Monster trucking

• What: Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam
• When: Tonight, 7:30; Saturday, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
• Where: Roanoke Civic Center
• Cost: Gold Circle, $25 in advance, $27 day of show; Super Value Seats, $16 in advance, $18 day of show; kids (2 to 12 years old) $5 in advance, $7 day of show

Courtney Jolly loves crushing stuff.

She digs catching air.

She's heavy into speed.

Yet the 20-year-old monster truck driver says deep down, she's "just a girlie-girl."

Before she buckles herself into Pastrana 199, a fire red, 10,000-pound, 10-foot tall monster truck, she sweeps her eyelids with blue eye shadow.

"I don't want to look like the burly girl in the truck," she said. "You've got to look cute."

Jolly will pilot Pastrana 199 this weekend at the Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam at the Roanoke Civic Center.

The event, which regularly sells out, is one of the most popular at the venue, according to Cathy Watson-Bloch, a civic center spokeswoman.

During monster truck events, drivers race through a course while smashing through and jumping over obstacles including junk cars, trucks and sometimes motor homes. There is also a freestyle event, where drivers spin doughnuts, launch into the air and compete for the wildest ride.

Jolly is not the first woman to drive a monster truck, but she is the youngest, which makes her popular with fans.

As Jolly puts it: "It's a big deal to have a chick behind the wheel. The moms and little girls are always on my side."

The boys like her a bit, too. Jolly said she hears her share of marriage proposals, cat calls and guys yelling, "I love you."

The petite blonde grew up at race tracks. Her dad drag races. Her mother drives swamp buggies.

Jolly started racing at age 7, in a 60-mile-per-hour go-cart. She took a couple of years off in her teens after she broke her arm in a crash.

While she healed, she tried beauty pageants. "I figured out that wasn't for me," she said.

By 16, Jolly was back on four wheels, this time traveling 170 mph in a rear-engine dragster.

Then came the monsters.

In 2005, Jolly went to a Monster Jam in Naples, Fla., her hometown. She went into the pits and begged the drivers for a shot behind the wheel.

Jolly got a tryout later that year. In 2006, she signed a contract to drive Pastrana 199, a 1,500-horsepower machine with a Ford F-150 body and four-wheel steering.

Some of the older drivers didn't know what to think about her, Jolly said. Some didn't accept her, not because she was a woman, but because she had just graduated high school.

Fans liked her right away. Like them, she's into the sport for the big air jumps that shoot the trucks 30 feet in the air.

"It's cool. It's like, woo-hoo, I'm flying," she said. "Sometimes it's like, woo, this landing is going to hurt."

So far, Jolly has flipped the truck three times, but hasn't been injured.

The moms always ask her if she's scared.

"I never learned how to be scared when I grew up," she tells them.

What's next? Jolly hopes to win a monster truck championship and then switch to top fuel dragsters.

Oh, and she wants a Courtney Jolly Barbie doll.