Founding Community Teams
You've just graduated college, where you played quidditch for the past four years. Want to keep playing, but don't know how? Perhaps the best way to continue with the sport is by starting a community team. While a college or high school team is a group of players who attend the same school, a community team is loosely defined as a group of players who live near each other and share a common interest in playing quidditch together.
Henry Raschke of the Santa Barbara Blacktips, Amanda Nagy of the Lost Boys, and Greg Weber of the Silicon Valley Skrewts. Photos by Kat Ignatova/IQA Staff.
Starting a college or high school team is fairly straightforward, but creating a community team can be more difficult. Don't worry though, the co-founders of some of the most established community teams in the United States, such as the Silicon Valley Skrewts (Mountain View, CA), the Lost Boys (Lomita, CA), and the Santa Barbara Blacktips (Santa Barbara, CA), are here to help you to create a new team.
Sam Fischgrund, one of the founders of the Skrewts, explained how to create a community team in four easy steps: “Get the equipment. Make a Facebook group that people can join to get event invites. Invite, in person, everyone (literally) you know to play. Play and enjoy.” While we all wish it was this easy to found a community team, both Fischgrund and Dan Hanson, IQA board member, gameplay department member, and founder of the Lost Boys, explained this process in greater detail.
Fischgrund, who played at Princeton, came up with the idea to start the team in 2010 after someone saw him in an intercollegiate quidditch shirt and suggested he create a quidditch team in Silicon Valley due to the lack of teams in the area. Fischgrund explained how he enticed players to come out to the pitch: “I generated interest in the team by talking about it to literally everyone I met. I had only moved to the area seven months before, so I didn't know that many people yet.” He continued: “So whenever I met someone, I mentioned the great sport of quidditch and why they should come play. I encouraged coworkers and fellow swing dancers, as well as posted online on sites like meetup.com. Also, if anyone stopped to watch us play, I'd encourage them to join in.”
Once there's enough interest generated around quidditch, teams must begin to recruit serious players. Hanson explained how this worked for his team: “At the beginning, we recruited players we had existing friendships and relationships with, who we knew were skilled and passionate about the game... Since we had a very successful season and have worked hard at creating a recognizable brand within quidditch circles, we hope that people will approach us and join our practices whether we know them or not.”
Fischgrund, however, took a different, approach to getting people to join the Skrewts: “I would persistently remind and encourage people to come out and play. I'd ask people multiple times until they agreed to try it once. [Almost] everybody was hesitant to try it, but once they tried it, they usually loved it and returned to play again.” Fischgrund continued explaining what he did once the prospective players came to practices. “I'd also tailor my pitch to the person: If I thought they enjoyed athletics, I'd emphasize the running and tackling, whereas if they just seemed to want to be social, I played up the silliness and friendliness of the sport. In its early days, the team was mainly my coworkers, but over time, it's expanded so much,” he said.
While Evan Bell, founder of the Santa Barbara Blacktips, tried to recruit players using the old-fashioned word-of-mouth tactic, he soon learned that this wouldn't work for his team. He then tried a unique approach, switching his focus to recruiting players from a nearby college. “Since [University of California Santa Barbara] was just about to start up, we decided to recruit heavily from the university, setting up a table during their orientation week, and even moving practice to one of the public grass areas on the campus. Ninety percent of our team comes from UCSB, although, oddly enough, no one on our leadership team currently attends the college,” Bell explained.
But what's the real secret to having a successful community team? “Make it a social event. After every Saturday scrimmage, my team goes to In-N-Out, a fast food joint, to eat together, and then to someone's apartment after that to watch TV or play games. We have something we call the "In-N-Out Effect": Those who go to In-N-Out afterwards are much more likely to come back and play. Our players are dedicated to the team because the team is a social group and everyone is friends with each other,” said Fischgrund.
Hanson, however, had a slightly different answer to creating a successful team. He noted that recruitment is paramount to making sure that players stick with the team. “That means finding quidditch veterans who are already hooked on the game, or using your relationships with people who would be a good fit for quidditch to keep them coming to practice when they otherwise might flake out,” said Hanson.
While the "In-N-Out Effect" certainly has people running back to the Skrewts, Fischgrund gave the following advice to prospective community founders: “Don't get discouraged. Growth is steady but slow. The second scrimmage we had was just me and one other person. But for the next few times, we had 5 to 6 people, and we played every other week. We slowly grew and played more, and now we have about 20 to 25 people every Saturday afternoon and about 15 people every Thursday evening.”
