MQC Madness: Results
2021 MQC Fantasy Draft
Written By: Jack Moseley
Edited By: Fiona Wisehart and Serena Monteiro
The MQC Fantasy Draft was run by six GMs who built the best teams they could from the pool of all the players who would’ve been rostered over the 2020-2021 season. After six weeks, three livestreams, four articles, 14 rounds, 84 players, and over 100 votes by fans and experts, the results for the best team are finally in!
Final Draft Board
Results
Before discussing the final outcome for every team I’ll briefly mention the methodology we used to determine a winner. Similarly to the way MQC determined winners of their awards last fall, we conducted two separate votes: one with fans and one with a panel of experts from around the region. We weighted the results 60-40 in favor of the experts in order to more objectively determine a winner while still giving the fans a voice. Without further ado, here are the final results for the MQC Fantasy Draft best team poll:
*Quotes taken from expert voting panel
In sixth place is Team Smiley. Brooke drafted a solid team with some excellent later round steals like Rob McPherson, Jordan Smiley, Richie Abbott, Benjamin Boncaldo, and Nadia Sbuttoni.
“Smiley crafted a team with incredible chemistry and field awareness that will pass circles around the other teams.”
“Smiley went OFF the third night of the draft. All those picks were steals.”
Brooke Smiley (photo credit Isabella Gong)
Next up is Team Hillyer. Grant came into the draft with a simple strategy: draft as many BU players as possible and build a team that can score a ton of points. Our experts liked his team a lot, giving him the third most first place votes.
“The team that scores (Team Hillyer) probably wins.”
“Hillyer has the best rounded team. He has a strong ball handler in Xander and also a very strong beater pair with Nojus and Angela. He also mixed in more ball handlers with Ellie and would have a very strong team for a max 3 play style!”
Grant Hillyer
In fourth place we have Team Kowalski. Tess drafted a great combination of seasoned veterans that have already made big impacts and dynamic young players who are just getting warmed up.
“My first place nod goes to Team Kowalski though, because games are often close in fantasy tournaments, and their seeking lineup has had enough combined clutch catches to lead me to believe they could seal the deal, especially with the expected chaos that will ensue in the beater game.”
“Tess got some really strong players in her draft. She also has a well rounded team especially with drafting Leo first who can both seek and chase for her team. She also got some really great later round drafts like Donovan, Sabrina, Ari and some great RPI players.”
Tess Kowalski
First on the podium, and less than a tenth of a point behind second place, is Team Steinberg. Andrew built a really strong team around MLQ players and MQC award nominees/winners.
“I picked Andrew’s team first because he has fantastic chasing lines to at least stay within range throughout the first 18 minutes, due to the elite defense of HBB and insane physicality of players like James, Madi, and Shayla. Once snitch comes out though, Andrew’s team has it on lock with the smartest and most talented SOP beaters in Brooke, Daniel, and Justin as a quick sub, and the elite seeking of HBB.”
“The depth of both experience and skill that Steinberg has put Steinberg just over the edge for me.”
Andrew Steinberg
Taking home the silver medal is America’s sweetheart: Team Scawringson (SLB). The Middlebury trio (Mary Scott, Peter Lawrence, Abraham Beningson) went into the draft with a clear plan and they pulled it off masterfully. This team is strong in all three phases: with elite beaters, a quaffle lineup that fits together perfectly (especially on defense), and talented seekers.
“SLB is the best team out of this draft. I think they had a good balance between team identity and flexibility among the players they drafted, especially in the quaffle game. Having that first intended game plan with the draft what sets them apart from other teams. All the teams can argue "we are well rounded and flexible" but every team can argue that because of the collage of play styles they all drafted. SLB is different because of the intention in their draft picks to physically dominate other teams and build around that identity.”
“SLB screams cohesion. With a strong core of Middlebury and RPI players the team will basically be able to read each other's minds out on the pitch. The experience of an elite keeper in CJ at the helm will help to push them over the edge in the quaffle game.”
Abraham Beningson, Mary Scott, and Peter Lawrence
At the top of the podium it's my team (Team Moseley). I’m very happy with all my players (hey, we should all get matching tattoos!) and I could write pages and pages about this roster, but instead I’ll leave it to the experts.
“I think Jack’s team composition is best fitted for winning full games—they have strong driving, defense, and ball movement spread out on the quaffle lines, and a host of talented beater depth. But what puts them over the top is their Snitch-on-Pitch beating, which seems to stand above the rest of the teams. Mullins/Green/Rizzi is a powerful trio that I believe can expertly wall up around the snitch and secure chances for their seekers. While this team’s biggest weakness is its lack of a lock-down clutch seeker, they compensate with versatility and different styles from Beningson, McIntosh, Silver, and Schutt.”
“Jack's first line brings everything you could want to the table. Elite driving from Frankie, deadly shooting from Vanessa, and impressive distribution from Abraham and Aidan. Not to mention the arguably best beating line in Danny and Tessa.”
Jack Moseley
Trends & Takeaways
Coming into this draft I was curious how picks would fall along gender lines in comparison to past drafts. For the purposes of this analysis, I chose to combine female and nonbinary players into one category. As Serena Monteiro said in her piece following the 8th Man All-Campus Cup, nonbinary and female athletes in quidditch often face similar gender-related challenges. That said, although overall more male players than female and nonbinary players were drafted, the division is much smaller than we’ve seen in the past in similar fantasy drafts such as the 8th Man All-Campus Cup. In fact, there were more female and non-binary beaters and chasers drafted than male beaters and chasers. Multiple GMs went into the draft with the intention of drafting a team with a 3-3 gender split. Despite the fact that most of the MQC teams they were drafting from play almost exclusively 4-2 gender splits, the GMs drafted a fantastic depth of female and non-binary talent to strengthen their teams.
Looking at all the different schools the players were drafted from: BU led with 15 followed by RPI with 14 and Middlebury with 13. Although most of the players drafted played in MQC’s Division 1 last season, there were also a ton of great players drafted from smaller programs and each school had at least two players picked.
Final Thoughts
It was really great to see people so engaged with this draft. Missing out on a whole year of quidditch is rough for everybody, but we thought spotlighting a ton of great players would be a great way to close out the collegiate season that never was. It was a blast organizing, running, and competing in this draft alongside such awesome college voices. Usually quidditch discussion is contained to a select few club players and we wanted a fresh take from current college players talking about their peers.
From the beginning, there were a few elements that we wanted to include to make the draft the best it could be:
We recruited GMs with the intention of equal representation for gender, position, and geography.
We prioritized providing film to support the article writing process. Demonstrating a player’s talents with film rather than relying on hearsay from older or biased players is the best way to prove the GMs’ arguments and help the audience come to their own conclusions. Props to MQC for having a ton of film on their Youtube channel to work with.
We had leaders from teams throughout the conference help us out with some scouting of their players to get us started.
Lastly, we limited the draft to a single conference with ten teams. Although we had a smaller pool of players to pick from, and other teams in the Northeast were left out, we thought this was the best path to take for three reasons:
A smaller list of teams is more digestible for the GMs doing research. We knew it would be difficult to scout when no games have been played in the past year, but limiting the draft to one conference meant we could actually perform due diligence on all the players.
All the GMs (and most of the people following the draft) are very familiar with this player pool. Even though we haven’t played in over a year we still know the faces, names, and talents of the people we’ve played with and against most frequently.
Head-to-head matchups make players easier to compare. Teams in the MQC play each other very frequently, which gives us a reference for how all the players we’re looking at stack up against each other.
On that note, I challenge other conferences to run a conference-wide fantasy draft! Nobody knows regions like the people who play in them so I encourage people around the US to step up and get something started. You don’t have to be an expert, you just have to have a passion for quidditch and a willingness to put in the time. This draft showed that even with a smaller pool of only one conference (and no games played in the past year) there’s still a ton to write about and a ton of fun to be had.
Big thanks to all the GMs for their great work researching players and writing; Harry Greenhouse and Fiona Wisehart for using their connections to get this thing organized and running; Nik Jablonski, Tessa Mullins, Finn McGarghan, CJ Carter and Carsen Olazaba for helping to run our livestreams, all the different captains who helped us out with info on their players, and everybody else across the MQC who participated in making this a success.