m-rich:

Here are some quick looks at my past weekend at the Northeast Regional Quidditch Championship Tournament. NYU Nundu played with a fire and intensity never before seen on our team. In fact, none of the other teams expected anything from us. Ending 3 wins (U-mass, Brandeis, Harvard), 1 loss (Tufts University) was very rewarding, and we came out tied for 5th out of the 24 teams present in the tournament. 

On the following day, we qualified for the 2012 World Cup being held in Florida after beating Syracuse University 110-50. 

For the next five months, we’ll be training and working hard to represent our university proudly at the World Cup. 

I love this sport. I literally cannot wait. So much excitement. :D

QuidKidProblems: i want to try to air my views on the world cup location bids in, what...

quidkidproblems:

i want to try to air my views on the world cup location bids in, what i will try to make, a reasonable way:

i go to a small school in the northeast. also, i’m a rising sophomore so i’ve only seen one world cup, the one in new york city. every tournament i’ve been to has been easy to get to, and…

Hi luv!

I’m going to be using your post as a type of springboard on my thoughts on the topic of bids. I have seen constant complaints from many sides, midwest, northeast, non-region-affiliated, the muppets, and seen a few very vocal and negative peeps who are participating in what is in my opinion way too much region bashing (dude how do you even characterize a region accurately). There have been some rude claims for the Northeast to “shut up an stop whining!!! omfg!!!!!”, instead of commenting, that, say “oh gosh I know, we had so many problems last year getting to the cup, here are some tips/comments/general advice/sympathy we as part of the loveling and extended Quidditch community would like to give you”…

Good show guys : (

I am worried for my team too! Getting all of our Vassar peeps is going to suck, I am worried because getting fans will be another nightmare, and I’ve been trying to think of fundraisers. Maybe I could offer to help people move in for some bucks to donate to the Broooer’s funds. Basically, we are really going to need to unite as a team and take our college by storm, so I guess I am going to be far more involved my Senior year than I thought it was (once a Captain always a Captain), but that isn’t even my point.

All these complaints have been about the city/location… but I think there is a huge misunderstanding as to how these bids were processed.

The IQA selected these bids based on the support and plans we will already have there. The bids were never about which city is closest/fairest to a region. That, I feel, was one of the, well, not minor things, but not one of the key concerns in the selection process.

If we had gone with what I will arbitrarily call Choice A, with some mythical location that somehow makes everybody, or even the majority happy (not going to happen) but that lacks a good network of support, we would get a very shitty World Cup. Especially for the IQA, which is an amazing, young, not for profit organization that relies on an astounding body of amazing, dedicated volunteers who have spent hours and hours of their time helping our beloved sport develop. Can you imagine how difficult this is to execute?!

Then we have what we are doing with Choice B, with a place that will not be palatable to a lot of people due to regional claims and just the general cost, but that will have the facilities, staff, experience and similar ongoing logistics hijinks to free up the time of the IQA to make sure things like gameplay, referees, vendors, freaking water, licensing, advertising, freaking everything goes by smoothly, and we will have a great event that will hopefully keep in with a wondrous double reacharound of whimsical spirit and awesome straight out competition, battling it out for the title like never before!!

We are judging these locations for the wrong reasons. We should be focusing instead on trying to find which of these will benefit the sport as a whole, and help make the World Cup an even more amazing, smoothly run event.

Which field will be better? Which place has better, cheaper hotels and transportation? Which one will draw better crowds? Which ones will be safer/have better access to hospitals/all the things already mentioned in the bids? We should be dissecting this, asking for more details, contacting locals, inspecting the groups who put forwards the bids, and scrounging any last bit of support in the area and prove that we are a formidable force!

Do I feel happy about my beloved Northeastern no longer being the heart of Quidditch Season? Not exactly, but it is mostly the whole “how are we going to pay for this” headache that quidkidproblems is reasonably having. But you know what?

It makes sense for the next World Cup to move out of the Northeast. It really does. Quidditch is growing! We’ve had a monopoly! And while arguably the West is better due to the concentration of teams, somebody on Westbook itself (I think, not going to look up the source right now) said that the WC is an incredible opportunity to expand the sport. By moving to California or Florida, we will be creating a presence that should generate more teams. We want to promote our sport, heck, it is even one of the big IQA goals. I want this sport to survive until I have grandkids or something, though by then I will probably be all cynical and spout in stereotypical “in my days we did not -” etc, etc. But again, the region itself isn’t relevant because the regions, as lovely as they all are, are not as important as the bid itself! And a region claiming for the WC has a bit of entitlement that I don’t like (this involves the Northeast, and generally every region, if I generalize, which I have to do because I am talking about regions, again, how do you accurately characterize them - answer you can’t, not really).

But do you know what really has made me unhappy?

How are acting about it. Debate is good. Discussion is healthy! Different points of view help bring out points, mechanisms, resources we wouldn’t tap otherwise. Diversity is healthy, redundancy and adaptability is an important concept in ecology and niches and woah you don’t care about that, sorry, Biologist here. But basically, it is good that we discuss this sport that we love! Or game. Whichever of the two you prefer to call it. Diversity in opinions is good!

But we have been downright vitriolic in some of these discussions, with petty snipings that reduce me to bored tears. It is ugly, undignified, and really fucking stupid. Also, below all of us. I might, say, disagree with some of Snitchy’s opinions (Hi Snitchy! : D) but I respect him! (Or her). But damn if some of the reactions so far have just been out of line. I understand that passions are running high, but come on guys, don’t shit on your own community!

Besides, most of us are all adults. We have to be careful with how we speak on the internet, which provides an easy way to miss tone/context and launch stupid attacks.

Let’s turn all our wonderful minds and passion into a productive direction. Let’s continue making efforts to make each World Cup better than the previous one. Let’s continue giving the IQA feedback. Let’s build a stronger community from the infighting!

Despite these issues I am confident we will, as always, rise above and continue in our friendly competition, our bonding, and of course, in our growth as a sport.

Hugs, Quove, and Snitches!

Broooer