The iconic neon glow of the Domino Sugar sign illuminated the Baltimore skyline as Abby Dufoe and Amber Dubill sat on Dubill’s rooftop, stewing over how a city so rich in sports culture offered so few opportunities to play the game they loved. What started as a late-night conversation overlook ing the Inner Harbor soon evolved into something much bigger: a chance to build the kind of hockey culture they felt Baltimore was missing, one rooted as much in community as competition. So in August 2024, they founded the Charm City Crush, a Baltimore-based women’s hockey team that competes in the Mid-Atlantic Women’s Hockey League (MAWHL), one of the country’s longest-running women’s adult recreational hockey leagues. For Dufoe and Dubill — who serve as team captain and assistant captain, respectively — the vision was never simply about putting together another women’s team. It was about creating a brand that reflected Baltimore itself. The color scheme, centered around orange and purple tones, gives the team a distinctly Baltimore feel while reinforcing the bright and bold character that the city embodies. “It just embraces that Baltimore spirit, and it doesn’t have to be a men’s team,” Dubill said. “It can be a bunch of women who can relate in our experiences and get to play hockey at a really competitive level. You could be the best player in the world, be an absolute jerk and we would not take you. Everyone who’s on our team just genuinely loves playing hockey and wants to be there.” Turning the idea into an actual team proved far more complicated than a rooftop conversation.  Beyond designing jerseys and creating a name, Dufoe and Dubill had to build an organization from the ground up.  All of a sudden, Dufoe was tasked with securing ice time, scheduling and paying refs, ordering jerseys, handling team financials and running the team’s social media efforts.  But the foundation for taking on that kind of work wasn’t accidental.  Both had spent years navigating the patchwork reality of women’s hockey — coming up through youth systems, club programs and co-ed leagues where opportunity was often inconsistent and structure was something you learned to build for yourself. Hockey players skate alongside one another down the rink. Photo credit: Madison Short Photography. Separate paths, shared ice Dufoe’s path to hockey started on a different kind of ice.  A 35-year-old Westchester, Pennsylvania native, she was a figure skater before she ever picked up a stick and started playing forward — introduced to figure skating at nine years old after her mother enrolled her in lessons, drawn in part by her Canadian background.  An injury eventually forced her out of skating, but by age 16, she was back on the ice, attending a tryout for the Westchester East girls hockey team her mother had signed her up for.  However, the transition wasn’t immediate.  Dufoe didn’t enjoy hockey at first, but she stuck with it through high school while also playing club. That persistence carried into college at Penn State, where she continued at the club level, and later into graduate school at the University of Montana, where she again found a home in club hockey.  Along the way, she also spent a few years in co-ed and men’s leagues, experiences that sharpened her game but also made her susceptible to not being passed the puck simply by virtue of being the only woman on the team. “I’ve never played with any woman on a men’s team who’s overly prideful, showy, or anything like that,” Dufoe said. “We all just want to play hockey, and that’s one of my favorite things about hockey. It’s everybody playing on the same ice, so I don’t understand the need to act that way toward women, but it happens.” Dubill’s path ran parallel in a different corner of the sport.  As a Buffalo, New York native, she first stepped on the ice at five years old after her mother enrolled her and her twin sister in skating lessons. Her sister eventually stepped away, but Dubill stayed with it, moving into hockey as a goalie after a coach suggested figure skating and she instead chose a stick and puck.  She played boys’ hockey from ages five to 10, later joining emerging girls’ programs and traveling frequently — including cross-border trips into Canada during high school — before stepping away from competitive play after graduation. “Being the only girl on a team is a little bit isolating,” Dubill said. “You don’t get that same locker room camaraderie.”  Both players grew up immersed in traditional hockey markets — Dufoe following the Philadelphia Flyers and admiring defenseman Kimmo Timonen, Dubill raised on Buffalo Sabres hockey and idolizing goalie Ryan Miller — but neither expected to still be playing at a high level years later.  That changed after both eventually made their way to Baltimore for work in the early 2020s.  They agreed to leave their respective setups and commit to forming a new team in Baltimore, even if it meant pulling players from existing MAWHL rosters and navigating the politics that came with it. What they thought might be an end to their competitive playing days instead became the beginning of something new: a shared effort to rebuild women’s hockey opportunities in a city they both now called home. Members of the Charm City Crush women’s hockey team sit alongside one another on an ice rink bench. Photo credit: Madison Short Photography. Finding their footing The Crush’s inaugural season was uneven but foundational at the same time.  For Dufoe, stepping into a formal leadership role for the first time since college meant the on-ice responsibilities were only part of the job. Off the ice, she was functioning as general manager, operations coordinator and de facto administrator — often in the same week. Ice time had to be negotiated and secured in a crowded rink landscape around Baltimore, where youth programs dominate much of the available space. Most home games are played at the Gardens Ice House in Laurel, while away games are typically played in Wheaton, Columbia, and Washington, D.C. The structure of MAWHL didn’t make the process any easier, either. The MAWHL season typically runs from November through late March, with teams playing each opponent in their division twice — home and away — across a schedule that stretches into roughly two dozen regular-season games before playoffs.  With upper and lower divisions in place, the top teams advance to a postseason that can hinge on a single weekend in Virginia, where the league’s championship is held at St. James. As a result of that format, every weekend matters, and any stretch of missed chemistry can carry real consequences. By the end of the season, the Crush had stabilized enough to reach the playoffs in their first year, an early validation that the team could achieve competitive success. The postseason run ended in the championship game, falling just short of a title. Still, the experience set a baseline for what the group could become — a team capable of competing immediately while still building cohesion. The second season showed that the foundation was holding. The Crush returned to the playoffs again, this time finishing third, reinforcing that their first-year success was not a fluke but part of a growing presence within the MAWHL’s upper tier. For Dufoe, the results mattered, but so did the structure taking shape around them.  What began as a rooftop idea was now a consistent playoff team, built on a roster of around 30 full- and part-time players that learned how to stay together through the grind of a full MAWHL season. “It’s just girls hanging out, and then we go play some hockey,” said Devon Strachan, a 28-year-old forward for the Crush. “There’s really nothing better. It’s just such a privilege to show up to the rink and be surrounded by all your favorite people. And then you get to go win a hockey game.” Members of the Charm City Crush played a game as a fundraiser against the Baltimore Banners — a youth hockey program rooted in East Baltimore’s Tender Bridge nonprofit. Photo credit: Madison Short Photography. Leaving a mark beyond the ice For Dufoe, Dubill and many of the players on the roster, the Crush have become more than a team competing in a regional league. It has turned into a growing community built around the idea that women’s hockey in Baltimore can be both sustainable and competitive. That impact has also extended beyond regular season play.  In fall 2024, the Crush participated in the “Bridge the Gap” game at Patterson Park’s Mimi DiPietro Family Skating Center, an exhibition game aimed at highlighting women’s hockey in the Baltimore area and connecting it more directly with the broader youth hockey community.  Played as a fundraiser against the Baltimore Banners — a youth hockey program rooted in East Baltimore’s Tender Bridge nonprofit — the event drew a full crowd of families, young players and volunteers filling the stands for a rare public showcase of local hockey across generations. “There’s not a ton of space for hockey in Baltimore right now, but there’s definitely space for Baltimore and hockey,” said Matt Leone, board chair for the Tender Bridge. “And I think that the Bridge the Gap game showed you don’t have to fit the mold of what people thought hockey players were.” Moving forward, the focus has begun to shift from simply sustaining the team to expanding it.  Dufoe has discussed the possibility of fielding additional Baltimore-based squads in lower MAWHL divisions to create more entry points for players and strengthen the pipeline locally.  At the same time, the Crush continue exploring ways to keep costs manageable while deepening ties to sponsors and community partners. Even with that growth in mind, the core identity remains unchanged — a group of players who built their own space in a system that didn’t initially have one for them. That impact is most visible in the younger players who watch the team from the stands and rink glass during games, as the Crush represent the kind of example they rarely saw themselves growing up. “I’ve lived why it’s important,” Strachan said. “There are always youth teams playing around the rink at the same time that we’re playing. And you can see the girls lined up along the boards, watching us play and they’re into it. They’re seeing in that moment, their future, you don’t have to stop playing when you’re done with high school.” ...read more read less