By Jared M. Swain
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Case-A-Diva skidded into the crowd at the end of the Charm City Roller Girls intraleague season opener last Saturday, sweat dripping from her helmet as she gasped for air.
The “highest scoring jammer” in the game, Case-A-Diva hugged her teammate and best friend, Emily Kapfer, then stopped to hear the announcement that she had been named her team’s most valuable player.
The 19-year-old screamed with excitement before she rolled off on her green and purple wheels to receive her award.
Case-A-Diva, who is known during the day as Casey Gilman, is a Towson University student and one of about 40 women from all walks of life who come together each week to play roller derby in the Baltimore-based Charm City Roller Girls, which features six teams: three home teams and three travel teams.
The competitors practice once a week and play each other once a month at Skateland North Point. The objective in roller derby is to score points by one skater, a “jammer,” lapping members of the other team. “Blockers” are used to stop the jammer from scoring. Each game lasts 30 minutes.
“All of them [the Roller Girls] are like my big sisters,” said Gilman, a New Jersey native who is the youngest player in the league. “It’s really cool because I don’t actually have my family in Maryland.”
The season began for the Charm City Roller Girls this past Saturday night with a triple header featuring three intraleague teams: Charm Red, Charm Yellow and Charm Black. Every month, these three teams play one another.
In between these matches, the travel teams, the Charm City All Stars, Female Trouble, and The Trouble Makers, play at Skateland North Point and nationwide against other teams.
On the floor, the women are as strong and competitive as football players. Off the floor, they each have private lives and their own personal reasons for putting on skates for Charm City.
“Everyone has this preconceived idea about [roller] derby girls and we’re trying to break that,” said Charm Yellow skater Wendy McDermott, aka Slampagne Supernova. “I’m a lawyer. We also have veterinarians; we have painters, and architects. We’re a lot more than athletes.”
The architect, Kacey Huntington, goes by the name I.M. Pain and said in a recent Instagram post that she based her roller derby name on the architect I.M. Pie.
“I began playing Roller Derby while I was in grad school getting my Master of Architecture, so I knew I wanted my name to be based on a famous architect,” Huntington said on the CCRG Instagram page.
Huntington also recalled her first season with Charm City and their quest to the championship tournament.
“The first season I was here…we never made it to champs and we kept saying, ‘We’re going to make it to champs.’ That was our motto,” said the Charm Red skater. “We banded together that year, we beat the third-ranked team and made it to champs. For some [of the girls], it was their last year, and it was my first. I was glad to be a part of that.”
Some of the roller girls are not only occupied by their professions outside of the skating rink, but they are taking care of their families as well.
Eboni Watson, aka Nuckin’ Futz of Charm Black, recently gave birth and Saturday’s season opener was her first game back since her pregnancy.
“It was sad [missing last season], especially because I had to sit out of the tournament,” Watson said at the end of the game. “I’m a teacher, first, but this is my pastime. I’m meeting people who are very different from me.”
Those differences are also evident on the floor.
According to Erin Maher-Moran, who uses the name Smearin’ Off Ice, the skaters each have their own styles and personas.
“Some of our skaters are 100 percent athletes. Some do more of the glitz,” said the retired Maher-Moran in her red, black, and yellow hair and make-up.
One of the girls who embrace her glitzy persona is Leah Christopher, also known as Cherrylicious when she is skating for Charm Red. She wears long red and white pants, pink wheels, glitter, and a face painted cherry on her left cheek.
“No one wore long pants when I started…it was more like punk rock, a lot messier,” said Christopher, who is in her 10th season as a roller derby girl. “I still love the playfulness of the sport. With my glitter, my face paint…I get to be like a rock star for 30 minutes. Play hard, skate hard.”
Cherrylicious has been referred to by Smearin’ Off Ice as “the people’s skater.” While Cherrylicious was signing autographs, a man walked up to her and asked for her derby name. He responded “Cherrylicious? Now that’s the girl for me.”
The Charm City Roller Girls will hold an info night on March 7 for anyone who is interested in joining the league. The next match is on March 26. Both events will be held at Skateland North Point at 1113 North Point Road in Baltimore.