World Cup Diary Tad Walters
Editor's Note: The IQA is pleased to publish another World Cup diary, where players from around the world tell us their story. If you want to share your tale, send it to editorial@internationalquidditch.org and you could see it in this space.
My name is Tad Walters. I am 20 years old and a chaser/seeker for Loyola University - New Orleans. This year was our first year as an official team; it's been barely over a year since we played in our first tournament. Last year I joined the team because I'd heard about quidditch in high school and it sounded interesting. I'm not that big of a Harry Potter fan at all, as many will tell you. I really just wanted to tackle nerds.
After a semester of lackadaisical practices and a scrimmage with LSU (where we were absolutely destroyed), our senior captains told us that we were going to compete at the 1st Annual Mardi Gras tournament in Baton Rouge. At that tournament, a bunch of freshmen played a sport they knew next to nothing about and subsequently were crushed by all but one team. Our captains quit after that tournament, so a new captain was elected and soon after, a new president and vice president joined.
Returning for my sophomore year, the quidditch team had 7 or so returning members. We recruited heavily, and soon had about 25 on our roster. With this team we placed fourth at our own Wolf Pack Classic and then tied for fifth at the Bae Cup. However, after our first tournament, when the time commitment to quidditch began to conflict with other organizations and school, numerous players, including some of the veterans, left the team. This was a huge blow, as we went from having our pick of the litter for tournaments to begging people to go with us so that we could have 14 people. At one point in time, we had so many people temporarily or permanently leave that we couldn't even field seven players for the Collegiate Cup in Kansas.
Coming into the spring semester, we saw a change of leadership, as well as an addition of a co-captain. With these changes, along with some players returning and a few new players showing up, we started to look like a team again.
Our first tournament of the spring was Bottom of the Bracket. I personally thought we had a really good chance of winning and so did a few people from other teams. In fact, I'd say that we were one of the favorites to win. Due to our lack of drivers, some of our team had to Megabus to the tournament, arriving at 4 a.m. and getting about three hours of sleep. During the tournament we had 2 key players get injured. When we played Sam Houston, the absolute favorite to win, we got rolled by a 50-point margin before they caught the snitch. I was absolutely devastated. We came away from that tournament tied for 5th, when we had planned to win. The second annual Mardi Gras Cup wasn't any better, as we still had injured players and also a lot of missing people. We placed almost last, another blow to the thought that we were finally becoming a decent team. The Southwest Regionals were a continuation of my disappointment. We went 1-2 in pool play, and then lost to the team we beat in pool play during bracket play, eliminating any chance we thought we had of going to the World Cup in D1.
After these losses, I felt tired and exhausted. I was putting all of my effort into these tournaments and into the players on the team, but I wasn't seeing any results. I knew we weren't playing to our maximum potential and I didn't know why. For a while I thought it was the stigma that we were losers keeping us losers. I legitimately thought that we simply had no drive to win and that that's why we couldn't seem to pull off a major victory in any tournament.
In March we attended the March Madness tournament as a completely new team. We had depth, we had some position changes, and we had been practicing hard preparing for D2. This tournament was going to be our testing grounds for World Cup. In this tournament there were only four teams, three official. One team was LSU, the other, the University of South Alabama. When we had played USA previously at Bottom of the Bracket and at Mardi Gras, they held us to snitch catch, even beating us 2 of the 3 times we had played. With our new team, we kept out of snitch range for the entire game. We were a new team. Even our friends at LSU seemed to notice the difference in the finals of the tournament. We left that tournament with a second place trophy, the first trophy we'd ever won at a tournament.
Soon, World Cup was upon us. We drew the hardest pool with Ringling College of Art and Design, the College of Charleston, Miami of Ohio, and University of South Alabama. Every analyst on The Eighth Man said that Ringling was going to win our pool. Going into pool play, I was the most nervous I'd ever been at a tournament. While I hoped and prayed that we'd go 4-0 or at the least have a winning record, I knew that if we didn't play as well as I knew we could, we could easily go 0-4 and see our time playing at the World Cup come to a quick end. The first three games were won by snitch catch, and USA pulled the suicide snitch, giving us an undefeated record for pool play.
On Sunday, I was even more nervous than I was the day before. Now we were playing the cream of the D2 crop. These games consisted of a close call with the University of South Carolina, a game that ended up being contested, which kind of took the excitement out of the victory. Next was a rematch with Ringling, where we played the best I'd ever seen us play up to that point. And lastly, we met our fellow Southwesties, Sam Houston State University, in the finals. Going into this game, I wanted to win more than anything in the world. I wanted to prove that them beating us by such a large margin at Bottom of the Bracket was a fluke, and that we could hold our own with them. This was a chance for Loyola to prove itself to the Southwest region. This was a chance to prove that we weren't some mediocre team from the outskirts of the region, but rather a team that deserved to be part of the Southwest, the best west.
That game was the toughest game I had ever played. Even in D2, the legendary Southwest physicality was still there. Both teams made amazing tackles, the beating was fantastic, and some of the goals would have definitely been featured on an ESPN highlight reel if there was one. We were only down by ten points, so catching the snitch would determine who would become the D2 World Cup champion. When the snitch came back to the field, I tried to catch her and got beat by one of Sam Houston's beaters. As soon as I had tagged back in and turned around, I saw Jesse Herring from Sam Houston grab the snitch, ending the game with a score of 110*- 70. It was over as quickly as it had begun.
When we lost that game, I admit, I was a little sad. I was of course disappointed that we didn't win. However, those feelings were quickly countered by the pride I felt for my team and the happiness I had for my friends at Sam Houston, who are some of the best friends I have from quidditch. The usual post-game handshakes became hugs, and each player spent time to congratulate the others as well as offer praises for the hard-fought game.
When it was all said and done, the Southwest teams mobbed the field shouting "Southwest, best west!", making the World Cup worth the time, energy, and money that I've put in over the past two years. Not only did I leave World Cup with a newfound pride in my own team, but knowing that I play in the hardest-hitting and one of the most supportive regions in all of the IQA. Even though we broke the trophy (my bad...) we will always have the memories of World Cup VI, and how we started from the bottom, and now the whole team is here.
