Confessions of a Fantasy Fantasy General Manager
By: Serena Monteiro
The All Campus fantasy fantasy draft was a wonderful experience that allowed me to take the time to review lots of film of teams across the country, befriend people from teams I’ve never even played against, and it helped to fill the quidditch-void that we’ve all been experiencing. I’m super grateful to the Eighth Man for organizing and hosting the draft, to my fellow GMs for making our Thursday night Zoom calls one of the highlights of each week, and to all of the members of our community who tuned in to the drafts and interacted with each other in the discussion forums continuing to build a strong sense of quidditch community.
This article is focused on the presentation and analysis of gender-statistics that I analyzed after the All-Campus and All-Timer drafts were complete. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the stark gender biases that exist in our sport using concrete data. It is not a personal judgement on any of the GMs, The Eighth Man, its analysts, panelists or any of the athletes that were selected in the draft.
The All-Campus Cup draft board color-coded by the gender of the player chosen. See DATA ANALYSIS #1 for an explanation of the pink boxes.
The All Timer draft board color-coded by the gender of each player. Blue for male players, yellow for female and nonbinary players. See DATA ANALYSIS #1 for an explanation of the pink boxes.
CONFESSIONS
It is highly possible that I misgendered someone on these sheets. If there are mistakes, please let me know and I will correct this on the sheet and in the data results.
Yes, I’ve split the data back into a gender binary by grouping women with non binary people and leaving men in their own category. Nonbinary people often face similar challenges in quidditch related to their gender as binary females do, thus I thought it appropriate to group them together.
The All Campus GMs were given the option to draft as though we were under a rulebook with a 3-maximum gender rule.
The group collectively decided not to move forward using this rule because not all of the GMs saw the message in time to decide on this option before the first night of drafting.
All of the GMs were facing various pressures during the draft that influenced our drafting decisions. There are many reasons that a GM picked particular athletes when they did. This article is just looking at overall trends in the data and not trying to psycho-analyze each GM’s strategy.
I am not a statistical analyst. The conclusions I drew from the data are relatively surface level. If anyone is interested in doing their own analysis, here’s a link to the google sheet with the data of names in order of drafting and colored by gender that can be copied into your own document.
COLD HARD FACTS
Both Drafts
Out of 112 total players drafted, 37 of them were women and nonbinary players, 75 were men.
See Conclusion #1
The maximum number of female/nonbinary players that any GM drafted was five.
Reminder: teams had a cap of 14 players.
The minimum number of female/nonbinary players that any GM drafted was four.
In the final results of both drafts, all 4 teams drafted by a female GM came in 7th and 8th place
See Conclusion #2
Both drafts had eight GMs, two female GMs per draft, and one genderfluid GM in the All Timer draft.
Twenty-two (22) of the women and nonbinary players drafted were chasers, 15 were beaters
If drafted as utility, their primary position was deferred to, indicated by a (C) or (B) in the sheet for chaser and beater respectively.
In the All Timer draft, there were some players that I would consider true utility: Rachel Heald, Melissa White, Cassia Menkhorst and Elizabeth Ng.
Heald and Ng play Keeper and Seeker as one of their primary positions, positions that are not common for many female players
All-Campus Cup
Zero (0) female or nonbinary players were chosen in the entire first round of picks.
The first woman drafted was the 11th overall pick of the draft and was chosen by one of two female GMs in the All Campus draft.
See Conclusion #3
All-Timer Draft
One (1) female player was chosen in the first round of picks.
The first woman drafted was the third pick overall.
Just like in the All Campus draft, the first female player was selected by a female GM.
See Conclusion #3
DATA ANALYSIS
The pink boxes on the draft sheets indicate the only times when a GM made back to back picks in a single night of drafting that were both female and nonbinary players.
a. In the All Campus draft, there were 3 times when a GM used both of their picks of the night on female/nonbinary players.
o There were 22 times when a GM used both of the night’s selections on male players.
o 31 times that a GM chose both a male and a female/nonbinary player during a night of drafting.
b. In the All Timer draft, back to back female/nonbinary picks happened twice.
o 20 instances of ‘men-only’ rounds.
o 34 rounds where a GM picked both a male and a female or nonbinary athlete in one night.
See Conclusion #4
In the All Timer draft, if a female or nonbinary player were to be drafted, they were more likely to be chosen as the GM’s second pick of the night as opposed to the first.
o As a reminder: rounds 1 and 2 happened on the same night, round 3 and 4 the next week, and so on.
Only on the fifth and seventh nights of drafting (rounds 9/10 and 13/14) in the All Timer Draft were there more women/nonbinary players picked in the first round than in the second. Rounds 2 and 12 had more women/nonbinary players picked than male players.
In the All Campus draft, 3 of the 7 nights of drafting had more female/nonbinary athletes chosen in the second round compared to the first round of the night.
Round 7 was the only time in which more female/nonbinary players were picked than male players in a single round.
CONCLUSIONS
#1. Thirty Three Percent: We all know that quidditch still has a long way to go before we can claim to be inclusive and representative of all genders in our sport. Representation and equality matters both on and off of the pitch. These fantasy drafts are one of those off-pitch events, but the fact that 66% of all draft picks in both drafts were men is not surprising.
In real life, the vast majority of quidditch teams will play exactly two female or nonbinary players and four male players on the field during the seeker floor, creating this 33% female/nonbinary and 66% male player distribution on the pitch that we see reflected in the draft.
It’s normally a topic of conversation for the commentators, spectators and other players in game if there are ever chaser lines with more than one female or nonbinary athlete at a time, if there’s a female or nonbinary keeper, or if there’s ever a double-female beater set in play. If we are looking for ways to reach gender equity on and off-pitch, let’s first begin fielding equal numbers of women, nonbinary people and men. Simultaneously we can normalize these gender distributions within our culture by working on our response to these ‘non-traditional’ beater sets and chasing lines…don’t act as if it’s a surprise when you see more than two women on the pitch!
Even if the draft results accurately reflect the makeup of the rosters we see in our actual tournaments, this distribution is still cause for alarm.
#2. Final Ranking: I honestly don’t have much to say about this aside from drawing attention to it. I firmly believe that these rankings were influenced by the perception that women are less capable and less skilled at drafting and understanding game strategy as compared to men. Personally, I did not initially sign up to GM for this event. I knew I could definitely put a good team together, and I knew plenty of good players outside of my region. But I was convinced that there were so many other people out there more qualified than I to participate in the drafting, so I avoided signing up. Not to mention, signing up meant volunteering to have my knowledge of the game and its players put under the microscope and scrutinized by analysts and other quidditch peers and role models of mine every week.
In the end, I was encouraged by a friend to sign up as a GM in the second round. I can’t be sure if after the first round of sign ups there simply were fewer than eight qualified people to sign up or if those running the draft knew that there had to be more female GMs to choose from. Either way, I was given the opportunity to showcase my knowledge of the game. I ended up having a blast participating in the draft, and was happy and confident with my team and the picks I was making.
The outcome was not at all what I expected, but what it tells me is that female and nonbinary players need to continue to put themselves in these types of spaces. Our goal should be to normalize for ourselves and for future generations of quidditch players seeing just as many women and nonbinary people alongside men as they analyze the game, its players, and strategy.
All Campus Cup Team Ranking Breakdown. Photo from The Eighth Man’s website.
All Timer Cup Team Ranking Breakdown. Photo from the Eighth Man’s website.
Final Ranking colored by GM’s Gender. Graphics by Quincy Hildreth.
#3. First Female Pick: It is significant to note that in both drafts, the first female players selected in the drafts were selected by female GMs. I have found that it is common for women to value the talent of other female athletes more highly than men would value the same female athlete.
#4 Second Best: It makes sense that since there were fewer women and nonbinary people drafted overall, there would be fewer of them drafted than men in some rounds. However, especially in the All Timer draft, the fact that more women were drafted in the second round of the night as opposed to the first round points to the devaluation of their skill, and GMs believing that other GMs would also ‘sleep’ on those female/nonbinary picks until later rounds.
The observation that more male athletes were often picked in the first rounds of each night could also indicate that GMs had stronger preferences to get specific male athletes on their team as opposed to specific female or nonbinary athletes. In other words, the male athletes were more desired, whereas the female athletes were put in second place, possibly being added not because a GM actually had a strong desire for that person on their team, but perhaps just in order to fill the ‘quotas’ and adhere to the USQ gender rule.
…
Representation matters. Whether it’s as a GM in a fantasy draft, a guest on a podcast, an analyst, an announcer, a coach, a referee, or a captain of a team, all of these positions have degrees of power and respectability. Women and non binary people are currently underrepresented in all of these areas within quidditch. For men in any of these positions: use your position to make space for others, especially those of underrepresented genders who may not feel like these positions are for them. Invite them in, encourage them to reach for these positions. Your support and belief in that person’s abilities can mean a lot. To the women and nonbinary people reading this: keep making your voices heard, your faces seen, your presence noticed. You are capable of coaching, head reffing, drafting a kick-ass fantasy team, and doing literally anything else that you set your mind to. Just because there might not be many of our faces in those positions (yet) doesn’t mean that they’re not for us.
