USU’s Quidditch team heads to nationals this week
The USU Quidditch team is headed to the U.S. Quidditch Cup in Round Rock, TX on April 14-15 for the third year in a row.
Eight regions compete in the U.S. Quidditch Cup, and only five teams can place in regionals to make it to the tournament. 12 teams competed in the West region and Utah State University took fifth place.
There are three co-captains on the team, Dru Smith (Beater), Madison Ransom (chaser) and Cameron VomBaur, who is the only fourth year player on the team and plays Keeper (goalie).
Sofia de la Vega Smith has been on the team for two seasons and said he happened to stumble upon the Quidditch booth on the Quad during Welcome Week.
“I decided to just try it out and fell in love with it,” Smith said.
Ransom was convinced by a friend to come try out. She thought it was fun and decided to stick around.
VomBaur said he played Quidditch in his high school “Harry Potter” fan club and wanted to start a team when he came to college. He met someone who played on the team here at USU and was invited to a practice.
“I’ve been going to most practices ever since,” he said.
Sofia de la Vega VomBaur said the most important thing to know is unlike the “Harry Potter” wizarding world, Quidditch is a real sport. It was classified as a club sport for the 2017-2018 academic school year here at USU.
“We practice, we play against other schools, we hit. It’s full contact and it’s very physical and we’re a very physical team,” VomBaur said.
The team holds practice three times a week and is one of the more well-traveled teams in the country and have competed in eight tournaments, a lot more than other teams in the region according to VomBaur.
“We have to because there aren’t any teams close to us,” VomBaur said.
VomBaur said for most tournaments they game-plan around their opponents, but the U.S. Quidditch Cup makes it so they don’t know their opponents until the day of the competition, “which is a little frustrating.”
Sofia de la Vega Normally the team watches game film on who they’re going to be play by searching the internet or trading with other teams, VomBaur said.
“But we won’t really be able to do that for this one so we will be watching film of ourselves to see things we can improve on,” Vom Baur said.
VomBaur said they get to know the first team they play about a week and a half before the tournament, and that’s all they get to know.
This is the first year the U.S. Quidditch Cup has been a collegiate-only tournament. In the past, college and community teams were able to participate in the U.S. Quidditch Cup, VomBaur said.
Community teams are often made up of people in their mid or late 20s who played four years in college and then graduated and created a Quidditch team in their community. University teams are made up of 18-year-old freshman who didn’t know how to play Quidditch a year ago, VomBaur said.
Danielle Christensen “So that is going to be a big plus and I think it’s really going to help our chances. We’ve done well against other universities so far,” VomBaur said.
Ransom said USU’s record against other college teams are 11 and 6.
“Teams we’ll be matching up with at U.S. Quidditch Cup will be pretty good matches,” Smith said.
There will be live streamings of the games at the U.S. Quidditch Cup, follow USU Quidditch on Facebook for updates and more information.
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