Home field advantage not enough for Guelph Quidditch
Just in time for Halloween, the wizarding world of Harry Potter stopped by Guelph. On Sat, Oct. 22, the University of Guelph Quidditch club hosted their annual invitational tournament on home turf. A total of 10 teams came out for the tournament hailing from around Ontario and Quebec. The teams competing included: Valhalla (a team based out of Toronto), the University of Waterloo, McGill University, the University of Montreal, Queen’s University, Carleton University, the University of Toronto, Canada’s Finest Quidditch Team, the University of Guelph, and Guelph’s Royal City team.
The tournament, held at the Gryphon Soccer Complex, began at 9:00 a.m. and finished at 6:00 p.m. Each team played three games and their scores from those games determined who would play in the finals. The two teams with the best scores advanced to the finals at the end of the day. Despite the players’ inability to actually fly on their brooms, the University of Guelph team soared convincingly into the finals.
Valhalla and University of Guelph went head-to-head in the final game and were close in score throughout. In the end, Valhalla won the game with the snitch catch.
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After 18 minutes of gameplay, the snitch is put into the game. The snitch is a non-player dressed in all yellow with a flag attached to the back of their pants. Both teams put in a seeker, who holds the job of taking the flag from the snitch. The team who catches it is awarded 30 points, which is what decided this game in the end.
Both teams fought hard, however, the final score of the game was 110-60 in favour of Valhalla.
The Guelph Royal City team—the development squad for the University of Guelph team—finished ninth in the tournament.
One of the captains of the University of Guelph team, Bradley Connolly said, “I am proud of both of our teams, they fought hard and played well, our new players were able to adapt to the game well and gave it their all.”
Connolly added that although it would have been nice to win the home tournament, they remain focused as they prepare to face many of the same teams at Carleton’s upcoming tournament in Ottawa.