Caroline Donaghy — who co-founded the Charm City Roller Girls, an all-woman roller derby league — has died.
The Charm City Roller Girls, which a page on the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association website called “Maryland’s premiere all-woman flat-track roller derby league,” at one point had over 80 skaters. The league competed against others across the country, and was part of the sport’s revival around the early 2000s.
Roller derby surged in popularity in the ’40s but faded by the early ’50s, only to spike again in the mid-’60s and early ‘70s. By 1975, the sport had again fizzled out.
As the league grew, so did its fanbase. The Charm City Roller Girls would have bouts at Du Burns Arena in Canton drawing sellout crowds of 2,000 people. And the league maintained a following for years.
Friends and former roller girls said Donaghy, a driving force behind the idea to start the league, was responsible for the formation of hundreds of friendships in and around Baltimore, where the league practiced for many years.
“She founded this league that united a whole army of people that have become a family,” said Melanie Trigeda, a longtime friend and former roller girl.
“There are hundreds of people who are currently giving thanks and who will continue to give thanks for what she created, because she formed our roller derby league, and that changed so many people’s lives,” she added.
Donaghy died on Nov. 16 at 44, friends said. A cause of death was not immediately available. Attempts by The Baltimore Banner to reach Donaghy’s family members were unsuccessful.
Donaghy, who friends said spent much of her life in Baltimore, was inspired to start the Charm City Roller Girls after briefly moving to Texas, said Jennifer Tydings, who was Donaghy’s close friend for about 20 years and a co-founder of the league.
While there, Donaghy joined a roller derby group in Houston and was hooked, according to a profile in The Baltimore Sun. She flew back to the Baltimore with hopes to start a local league.
Around 2005, Donaghy created a MySpace account to recruit skaters and printed around 1,000 fliers to advertise the burgeoning league. The co-founders organized car washes and recruitment sessions and talked to Skateland Putty Hill about practice space, Tydings said.
At its first practice, Trigeda remembered, there were about 10 or fewer people. But “it just kept growing and growing,” she said, with “more and more girls showing up to practice.”
Eventually, the club had amassed around 80 skaters and even more supporters. For years, they practiced three to four times a week, Trigeda said.
They formed travel teams that would go across the country for “bouts,” or competitions. In a bout, one player from each team, called a “jammer,” must lap skaters playing defense on the opposing team, called “blockers,” to score points.
Outside of practice, the league held fundraisers and parties which many members participated in.
The league became the Charm City Roller Derby in 2019 to show “our dedication to providing an inclusive community for all skaters, officials, and volunteer[s],” according to the group’s Facebook page.
While the WFTDA has resumed hosting tournaments after pausing events due to the pandemic, the Charm City Roller Derby has not been listed as a participating team in recent months. Hilary Rosensteel, former PR chair and co-owner, as well as a close friend of Donaghy’s for many years, confirmed the league is “no longer meeting or skating right now.” But she said Donaghy was “well-known and well-loved” and brought people together.
Even after the Charm City Roller Girls began, Donaghy would continue to try to convince anyone and everyone to join the league or come to a practice, said Laura Schneider, a former roller girl.
And she was committed. If someone said the league sounded cool, Schneider recalled, Donaghy might counter, “Does it sound cool or are you coming to practice?”
“It was her baby for sure,” Tydings said. “She cared a lot about all those people, and the league turning into something bigger.”
The group, former roller girls said, became a family — a network of people across the city that are united and look out for each other, they said.
“We wouldn’t have known each other if it weren’t for her,” Schneider said. “Years and years of friendships, because of this thing she started.”
Around the league, Donaghy had a way of making people feel valued and important, Schneider said, no matter if you were a volunteer “who nobody knew” or a skater.
“She really just made everybody feel like the coolest guy in the room,” she said.
After a few years of skating for the league, Donaghy moved away to New York and California before returning to Baltimore about six years ago, Tydings said.
But, whenever Donaghy visited Baltimore while living in other states, she always made sure to cheer on the league.
She’d always sit in the first row, track-side, Schneider remembered.
Donaghy, friends said, was always loving and supportive.
Tydings and Donaghy lived together throughout their 20s and 30s. If Tydings was having a hard week, she said, Donaghy would make her bagged lunches and put little notes in them with messages like “Have a good day. I love you.” inside, she said.
If Tydings wasn’t feeling great, Donaghy was the person she’d call. She could count on her to make a joke that would cheer her up.
When longtime friend Fionnuala Brigman broke up with a boyfriend, she remembers Donaghy let her sleep at her home.
“I never left her side,” Brigman said. “She really just made a place for me, and she didn’t have to.”
She was fun-loving and energetic, friends said. And she loved to play board games like Cranium.
Tydings said she and Donaghy got matching spaghetti and meatball tattoos as part of an inside joke. They would often make elaborate dishes together. Donaghy liked making ramen with a pork broth, which could take days.
And they would celebrate “dumb holidays” together, Tydings said, like “tap dance to work day.”
All day, Tydings said, they wore costumes and tap-danced everywhere they went, even in the supermarket.
“She just was a joyful, hilarious weirdo,” Tydings said.
