McQuid Kids!

As I might have mentioned previously, since I arrived in Montreal I have joined the McGill Quidditch team. Now, even as someone who has grown up living and breathing Harry Potter, I can hear how ridiculous that sounds... but it's actually turned out to be so much fun! 

We road tripped down to Cortland, New York this weekend for a tournament. Challenge 1: cross the border! We stopped at border control and an officer came on board the little yellow school bus to check our passports. Apart from myself and my Aussie friend Jamie, everyone had Canadian or American passports, so it was pretty intimidating when only the two of us were asked to step off the bus. We were escorted into what can only be described as a pen to await questioning and after a rather stressful 20minutes trying to explain what Quidditch was to an American official who had never read Harry Potter, we were asked to give our finger prints and got the all important passport stamp to let us into the country!


We stayed for the night at various students' houses at Ithaca College which was so lovely of them. Our host had to get up early for a rugby tournament so we had time to breakfast in Ithaca before we got the bus to the tournament. Unfortunately, we got incredibly lost in the maze that is an American college and still managed to be last on the bus. It was crazy, there were fountains and sculptures and amazing building all over the place- looked more like a stately home at times than a university!

We made it to the tournament and started warming up straight away since we were slightly late. Since it was my Quidditch debut I was pretty darn nervous but McGill have a million chants designed to wash away any nerves you might have. At any point during the day, if you were asked the question "How ya feelin'?" the one and only response was "FIRED UP" which really does convince you that you're ready for anything!

Our first match was amazing. I decided to make myself the last sub so that I could see what was going on as much as possible before I was thrown into the frenzy, but within about 5seconds of the whistle being blown my competitive spirit kicked in and I was ready to go! I've never really played a contact sport before and in training I'd been finding the whole concept of tackling a bit difficult to grasp, but as soon as the match started I realised my problem was just tackling people I knew: give me a complete stranger and, it turns out, I will happily tackle them to the ground if I'm able! Who knew?!

So, we went on through out the day to win our first three matches and yell several chants that unfortunately are probably not appropriate to be repeated on the internet! And then came the big show down. The tournament was played as a round robin, and so the final two matches were between Guelph and the two McGill teams. The first was kicked of with a rousing rendition of the Canadian national anthem since both teams were from Canada playing on American soil. The A team took them on first and fought valiantly but just missed out of the win. Now, it was B teams turn and, with the slight advantage of having watched Guelph play just before, the match was even tighter and ended on a draw meaning that we went into overtime. I don't care what people say about Quidditch not being a real sport, either way that was one of the most stressful 10 minutes of sport I have ever played and unfortunately we just missed out on a win. On the other hand, all three Canadian teams had lost only 1 match giving up the joint title for the cup!! Not too bad for my first tournament!