World Cup Fever

I might go so far as to say my life is now officially complete. Bright and early Saturday morning (7:00am) we meet at the greyhound bus station. Only, at 7:00 there is just me and one other boy (who isn’t even playing – he is the papa of the team). So we stand around, in anticipiation of the teams arrival. Lucky the bus didn’t leave until 8:45. Good planning to make us arrive (or not arrive) almost two hours early. So gradually the team assembles. There are a few fallen. One of my fellow girl chasers was violently ill the night before – so can’t make it. And one beater (thankfully with car) sleeps through his alarm, so also does not make it onto the bus. The official capes are distributed among the team and mine manages a dual purpose of a blanket. We have a stop at the American border. Where the U.S guards (or whatever they are) are highly amused that about half the passengers on the bus are going to play quidditch. I get grilled about what position I play, and what position Harry Potter plays. Clearly more important questions than why I’m entering the country, and equally important when I am going to leave. I pass the test, and can enter the US. Reid (papa) I think mildly manages to aggravate the US guards, when asked if we play on a field – replied no a pitch. Ha ha! The team make it through boarder security with only one bag search! The journey continues to the town of Burlington. This is where we need to make our connection to Middlebury. Burlington is hosting a Halloween street fair and a farmers market. These events are glorious – but not for FIVE hours. At 11:30 we find out the next bus that will transit us to Middlebury is at 5:00. So we make some purchases from the farmers, wander the Halloween fair and sit in the rain. We play some drama improv games, which attract us even more attention than we were getting before. Some locals even come and join in the festivities. We manage to play drama games for about an hour before we decide to go see a movie. It was only $5 – yay. It was where the wild things are – not so yay. This movie did not keep us out of the rain for long enough, and I had already seen it I think a couple of days beforehand. I might have napped a little bit in the theater - but so did my entire row. We went and got some ice-cream before standing in the competitive line for the bus to Middlebury. The 5:00 bus is the last bus to Middlebury, and I got the feeling there was no bus to Middlebury on the Sunday. So people were manically pushing on and looking generally worried and fearful when it arrived. The bus left at maximum capacity. There were two poor (local?) people that were almost denied passage, but the surly bus driver checked the maximum allowed people sign, and decided that they could after all go to Middlebury with the squished masses.

We arrive at Middlebury University at about 6:00, at which point it is dark. We look lost for a little while, and finally meet our designated greeters. They show us to the food hall – YAY! The food hall is glorious. All you can eat buffet – with actual good food, amazing chocolate milk, AND a 24-hour soft serve machine! Oh my god! No wonder there is an obesity epidemic! It is hard to express self restraint. After tea, we are shown to our sleeping quarters. i.e the couches and floor of someone’s dorm room. There are two 5-bedroom apartment types, which each have two living rooms, ONE bathroom and a kitchen. So we are able to make our selves comfortable in the living rooms. Reid and Ben go to a quidditch brief about the code and conduct of the game. The rest of us sit around and play apples to apples – a mildly amusing board game. At 10 the meeting is over, and we decide to have a late night quidditch practice. Practice includes learning chants for the next day. We cleaned up the McGill once chant. It now goes:

McGill once, McGill twice,
Canadians are really nice,
Wham, bam, alakazam, son of a witch, BOOM,
Three cheers for McGill – ole, ole, ole,
Three cheers for quidditch – McGill, McGill, McGill!

(ha ha)
We bury some loonies in the centre of the two of the fields and all touch it for luck. At night, a few decided to go to what is known as a kegger, while the rest of us crash in the living rooms and tell some scary stories. What a wild night! I succeeded in forgetting my sleeping bag on this journey. So I shared ONE in blanket format with the female keeper and one of the chasers (not Eric). Me and the other chaser are both tiny, and in no way should have agreed to share the sleeping bag with the larger keeper who managed to hog the blanket all night. The room was so ridiculously cold and I spent a large portion of my time huddled in fetal position. I couldn’t even find my jumper (someone had been sleeping on it) and so at one point so desperate for warmth, I groped around and found some random jumper to wear. The next morning could be analogous to Christmas morning! We had some tasty breakfast buffet and put on our ‘uniforms’ and participated in the opening ceremony parade! Eek! We sung the Candaian national anthem, our McGill chant (I think I recall we stuck to the dirty one) and two French chants. I didn’t ever quite learn the words to one, but it implied something about McGill and America, and the other one was a classic - Où est le Fromage? X about twelve.
Then we all filed in around a quidditch pitch, and listened to a speech that we would hear again at the finals. The first draws were announced and the games begun!

Our first game was a real confidence boost. We beat St. Lawrence University 100 – 30, and they only scored 30 as they caught the snitch. We then played University of Vermont in some what of an upset match. We had only been playing for what seemed like 10 mintues and the snitch came back to the field. It was caught by Vermont which brought the game to a tie: 40-40. We then had to enter sudden death! Aaa! I was terrified when I was subbed back onto the field. Anyway our seeker caught the snitch illegally or something, and then the other teams seeker caught it properally! And game over. Our last game in our pool reminded me of the Harry Potter movies. The score was 0-0 McGill: Green Mountain College. But then the snitch made an appearance on the filed, and our seeker got him! Oh, it was too glorious, we all rushed onto the field, cheered and lifted up the seeker in victory. In practices I don’t really pay attention to the seekers or the snitch, but here it is such a big deal, as the games are really short. So I could then appreciate why people think Harry is the greatest in the books. The seeker is pretty much the most important person on the team. We had two, so the less good one would do all the hard yards running around and getting tired, and then when the snitch came back to the field, he would sub out for the good one! We finished in a good position in our division, and so progressed to the quarterfinals against Vermont - The grudge match. The tension was tangible. But we won, I don’t remember the score, but we caught the snitch, and generally felt pleased with ourselves. We then went on to play Middlebury (the host team of the cup) in the semifinals! This was carnage. 60-10. But they were about twice the size of us, and had capes with actual pleats in them. This school practices inter hall quidditch, and so had the cream of the crop. The game was pretty intense. And the crowd was wild, one of our beaters was physically picked up and thrown off a Middlebury beater by one of the Middlebury supporters. He was trying to rectify some rule in his mind… I guess.

So our quidditch cup dreams were ended. We tried to organize a scrimmage match against Harvard, but not enough Harvard players showed. We scrimmaged against two other teams though – for the love of quidditch (ha ha). We watched some other matches. Middlebury really put a lot of effort into this cup. In one match people in garbage bags stormed onto the field in a dementor like fashion! And in another they released all the snitches onto the field, so that there was mass annoyance and confusion. The snitches had access all the buildings and could run around and go crazy in them. Our snitch threw some chairs in a caff in the way of some seekers. Some snitches splashed mud into the eyes of their opposing seekers. One even rode around on a bike. They were generally allowed to cause a lot of mayhem.

We watched the final match against Middlebury and Emerson. Needless to say it was a pretty rough match. They had an opening ceremony to this final, where we heard the same speech we had heard in the morning, Emerson burst through some banners in a similar fashion to that of an banner bursting in an ALF final, and Middlebury brought out a man playing the bagpipes on a unicycle! I ended up rooting (hee hee) for Middlebury, as I felt there was more pride in being pulverized by the ultimate champions, than to second place. When Middlebury won, they started the most hideous chant: “mid-quid, mid-quid”. BOO. We retired for dinner and soft serve ice cream machine, before packing up our belongings and getting on a real yellow school bus (very exciting).

Quarterfinals

Semifinals

Finals

Championship

Boston

Lafayette

Boston

Louisiana State

Villanova

Villanova

Boston

Vermont

Middlebury

McGill

McGill

Middlebury

Middlebury

60

Emerson

Emerson

10

Syracuse

Emerson

Vassar

Green Mountain

Emerson

Texas A&M

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh

Third place

Chestnut Hill

Boston

There were problems at the boarder. One girl, did not have her study visa stapled into her passport, and so was held up at the boarder. They were about to ship her back to her home in the states, when somehow they found her study visa online. There had been some mishap with the labeling of her gender that prevented them from finding it online. She had been listed as a guy! We made it back to Montreal at about 11:00 or something. I caught the metro home and collapsed into bed.

Here is an article some random girl from Carlton that came along with us posted!

http://www.charlatan.ca/content/taking-quidditch-air-field