Spotlight: Silver Phoenixes
At some schools, quidditch has become so popular t...
Chaser Justin Tepera pushes the quaffle in a recent match. | Courtesy Becca DuPont
Although the Silver Phoenixes act as a second team, they are just as serious about competition as the regular A&M Quidditch team. “The team is very much a group of headhunters looking to upset whoever dares cross their path,” said Guitierrez. “We play a very competitive game and we seek glory the same as any other quidditch team vying for the World Cup.”
“This year we are an official IQA team, so we have a set roster,” said Justin Tepera, a chaser on the Silver Phoenixes since last semester. President of A&M Quidditch Drew Wasikowski and Director of Operations Becca DuPont oversee the selection process.
“For A&M, we have people [who] started coming to the practices, and if you showed up to multiple practices, then you got on a roster,” explained Sam Adlis, freshman chaser on the Silver Phoenixes. After a few weeks of practice, players were organized into the A&M and Silver Phoenix teams.
Although the Silver Phoenixes are registered as a separate team, they do not practice separately from the rest of A&M Quidditch. Adlis has enjoyed the camaraderie associated with being a part of a larger organization. “We're really close with the A&M team. We do all the same conditioning and when we scrimmage against each other, we don't split up into Silver Phoenix versus A&M. One team is half A&M and half Silver Phoenix,” explained Adlis.
While a secondary team allows for more players to compete, it also creates some additional challenges. “We have a lot of turnover. The team is very much 85% new from year to year. We have to refigure out our players to see what our strengths and weaknesses are nearly every season,” Guiterrez explained.
The University of Maryland (UMD) Marauders (College Park, MD) are another secondary team that originally formed to play at World Cup V. Ricky Nelson, beater for UMD Quidditch, acted as captain for the Marauders last year. While the Marauders and UMD Quidditch both competed in tournaments, there were a few differences in terms of competitiveness. “The [UMD Quidditch] team does what they can to win, but in the Marauders, we try to give everyone as much [playing] time as [we] can and still win matches,” he said.
As of now, UMD does not plan on making the Marauders an official IQA team, but plans to continue sending them to tournaments whenever possible to allow players to have tournament experience that they might not otherwise receive.
On the future of secondary teams, Darian Fazeli, co-captain of Austin Quidditch (Austin, TX), the community team comprised of students from the University of Texas at Austin, noted, “It really depends on where you see quidditch. If it continues to grow, which I'm hopeful that it will, I can see schools like [Louisiana State University] and [University of California Los Angeles] developing second teams of their own. It's a successful way to foster development of your school's quidditch players.”
This past semester the Silver Phoenixes competed in three tournaments, the Breakfast Taco Chicken and Waffles Tournament, the Diamond Cup hosted by Texas State Quidditch and the Collegiate Cup. Recently, the Silver Phoenixes ventured out on their own to the Bottom of the Bracket Tournament hosted by Rice University Quidditch (Houston, TX) where they reached the semifinals, losing to eventual champions Sam Houston State.
