Playing For Keepers: An Introduction
Author: Erik Bergland
Editor: Izzy Sangaline
Erik Bergland, playing for RPI Quidditch at US Quidditch Cup 11 against Maryland Quidditch
Image Credit: Teri Wilson Moseley
About the Playing for Keepers series
Playing for Keepers is a three part series from guest author Erik Bergland. Bergland has formerly played for RPI Quidditch and Revolution Quidditch and is a current member of the Boston Pandas. In this series, he discusses the keeper position, offers insight to new keepers, and advises coaches on developing talented keepers.
How do you develop a quality keeper?
If there’s anything I can definitively say about this question, it’s that it’s not easy to answer. This one problem touches almost every other question about quidditch that you can imagine: chaser-beater coordination, drill development, film analysis, and often even offensive considerations. It can be difficult to know where to begin, especially if one hasn’t had any experience with similar positions. However, I’d argue that the only wrong way to approach this question is to ignore it. Whether you’re a captain, coach, or a keeper yourself, focusing on the green headband can yield a surprising return when it comes to improving your team. In this and other articles to come, I’d like to offer my observations on how a program can go about developing talented keepers.
Let’s begin with the obvious: good keepers highly affect the game. This much is probably clear from watching truly top-tier keepers, but it bears repeating. Quidditch is a high-scoring game, and goals are expected to happen much more often than low-scoring affairs like soccer and hockey. This facet of the game has a clear consequence: saves are money in the bank. Low supply, high demand. Every time a keeper takes away a shot, they hand the ball back to their team. A save followed by a successful offense is a two-goal lead. In a sport where late-game strategy changes wildly based on whether a team is up by 2, 3, or 4 goals, one quality save can completely change your team’s strategy and outcome of a game. Keepers embody the difference between a wild Snitch-on-Pitch situation where all beaters are totally engaging with seekers to a much more secure out-of-range advantage.
It's worth noting, of course, that this reasoning applies to every defensive stop. Solid tackling from point chasers, strong beaters, and a wall of a keeper all have a similar effect. So, why should keepers be singled out?
For one thing, the value of shot-blocking will soon increase. In a well-received rule change, USQ has increased the spacing between their hoops. While the difference between a good keeper and a bad one may be slightly obscured now, I can assure you that there will be no trial by fire quite like a greatly increased area to defend. USQ has also implemented two-handed tackling, which will make stopping drives much easier for all defenders. As such, teams will be looking for new ways to score.
Clearly, it would be in a coach or captain’s best interest to get a feel for their keepers’ strengths, or for keepers themselves to have a good understanding of their development. The question then becomes how to do that. It is at this point that I believe coaches and younger keepers run into one of their biggest obstacles: a lack of dedicated keeper instruction. Let’s take a look at all non-player coaches in the Northeast region, which is one of more shot-heavy areas in Quidditch.
2019-2020 Season Non-Player Coaches of College Teams in the Northeast*
*Only non-player coaches were included in this list not because player-coaches do not have significant contributions to their teams, but because there is high turnover in player coaches on college teams, creating a significant challenge in maintaining best practices in a specialized position, season after season.
One thing immediately jumps out: of all the schools with non-player coaches on their staff, only three of these coaches (Tuft’s Nik Jablonski, RPI’s Sam Nielsen, and Emerson’s Timothée Courouble) have played many keeper minutes. This leaves coaches on the remaining teams in the difficult position of having to teach players a position that they themselves have never played, and with fewer people, they can ask for advice (as opposed to, say, beaters). As such, players will need to figure out every aspect of the position themselves, which leads to a very steep learning curve. While player-coaches often do an admirable job teaching another position in addition to playing (Sam Nielsen was a player when he taught me, for example), this simply pushes the problem back a step. Strong keeper-coaches such as Middlebury’s Ian Scura undeniably play the position well, but they still needed to learn everything with no feedback. Recognizing your own weaknesses is tremendously difficult, and even the most gifted self-taught keepers certainly benefit from having outside instruction they can rely on. Ian Scura is an excellent example of this; his skill only increased when he joined MLQ Boston’s deep roster.
In addition to the difficulty that comes from being self-taught, there’s also something to be said for building a base of knowledge and experience that sticks around for longer than four years. Consider the example of Ian Scura again: after all that hard work and development, he has reached the end of his college career. While he can certainly still answer questions for his former teammates, sometimes it’s difficult for coaches to even know what to ask. In order to make it easier for teams to make use of their graduated stars, keepers must begin to create resources that describe the basic knowledge of the position. Without any kind of instructional material such as notes, articles, or videos, teams must repeatedly start from scratch every four years. This in turn means that collegiate keepers will not improve nearly as fast over time. It goes without saying that beaters and chasers today play better quidditch than their counterparts ten years ago because modern players have a much easier time finding resources and coaching that helps them skip over the mistakes and strategic dead-ends that players in the past discovered. On the other hand, coaches are much less able to accelerate the development of new keepers. As I will discuss in future articles, it takes many keepers a long time just to see enough shots to get comfortable with the position. Speeding this process up is a worthwhile goal.
In the articles to come, I will discuss keeper development from two perspectives: new keepers themselves, and their coaches. I will try to draw on both my experience as a keeper learning the position and as a former player who has tried to help build a solid legacy of keeping at RPI.