Playing Quidditch

My director is really, really cool. Not only is she a phenomenal director all around, but she does awesome things like let her cast members play Quidditch at rehearsal. I love Quidditch (along with Calvinball, it is the only sport I actually understand, if you don't count piano as a sport. Which most people don't seem to). I was very eager for the match, because while I knew all the rules of Quidditch I had never actually played before.

The match was last Tuesday. Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw. I was quite pleased to have been chosen as team captain for Gryffindor. I also felt very spiffy indeed, because a friend lent me his cape and a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages (an excellent read, by the way) that he had made notes in about which plays and techniques would work the best for people who didn't actually have brooms that flew. The players were picked, positions were assigned, the Snitch was released, and the game began.

Who won, you ask? Well, I am pleased to inform you, dear and gentle reader, that we beat the pants (er, capes) off of Ravenclaw and won by a large margin. However, I should add that this was not due to the team's Keeper. The Keeper was sadly not very good, and missed incoming balls on a regular and pathetically consistent basis. But because the other players were actually good at the positions they were assigned, we won. Why, my dear Naddie, you say, whoever was this terrible Keeper? Who could have caused your team such distress? My dear reader. I appreciate your concern. Thank you for your thoughtful question. The terrible Keeper who caused my team such distress was... erm... me. However, in my defense, I played Chaser later in the game and was quite good at that. Several people who were there will back me up with this story. I wish I had known that I made such a good Chaser and a pretty abysmal Keeper earlier in the game. Perhaps the most embarrassing part is that all the other players on Gryffindor were picked at random from a bucket containing their names on slips of paper. They could not control the positions to which they were assigned (at least in the first couple rounds). As team captain, I chose my own position. I thought I would make a fair Keeper. How terribly wrong I was.

All in all, we had an absolute ball (no pun intended, I swear). Many of us really want to have another match in the future. However, if we do this, I propose that we play on vacuum cleaners rather than brooms, because we had quite a large quantity of straw from beat-up brooms to remove from the (carpeted) floor once we were through. And the thing about sweeping up broom straw from a carpet is that it pointless because among other things you're probably using the very broom that caused the problem in the first place, and it will only increase the amount of straw on the floor. Brooms are very resistant to changing their ways.

~Naddie