#5 Charm City Comes Back on #18 Kansas City, 135-115

By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Sun Jul 19 2009 6:24am

KANSAS CITY, MO -- Charm City continued to solidify their reputation as a slow-starting but strong-finishing team in a trip to Kansas City Saturday night, falling behind by 29 points in the first half and not taking their first lead until 42 minutes into the game. In the end, though, their superior skill in single-jammer situations would prove to be the deciding factor, and they pulled out a hard-fought 135-115 win for their 11th win of 2009.

Live text coverage of this bout was sponsored by Roller Warriors. Read the play-by-play in the text boutcast from Justice Feelgood Marshall.

Charm City's jammer rotation was a little different than usual in this bout, as they were missing heavily used jammers Lady Quebeaum and Bambi's Revenge and turned to a four-girl platoon of Pistol Whip, Joy Collision, Flo Shizzle and Duchess of Torque -- for most of their '09 season, Pistol and Joy had been primarily deployed in the pack. For Kansas City's part, the bout was a interleague debut for a very fast rookie in Track Rat, who joined a rotation of Hall Balls, Strawberry Cutthroat, Bella Fire and Ami-Geddon.

A crowd of about 1700 at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium was vocally pleased by their home team's big lead as the first few jams of the night played out -- Charm City only got on the board once in the opening four jams, giving KCRW a 20-4 lead to start off. Notably, though, most of those points came on a 12-0 powerjam for KCRW Hall Balls -- and it would be one of the very few times that Charm City allowed multiple scoring pass in a power jam situation.

Charm City strung together some low-scoring jam wins to bring it to 24-14 favoring KC after the first ten minutes, but a 9-0 for Strawberry Cutthroat on a full Charm City box followed by a blazingly fast 4-0 for Track Rat had KCRW up by 23 points at the midpoint of the first half, 37-14.

Again, the Baltimore girls put up some points before the point margin could get out of hand with a big 13-0 power jam for Just Carol as the Charm City blockers severely slowed the pack. That brought Charm to within ten points at 37-27 -- and then the momentum was all Kansas City for the next 4 jams, where they'd put up 21 points to just 2 for Charm City and hold their largest lead of the bout at 58-29 with 5 and a half minutes to play.

Fortunately for Charm City, they got their biggest jam of the night just when Kansas City was threatening to establish a dominating lead by halftime. CCRG jammer Flo Shizzle got out of the pack without lead while KCRW jammer Bella Fire got sent to the box, giving Flo Shizzle a full two minutes to race around while Charm City once again imposed slow death on the pack. Flo would put up a massive 20-0 jam that completely erased KC's margin from the previous four jams.

Kansas City did not score again before halftime, and the score at the break had Charm City closer than they'd been at any point in the bout, with KC hanging on to a 2 point lead at 58-56 and Charm City on a 27-0 scoring run.

Second Half

For the first four jams of the second half, it looked as if Kansas City had made the more effective halftime adjustments and halted Charm's momentum. Charm City couldn't put any points on the board while Hall Balls picked up a bunch in a 0-0, 4-0, 0-0, 12-0 sequence that was much to the liking of the home fans. Kansas City was up 74-56 at that point, but that was when the Charm City comeback began in earnest.

Charm City managed to get some momentum without scoring a point during a power jam for Kansas City's rookie sensation Track Rat, denying her an opening pass for the full two minutes as she was unlucky enough to find herself up against Joy Collision, Dolly Rocket, Pistol Whip and Holly Go Hardly in the Charm pack. The momentum shift continued on the following jam as Flo Shizzle got another big powerjam with a 10-0, although KC blocker Annie Maul was practically singlehandedly responsible for holding Flo back long enough to keep it from getting any worse for KC.

Things continued to spool out in Charm City's favor for some time and suddenly it was KC that could not get on the board. After KC was blanked on 4 consecutive jams, Joy Collision got Charm City in the lead for the first time with a 10-0, making it 80-74 Charm City with about 18 minutes left to play. While the bout was momentarily tied up on the following jam at 82, the Charm City run picked right back up with 25 unanswered points over three jams to make it 107-82 Charm City with 8:29 to play. Over the midpoint of the half, Charm City had gone on a 51-8 run and denied Kansas City any points on 10 out of 11 consecutive jams.

Charm City's lead peaked at 37 points with 4 minutes to play at 124-87, and although entirely erasing the Charm City lead looked to be on the outermost edges of possibility, KC gave it a final run by winning the last three jams of the bout. They pulled out an 8-4 victory followed by a big 12-0 power jam for Hall Balls, and were looking at a 21 point deficit going into the final jam at 128-107 -- but though it went the full two minutes with no lead jammer, it only got them one point closer as Strawberry Cutthroat took 8 and Joy Collision took 7 to make the final score Charm City 135, Kansas City 115.

Charm City increased their record on the year to 11-2, while Kansas City moved to 4-2.

Next up for Kansas City will be a home contest with South Central regional rival Houston; that one goes down in Kansas City on August 22. Charm City's all-stars take their longest break of 2009 so far -- a mere six weeks -- before taking on #3 Philly and #4 Windy City on consecutive August Saturdays, the 22nd and 29th.

Photos: Phil Peterson