Back to Hoops
Author: Jack McGovern
Editors: Christian Barnes, Naresh Edala, Fiona Wisehart
RPI Quidditch at World Cup VIII in 2015. Starting line, left to right: Chris “Rock Boy“ Lore (chaser), Sam Nielsen (keeper), Mario Nasta (beater), Teddy Costa (chaser), Melissa Lindquist (chaser), Ashtyn Coyle (beater)
Sam Nielsen would later win the Benepe Cup (MLQ Championship) in 2016. Mario Nasta would later become a 2 time winner of the Benepe Cup in 2016 and 2019 and the MLQ East Division’s MVP in 2016. Teddy Costa would later become 3 time winner of the Benepe Cup in 2015, 2016, and 2019 the MLQ East Division’s MVP in 2019, and a current member of the US National Team (USNT).
Image Credit: Charley Nasta
About the author:
Jack McGovern has been involved in quidditch since 2010, when he was in sixth grade. He started writing a blog “The QuidKid” under the pen name JackThePhan and worked on the US Quidditch editorial team for several years. While in high school, he founded and ran Keystone Cup, an interregional tournament. He most recently played on study abroad in the United Kingdom for Oxford Universities Quidditch Club during the 2019-2020 season.
On Friday, November 13, 2020, a ten-year anniversary for quidditch passed without much fanfare from the younger generation of college players who have reenergized the sport in recent years. World Cup IV, the first US quidditch national championship held outside Middlebury, Vermont and a landmark event for the sport that hosted 46 teams and over 20,000 spectators in Manhattan, had occurred a decade before. US Quidditch held a Zoom viewing of Brooms Up!, a lovable 30-minute documentary about the weekend, and a roundtable discussion followed. Understandably, the audience for the virtual program mostly consisted of those who were there and wanted to reminisce, including yours truly.
The Brooms Up! documentary was produced by Boxer Films and Alivan's Wand & Broom makers, directed by Larry O'Flahavan, and edited by James Stubbs.
But while anniversary celebrations — and discussions of quidditch history, more broadly — have often been geared towards old-timers and established figures in the sport, a narrative account of the growth of competitive quidditch has never been written with younger and newer players as the target audience. The compelling story has been inaccessible, only available through a do-it-yourself tour through grainy YouTube videos or bits and pieces gleaned from conversations with older coaches and program alums. The more experienced hands in the sport have been left to talk about quidditch history amongst themselves.
Along the way, the central role of young, new players and the dynamic, grassroots nature of the sport have been obscured. Real-life quidditch was started by college freshmen in a geographically-isolated location and played almost exclusively by college-aged teams until 2013. Team USA stars on the most successful club teams were once role players, striving for the chance to roster at their first regional championship. Teams rose and fell, with cores of players who have long departed the sport, but left behind strategic legacies that endure. Every championship of every dynasty, including the three-peat of the University of Texas, was highly contingent.
Highlight reel of the World Cup 8 Finals game, Lone Star Quidditch Club vs Texas Quidditch, in 2015. Texas Quidditch won this game, winning Nationals for the 3rd year in a row. This is referred to as their “three-peat.“
This video was edited by Billy Quash and filmed by Billy Quach, Joey Reynebeau, Alex Gates and Caleb Ragatz.
The following series will tell stories that have been forgotten, through glimpses of primary sources like game film, Tumblr blogs, YouTube shows, and US Quidditch website archives. Each article will roughly cover one year in the past decade through a few representative matches, links, screenshots, or videos. This series will provide newer players the opportunity to join future discussions about quidditch history, similar to how ESPN’s The Last Dance documentary introduced younger basketball fans to Michael Jordan and his competitors in the 1990s. At the end of the series, Fast Break News will host a Jeopardy!-style trivia tournament with questions from each of the articles and multimedia sources included throughout. For more information about our Jeopardy! tournaments, click here. To sign up for our Jeopardy! tournaments click here.
The driving force behind this project is to empower newer players with the confidence to make their own history going forward. With the recent cancellation of US Quidditch Cup 14 we've lost a second national championship to the ongoing pandemic, and newer players who have been waiting to play quidditch again for over a year now need to know that quidditch has been waiting for them. Quidditch history has been made by people who were new to the sport, time and time again. It’s been made online by people new to the sport over the past year, while games and practices have been unsafe. I know quidditch history will continue to be made by people who have never even played before on the pitch once everything from fantasy tournaments to national championships can safely resume.