On Sunday Oct. 18, the Highland Trials took place at Terry Fox Field. The event was an all-BC affair, with British Columbia Quidditch Club (BCQC), SFU Quidditch, University of Victoria Valkyries, and Vancouver Vipertooths all participating. It was the first tournament hosted by the SFU Quidditch team. Quite the achievement considering a few years ago, the team did not even exist.
Despite the rain and a few hiccups, it was a successful tournament for SFU, showing how much the rec club has grown since beginning in fall 2013.
Philomena Chenne is the vice-president of SFU Quidditch, and was also in charge of organizing the Highland Trials. She said that all the experience the team has soaked in going to other tournaments signaled that the team was ready to host their own.
“Having three years [of] cumulative experience now of going to tournaments and seeing how other veteran players have hosted, just seeing how their tactics and scheduling” has been hugely valuable according to Chenne. “Just seeing how your veterans and team can commit to it.”
Once the team decided to host, Chenne had to put in the hours making sure that all the details were taken care of. That included booking the field, getting permission from SFU Rec, bringing in teams to play, making the schedule, and organizing all the volunteers for the tournament.
The volunteers make up a large part of it, as a Quidditch game will have four different types of volunteer referees (a head ref, an assistant ref, and goal judge, and a snitch ref), as well as scorekeepers and timekeepers.
Speaking of the snitch, that is another volunteer position which has to be filled — this is muggle Quidditch, after all. There isn’t any flying golden object, which means that the snitch is filled by someone running around the field trying to avoid a team’s seekers, whose goal is to take a socked tennis ball from the snitch’s pants.
Talor Mykle-Winkler is the president of SFU Quidditch. She said that the club probably wasn’t ready to put on a tournament before now, but believes that playing host won’t be a one-time thing.
“Definitely we will be trying to [host again], whether it be next semester or next year,” Mykle-Winkler said. “There’s so much that goes into the behind-the-scenes, the set up and take down, making sure that teams show up and volunteers because there are a lot of those that are needed.”
“It’s a lot more fun hosting; you don’t have to drive as far.”
With all the successes of hosting a tournament, it was a bit of a hiccup to end, as SFU was set to face Vancouver Vipertooths in the finals. However, several of the Vipertooths had to leave early, and appeared not to have enough players to play the final match.
SFU decided to lend Vancouver some of its players and turn the final into a friendly, which the hybrid Vancouver-SFU team won by a final score of 100–30.
Chenne said that despite how the day ended, it was very encouraging for the club to see the players come out and compete hard in the hopefully inaugural tournament on Burnaby Mountain. From here, the team will start focusing on their next tournament — the Rocky Mountain Rumble taking place in Kelowna next month.
