was quickly reduced by penalties to just Dolly Rocket all by her lonesome. Dolly committed an out-of-play major on Princess -- getting some equally major crowd boos -- and was sent to the box, but came right back in due to the box cap ... only to almost immediately get hit with a tripping major and increasing boos. By that time, Charm's Coach Ballbricker had returned from the box... and went right back in with a lunging forearm on Princess that made an already vocally unhappy crowd absolutely apoplectic.

Action was stopped for some time after that jam to restore order in a complicated penalty box and restore tempers to manageable levels, but it all ended with a 96-61 lead for Charm City and 20:16 on the clock.

Carolina got their revenge on the scoreboard, taking advantage of the still-light Charm City pack on the following jam to get a 17-0 that featured a crowd-pleasing star pass from Holly Wanna Crackya to DVS, reducing Charm's formerly controlling lead to just 18 points at 96-78.

After a quick Charm City 4-1, jammers Just Carol and Holly Wanna Crackya combined to give the new 4.0 ruleset a moment in the sun as they both went to the box almost at the same time, leading to very short penalties for both of them and a frenetic return to action that saw Just Carol winning a full-length 7-3, leaving the score at 107-81 with 14 minutes left to play.

Though the game was much closer than it had been at the beginning of the half, Charm City clambered back into the driver's seat for a streak that severely hampered Carolina's comeback hopes, stringing together a 14-0 run over three jams that ran the clock down to 7:40 and the score up to 121-81 Charm City. However, they did suffer a setback at the ten-minute mark, as Dolly Rocket was ejected for getting five trips to the box -- a happenstance that did not go unnoticed by an apparently pleased Carolina audience.

Carolina shrank the Charm City lead slightly over the last few jams of the bout, but they couldn't get it quite to within striking distance before time ran out. With 3 seconds left on the clock after the penultimate jam, Carolina called time to set up the derby equivalent of a Hail Mary pass, hoping that Kitty Crowbar could do the nearly-but-not-entirely-impossible task of making up a 31 point deficit against Joy Collision. Kitty did pull lead and put up 4 points, but with Joy Collision out of the pack and coming for her first scoring pass, Kitty chose to concede there by calling off the jam, ending the bout at 127-100.

In the bonus B-team bout, the Carolina Bootleggers had very little problem ending the night on an up note for the home fans by dominating Charm City's b-squad Female Trouble, going up 98-32 at half on their way to a 194-68 victory. For the Bootleggers, Roxxxy Slide, Deviled Leggs, Kelly Clocks'em and Pink Slip took the opportunity for some endurance training by playing in both that bout and the all-star one; for Female Trouble, Mistress May Eye, Minnie Piledriver, Cindy Lop-Her and Penaltyna did the same. It was also a public debut for two of Charm City's newest members, Dame Bramaged and Nurse Wretched.

On June 6th, Carolina becomes the next league to try and stop #1 Gotham's incredible winning streak, which now stands at 14 games. Charm City also has a major challenge up next, taking on the godmothers of the flat-track game on June 20 when they battle #4 Texas in a high-noon, neutral-ground sanctioned bout in Boston.

Additional reporting: Frenzy Lohan, Slack Kerowhack
Photos: Joshua R. Craig