Quidditch!

[tarotgal]

I spent all day today up in Maryland watching the first Turtle Cup Quidditch tournament. Teams from Virginia and Maryland played matches and I sat or stood around trying to keep warm and dry (and I succeeded until it started raining in the afternoon and I put my chair & blanket in the car). But now I'm home and much warmer.

There were some AMAZING plays, some beautiful moments I hope I'll never forget, like all the teams spontaneously dancing to the Cha-Cha Slide on the field together. The semi-finals ended up with Virginia teams playing on Field 1 (University of Richmond vs Virginia Tech) and Maryland teams on Field 2 (Johns Hopkins vs. University of Maryland). BOTH games were tied when the snitch was caught and had to go to overtime. I actually saw the Virginia Tech seeker catch the snitch way off in the distance and yelled and pointed. Some subs saw me pointing and looked over to see that they'd caught it. That was kinda awesome. Then Virginia Tech caught the snitch in overtime in about 4 seconds. I have the entire overtime on video.

The final match ended up being University of Maryland (which was hosting the cup, so they had lots of supporters) vs. Virginia Tech (who had all the Virginia teams backing them--they've got this bond with James Madison University that is awesome to watch. MAN- why am I not in school NOW?). It was a tough game to watch--I was so nervous! UMD kept scoring (though VT got a couple). It was cold and freezing and the players were playing hard. In the end, the VT seeker was victorious and there was much rejoicing. Go Virginia Tech Phoenixes!

There was really no better way for me to have enjoyed watching my first all-day Quidditch tournament than to see my alma mater win the cup at the end of the day.


PS- Um, and you can probably expect me to write a Quidditch fic relatively soon now. LOL

Comments

[melydia.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a lot of fun, but I have to admit that I'm picturing a bunch of folks running around with brooms between their legs and it's kind of a hilarious mental picture. How, pray tell, does one play Quidditch sans flying broom? And how does the snitch work?

[tarotgal]

That's what everyone asks. Non-magical Quidditch is played almost the same as regular Quidditch, but with just a few differences:
1- The beaters don't have bats, they just catch and throw the bludgers
2- If you get hit by a bludger or knocked off your broom, you have to take the broom out from between your legs and run back to touch/tag one of the goal hoops to simulate the time it takes to fall from the sky, mount your broom, and get back up again. The DADA plays it where you have to run around the whole pitch, but I'm going to start playing the IQA way.
3- The snitch is a person dressed in yellow (never go to a Quidditch match wearing yellow, FYI, it confuses the poor seekers). At the beginning of the game, players close their eyes and put their brooms down. The snitch gets a minute or two to take off running. When the DADA plays it, the snitch runs in and out of the field area and can only be caught by seekers when it's in-bounds. In the IQA, the snitch runs off whereever he/she wants (across the parking lot, inside buildings, etc.). Yesterday there was a seeker floor of 5 minutes, meaning the seekers couldn't leave their pitches to find the snitch until then. But after 5 mins they take off or help their team play while waiting for the snitch to reappear somewhere. Snitches are allowed to do anything except murder players. Yesterday they brought umbrellas onto the field as a shield, stole quaffles & bludgers, sprayed silly string at seekers, etc. The first seeker who grabs a tennis ball in a sock that hangs off the back of a snitch's uniform wins 30 points for his team (when the DADA plays, it's a stuffed snitch and it's 150 points, just like in the book; I'm a purist).

Otherwise, it's exactly the same as the books. I'll upload video and photos when I write my recap, but you can probably google it faster.

It's a full contact sport. Tackling people to the ground, wrestling balls away from them, sliding through the mud, you name it. There were 19 matches yesterday and at least 9 injuries, but we had a medi-wizard (there was an EMT on-site all day who would run over each time. Thankfully, we never had injuries on different fields at the same time, because there was only one EMT).