Charm City Roller Girls (#4) advance to Championships with a win over the London Rollergirls (#6)

By Lois Slain

The London Rollergirls (#6) came into their final bout of the East Region Playoffs hoping to be the first European team to advance to the WFTDA Championships. However, the Charm City Roller Girls (#4), of Baltimore, Maryland, were not willing to give up their third shot at the international title.

Photo by Kelli Catana

The teams were evenly matched for most of the first period, both playing heavy defense to lock down jammers in the pack. However, Charm City began gaining a little steam at the end of the first period as London ran into a stretch of penalty trouble. At halftime, the score was Charm City 77, London 42.

Charm continued to dominate lead jammer status at the start of the half as London rode out some blocker penalties. This allowed them to slowly add more points to their total while also burning time off the clock. When Charm's blockers began joining the London players in the box, the bout returned to a back and forth defensive slog with neither team able to pick up more than a few points per pass. Nonetheless, London slowly began closing the points gap, keeping it within fewer than 20 points, and then 10.

London's aggressive blocking again began landing their blockers in the penalty box, leaving them with only one player on the track at times, allowing Charm to rebuild their lead. After a time out, and with the bulk of the crowd at the Champlain Valley Exposition cheering them on, London came back strong to again narrow the gap. With 5 minutes on the clock, the score stood at 128 to 107.

Then, London's jammer landed in the box, allowing Charm's rookie jammer Trixy Von Doom to go on a scoring spree. As she fought to keep Trixy in the pack, top London blocker Stefanie Mainey landed a low block that got her booted from the game. With just over 3 minutes to play, there was not enough time for London to make up the 42-point gap, even when Charm's jammer ended in the box with a two minute penalty on the last jam.

Charm City earned their third trip to WFTDA Championships, while London gained two spots from the seed they entered at.

Charm City Roller Girls (#4) 183 - 3rd Place
London Rollergirls (#6) 159 - 4th Place