Rat City Rollergirls Bout on 7/13 brings Baltimore and Sacramento to KeyArena

Despite being oh, about a continent apart, Baltimore’s Charm City Roller Girls have become something of a long-distance rivals to the Rat City Rollergirls. The July 13 bout will be the fourth time the two teams have met in the past four years, and each bout has been exciting (who remembers the time the lights went out at East Coast Extravaganza?*) and Rat leads the series 2-1. The last time the teams met in Baltimore last summer, Rat City took the win.

Charm City has been a fixture at the WFTDA Championship Tournaments since 2010, earning their invitation by placing in the top three at the East Regional Playoffs, but the team’s 2013 record has been mixed—big wins over lower ranked teams, but losses (sometimes big losses) at the hands of this year’s top contenders for the WFTDA Championships. The one shared opponent between Rat City and Charm City is Los Angeles’ Angel City Derby Girls, with RCRG getting an 11-point win over the Hollywood Scarlets while Charm suffered a 17-point loss, so if those games are any comparison, fans should expect a fantastic night of derby from these two All-Star teams!

In the April WFTDA rankings, Charm is ranked 17^th to Rat’s 6^th, and the next set of rankings will be released in early July. The July rankings will influence the seedings for September’s WFTDA Division 1 Playoff Tournaments. With the elimination of WFTDA’s regional model, this could be the first of several times that Rat City and Charm City meet in 2013.

The opening bout of the night features Rat City’s Rain of Terror hosting Sacramento’s Sac City Rollers. Rain of Terror will be playing Sac City’s All-Star team, Capitol Punishers. With only a year of WFTDA membership under their belts, Capitol Punishers have quickly moved up the ranks, currently sitting at #50 (out of 155 ranked teams) and poised to earn an invitation to WFTDA’s inaugural Division 2 tournaments in August. Rain of Terror, not shying away from any play, has two bouts WFTDA All-Star teams this season in their 2-1 2013 record, including a big win over Bellingham’s Blunt Force Trauma and a loss to Australia’s VRDL All-Stars. This will be the first time any Rat City team plays the Sac City Rollers and if last month’s RoT bout against Montreal’s second travel team was any indication, should be a great way to start a night of exciting and competitive flat track roller derby!

*Don’t remember when the lights went out? Check out the Charm vs Rat bout at ECE from 2009 when we had hamsters running the machines with some throwback Coveritlive textcasts!