You might know Quidditch from the Harry Potter books and might have heard something about a University of Vaasa , but how much do you really know about it?
If you have caught a glimpse of our practices behind Tritonia you might be asking yourself what the hell these people have been drinking, but hey bare as I explain what this is all about.
Quidditch in a nutshell
So what is Quidditch? It is a mix between handball, rugby and dodgeball. There are seven players on each team. Three chasers whose job is to score with a volleyball , two beaters whose job is to defend by hitting the opposing chasers with dodgeballs, one goalie who defends the goal and one seeker whose sole job is to catch the snitch and take a flag or ball from his back, the Snitch is a player with no affiliation to any of the teams and can run around campus without any restriction as well as being able to be as physical or aggressive as they want to avoid being caught. Oh yes and all the players have to run with brooms between the legs, it does come from Harry Potter at the end of the day.
What makes Quidditch attractive once you get over the fact that you are running around with brooms?
1. Well it might be the fact that it is the only officially co-ed sport around
2. That the game itself is a mix between rugby, handball and dodgeball
3. The fact that it is the perfect marriage between Pop Culture and Varsity Sports
4. It is competitive without losing its nerd factor which keeps the athletes grounded and fun
Equality in the pitch, American Quidditch through the eyes of Athena Flusche from Texas Tech University
“It’s pretty popular in Texas. Most of the major schools have a team. I know that Texas Tech, UT, A&M, Sam Houston, TCU, and Rice all have teams. We also are competitive with LSU, they come to almost all the tournaments we have.”
“I love Quidditch. I like the fact that girls and guys are on the same team, playing each other. I also like that there are so many different sports combined in this one sport. It’s unique among sports and that’s what I like. I also like the fact that quidditch is a huge family, all the teams get along and enjoy the tournaments. We all look forward to seeing/playing each other. The mix of people is awesome.”
The World Cup
This event gathered 95 teams from all over the USA, Canada and us from Finland. Groups were formed and teams as different as Louisiana State and Kansas State would face each other. In our case we had the group of death, the champions Middlebury College , UCLA, Yale and the University of Michigan. Since we are so far away and it is so expensive to get there we only managed to get 6 people there, have one other girl from our school meet us there during her trip to America and we even had 4 American students from Tuffts, the Boston Area.
The Canadian Invasion, Andrea Hill tells us about their experience.
“I think most spectators at this year’s World Cup would find it hard to believe that there were only five Canadian teams in attendance. We may have been hugely outnumbered by American teams, but we were easily the loudest, most enthusiastic and most patriotic players. Canadian teams banded together to cheer each other on, often waving Canadian flags, singing our national anthem or marching teams into their games with the help of a snare drum brought by an Ottawa player. Even when no Canadian teams were playing, shouts of “Canada” echoed across Randall’s Island. In the finals in Ithica Stadium, the announcers actually had to ask if there were any Americans in the crows because the only thing they could hear was the Canadian teams screaming “Canada! Canada! Canada!” A Canadian team may not have gone home with the trophy, but I was so proud to be a Canadian all weekend.
There are definitely Canadian-ized aspects to our game. We take pride in the fact that most of our training is done in the snow and we like to think we stand up better in the cold than our southern neighbours. It was about 15C the weekend of the World Cup and teams from places like Florida and California kept mentioning how cold it was. So a bunch of Canadians stripped down to their underwear and sprinted across the island shouting “this is Canadian beach weather!” Everyone got a good laugh.
We definitely have to adapt to playing in the cold — something we regard as the tombstone of Canadian quidditch. We only cancel practices when it is below -30C and that’s only because we had issues with hardcore players getting frostbite. We like having snowball fights, making snowmen and generally celebrating the snow.
If our team ever won the lottery, the first thing I’d do as captain is make sure everyone gets a plane ticket to Finland to come meet you guys. Everyone on the Carleton team would be so pumped to spend quality time with an international team. Quidditch players in general are the coolest people ever. We would, of course like to play some games and have some mixed scrimmages, but we’d also like to grab drinks and just compare quidditch stories!
Our University in the World Cup
Our university is in fact the first university from Europe, Finland and most of all from abroad to officially take part in official matches, we have played in Harvard University, Stony Brook and Vassar College and this past November we became the first ever foreign team to make it to the Quidditch World Cup in Randall’s Island New York where we played against the ruling champions Middlebury College and managed to get our first World Cup Victory against the University of Yale.
So what is it worth to us as students in Vaasa to participate in this event, or any event for that matter where so many universities take part? Well first of all most of the people from these universities didn’t even have the slightest idea where Vaasa, Finland was. Now even if its through Quidditch we are interacting with students from the top universities in the USA and Canada. We had the great opportunity to play Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Stony Brook, Vassar College. In Europe and specially in Finland there is no tradition in Varsity Sports so we are indeed met with some resistance but at the same time some people have certainly jumped in on it. As any university activity we are trying to put the name of our school up high as well as to get a great learning experience which we would not be able to do if we would just sit idle in Tritonia or our crummy VOAS apartments.
In my own words
Well this is actually a fun sport and a great experience. Never in my life would imagine I would be playing against Harvard or Yale, or even to have the chance to talk and hang out with people from NY, California, Ottawa, Texas and of course Finland, Latvia, England or Italy and that is just in our team.
Yes it has been hard to introduce new things here in Finland, but it has been more than worth it, even with the stress that organizing comes with. I feel lucky that I have the chance of being such a good example of how intercultural our university is to all those who met us abroad. I mean I’m Mexican and I am representing my university with Finnish students, Latvia, Italy and England. We are a good example of what foreign people can do in Finland when given the chance, we are trying to be a good example of how multiculturalism can be good, and how equality can reach students through a non conventional sport. Which at least I hope won’t die off as soon as we graduate.
So if you managed to read the whole article I want to dare to join us in practice, or to even start your own hobby/sport or whatever you can to make your time in the university really memorable and challenging.
Remember that there is nothing silly about innovation, one day you will be old and will look back and remember how awesome it was to be a real active part of the university.
What’s next?
Whats next for University of Vaasa Quidditch?
1.Well we have been invited to play in London on summer for an expo match.
2. Stony Brook University from New York wants to come play to Vaasa.
Will this happen? We hope it does. Imagine how awesome it would be to have a team from America play here with us, yes in Vaasa .. not Helsinki, not Turku nor Tampere here in the University of Vaasa.
