Thursday, February 23, 2012

Mardi Gras... A Fat Day of Quidditch

The University of Texas Austin has secured its spot as one of the Quidditch blue bloods. They triumphed over World Cup Semifinalists Texas A&M and beat LSU on their home pitch. Oh, and their JV team came in fourth.
The Mardi Gras Cup was promising for Quidditch in the Gulf States. Many new teams including Rice, Texas State, and new FQC members Florida Atlantic also did well. Here is the order of placement.

University of Texas
Louisiana State University
Texas A&M University
Texas Deluminators (U Texas JV)
Rice University
Florida Atlantic University
Team Rocket
Texas State University
University High School
Loyola University New Orleans
Sam Houston State University
Hendrix College
University of Southern Mississippi
University of New Orleans

I'm getting published in the Seer!

One of my articles about Florida that was written for this blog is going to be published in the Monthly Seer. It is due to come out in early March. I am so excited!!!!!

Rankings

From the original category Quidditch rankings, I will now release monthly trend rankings. They will be completely decided by me, unless you comment with a good argument. I will move teams in and out and up and down in the rankings monthly. The moves will be based off tournaments and a team is not eligible to move up if the team hasn't played any games. Tournaments including are the FQC games on 2/4, the Mardi Gras Cup, the Utah Snow Cup and the Ives Pond Classic. Here are the January/February Rankings.
1 Middlebury
2 LSU
3 Pittsburgh
4 Texas
5 Miami
6 Boston
7 Emerson
8 McGill
9 USF
10 Kansas
11 Michigan State
12 Texas A&M
13 Florida
14 Villanova
15 Cal Berkely
16 Michigan
17 USC
18 Penn State
19 Marquette
20 Arizona State
21 Minnesota
22 Ives Pond
23 Maryland
24 Carleton
25 Vassar

I would've liked to keep producing the Categorized Quidditch Rankings, but they were too time consuming. I hope you enjoy having a say in these new rankings.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Snow Tournaments

The Ives Pond Classic and the Utah Snow Cup, both in their 2nd years, were great tournaments to kick off 2012 with. Pittsburgh beat Ives Pond despite an Ives Pond snitch catch 90-50. The standings looked like this before the six team final bracket.
Pittsburgh 4-0
Ives Pond 3-1
Ottawa 3-1
Rochester 3-1
RIT 2-2
Carleton 2-2
Geneseo 1-3
Edinboro 1-3
WEQL 1-3
Syracuse 0-4

The 1 & 2 seeds cruised to the final after receiving byes in the first round. According to Alex Benepe, there was a "moderate amount of snow on the ground."

In the Utah Snow Cup, there was no snow on the ground but ther eras some awesome Quidditch. The host team, the Utah Crimson Fliers, won the tournament for the second year in a row. Utah lost to NAU (Northern Arizona did not attend the World Cup, but they beat Arizona St convincingly in October)in the final match though, but Utah won on Point Differential. Here is the final standings.

Utah Crimson Fliers (UT)
Northern Arizona University Narwhals (NAU)
Auxkas (AUX) – mercenary team comprising USC, SVS, etc.
FYSU – mercenary team comprising UCLA, LSU, Villanova, Kansas, SVS etc.
Denver Dementors (DEN)
Brigham Young University Cougars (BYU)
University of North Colorado (UNC)

World Cup Six Bids

Six bids for World Cup Six that could happen

1. Chicago. Largest city in Midwest Region and the Midwest is hungry for a world cup.

2. Boston. Many experienced teams in Boston. But, if the World Cup is in the Northeast, then it will probably be in NY.

3. Dallas. Texas could be interesting option for a World Cup because the teams in Texas are really good. And minus a long flight to NY, the Texas teams could be dynamite.

4. St Louis. Again the Midwest is hungry for the World Cup and St Louis is a beautiful city on the Mississippi River. Also, St Louis is centrally located within the United States.

5. Los Angeles. The west also wants a the World Cup to come to the Pacific, but I believe that the teams in the West aren't good enough to draw a large hometown crowd. That being said, LA is beautiful and the World Cup would get a lot of TV coverage.

6. New York is by far the best option. Imagine a World Cup in Central Park. NY has the best public transportation, the most media coverage, and NY already has a dedicated fanbase. It might not be Centrally located, but the most IQA teams are in the Northest. Also, if it wasn't in NY, I wouldn't have the chance to report on the World Cup