One of the more interesting roster reveals in Major League Quidditch history dropped two weeks ago, with notable names popping up in unexpected places, rising college stars slated to make their summer debuts and a few surprise retirements across the country. After a new champion was crowned in the club division at US Quidditch Cup and a wide range of young players burst onto the scene in the college division, the rosters were announced in a climate of tantalizing expectations that the 2022 season could be the most closely contested yet. As teams hold their first few practices and players travel from the outer reaches of their recruiting radii, I had some thoughts based on the rosters about the storylines for each division. I am admittedly a little rusty as a quidditch blogger, but I have now been back around the sport for a full MLQ season and a full USQ season, so I have no excuse!
A Changing of the Guard?
One of the biggest questions for the league is whether the longtime dominance of the Boston Forge and the New York Titans atop the East Division will come to an end in 2022. The two rivals have finished either first or second in every season except one, with the Forge taking five consecutive division titles before the Titans finally knocked off their northern neighbors last year. Coming off USQ campaigns that fell short and heading into the 2022 MLQ season, neither team is necessarily favored though.
The Washington Admirals, fresh off a run to the semifinals at US Quidditch Cup by the Bosny Bearsharks without star players Julia Baer and Tyler Trudeau, were the early pick of MLQ co-commissioner Ethan Sturm. The Admirals have been making strides for several seasons now and the hard work of building a strong culture started to pay off last year, when Washington became the first team to defeat the Boston Forge in a regular season series and developed one of the prettiest passing offenses that quidditch has ever seen. There was a magic on their home turf outside RFK Stadium, where they believed they could beat any team, and all the key figures are coming back according to the revealed roster.
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| Photo by Chiddy Powers. |
With fewer home series in 2022 however, Washington will have to remain focused during the regular season because the ultimate goal is the same: a deep run before a hometown crowd in Howard County at the MLQ Championship. A year ago, the Admirals ran into the buzzsaw of the eventual champion Austin Outlaws in the quarterfinals before they could gather any momentum. To avoid a repeat scenario, the capital region squad will have to earn a higher seed by winning on the road in New York and Boston, a tough proposition for the beating corps especially.
The additions of former Maryland star Zain Bhalia and current Maryland standout Heather Farnan will provide much-needed depth, but continued development from the returning trio of Melissa Smith, Cody Nardone, and Bernie Berges is just as crucial. The three veterans stabilized a position that previously given Washington trouble last season and at times outplayed flashier opponents but the question of whether they can thrive as high-level beating speeds up and be the go-to beaters on a championship team is open.
Another team that is highly energized by a strong USQ season and could disrupt the duopoly of Boston and New York is the trial expansion team, the Charlotte Aviators. The Aviators took a game off the Titans, who eventually reached the finals, at the MLQ Championship last year and have the beating depth to hang with any team. They also have the top-performing seeker in the league in Ryan Davis, which means that more than any other positional unit, the burden lies with the chasers to elevate their games.
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Photo by Mike Iadevaia.
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Under the leadership of head coach Lee Hodge, the Aviators offense has come a long way, with a relatively one-dimensional attack becoming dynamic and multi-faceted over the course of the 2021 season. Davis has a killer midrange shot, Hodge is one of the best in the sport at working in underutilized spaces on the wing, and Logan Hartman can come out of nowhere and turn garbage into gold around the hoops. What is holding the Aviators back is a combination of two things: a lack of incorporation of their women chasers in strategic ways and an underdeveloped press on the defensive end.
Goals do not always come easy for Charlotte, and finding ways to move the ball and get counterattacking opportunities is part of the solution. With Diana Howard transferring to the Washington Admirals roster and Erin Smekrud appearing on the practice squad, Charlotte will need its new additions at chaser who are women to step up. But the coaching staff needs to have a real plan to take advantage of their skillsets. Similarly, players like Quincy Hildreth are deadly on the fast break but do not get nearly enough chances to run in the open field because of a lack of coordination on defense. The bar is exceptionally high for a trial expansion team, but the Aviators have every reason to believe they could win the division with their trajectory over the past few years.
Despite all the energy around the two potential challengers, Boston and New York will be hard to unseat from their thrones. New York is reenergized under a new generation of leadership, with Frank Minson stepping into the role of head coach and Rachel Ayella-Silver and Jon Jackson joining Lindsay Marella as assistant coaches. The younger members of the Titans squad have made enormous progress over the past calendar year and the beating corps is now stacked with the intriguing additions of Tate Kay and Tessa Mullins. The departure of several longtime fixtures in the quaffle game also creates a huge opportunity for a new player like Leo Fried to slot into the space behind the hoops and be a sparkplug off the bench.
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| Photo by Mike Iadevaia. |
While the stage is set for a young player to prove themselves at the highest level, the hopes of the Titans to defend their division title ultimately rest with a couple veterans. Jon Jackson was a highly efficient scorer and passer for the Titans last season, at times carrying the offensive load, but he will need to reach another level of consistency in the half court for New York to hang with Washington and Charlotte. Lindsay Marella is an unparalleled weapon for a team that is breaking a press with her vision and distribution, but the Titans will need more goals from the Team USA mainstay in 2022. In the beater game, it is exciting to see Devin Lee, who joined for the MLQ Championship last season, on the roster for the regular season. Can he recapture his form from the 2019 season?
Two hundred miles to the north in Boston, the Forge have turned over the head coaching reigns to Tom DeMouth. After the outstanding performances of many Massachusetts Quidditch Conference teams at US Quidditch Cup, the coaching staff had difficult decisions to make with the roster and its choices will fall under the microscope of the highly engaged local community if Boston starts slow out of the gate. The Forge have Charlotte and Washington at home in June, two show-me series for a team that is looking to move past a disappointing 2021 season.
For Boston to write a different story into the history books in 2022, they will need to begin with a much-improved defense. Most importantly for the three-time champions, Lulu Xu is back in the middle of the defensive half, the ultimate stopper who covers endless ground and fends off challenges with world-class hand-to-hand skills to snuff out danger. In the chaser game, the Forge picked up two defensive stalwarts from their southern rivals: Taylor Crawford and Peter Lawrence. Crawford brings some of the best point defense and open field tackling in the game and Lawrence provides size inside for crucial matchups with opposing ballhandlers like Tyler Trudeau and Quincy Hildreth. Together, they are fascinating pieces for DeMouth to have at his disposal.
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| Photo by Mike Iadevaia. |
Continued growth from the younger players on the roster is also key for the Forge. With Jayke Archibald and Grace Dastous no longer around, there are holes at keeper and chaser that Boston will need to fill. Ian Scura is the obvious choice to fill the shoes of Archibald and Ryan Pfenning is waiting in the wing but there is more of a competition for the heavy minutes that Dastous has logged over the past few seasons, not to mention the type of cutting that has carved up defenses for years. Morgan Bertram is the strongest defensive presence and perhaps has the inside track, as she posted impressive goalscoring numbers in 2021. Elsewhere, Zach Doyle was an excellent off-ball option for Boston last year and the additions of players who stuffed the statsheet in MQC play like Jordan Smiley and Chris LaBudde significantly raise the ceiling for the storied franchise.
The Ottawa Black Bears are the clear underdogs in the ultracompetitive East Division, but it will just be gratifying to have Canadian representation back in the league after more than two years of border restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For American audiences beginning to look towards the 2023 IQA World Cup in Richmond, Virginia, it will be interesting to see which members of the Black Bears squad seem likely to appear on the Canadian national team next summer.
My picks:
Washington Admirals 9-3
New York Titans 8-4
Boston Forge 7-5
Charlotte Aviators 6-6
Ottawa Black Bears 0-12
The New North
Split into two halves with a new regular season format that will culminate in the first-ever North Division Championship in South Bend, Indiana, the middle of the country is set for a compelling schedule of games in 2022. The western half of the division is probably stronger, with two teams in the Indianapolis Intensity and the Minneapolis Monarchs who should be the favorites based on the consistency of their programs and the results that they have produced in recent years. But the return of two teams in the eastern half, the Rochester Whiteout (who have played in the East Division since 2019) and the Toronto Raiders (who could not participate in the 2021 season because of border restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic), adds a significant wrinkle to the projection of a division winner. MLQ co-commissioner Ethan Sturm picked the Rochester Whiteout, a young team that ran the gauntlet of the East Division last season.
The perennial division champion Indianapolis Intensity enter the season somewhat under the radar after they fell to the Minneapolis Monarchs in a three-game sweep at home last summer. In addition, several program fixtures like Jeff Siwek, Alyssa Marassa and Matt Melton are taking the summer off or moving to other roles, lending an unfamiliar look to the roster. While certainly the depth has an untested quality with a large influx of players from the up-and-coming Columbia program, the coaching staff under head coach Nathan Digmann is committed to finding diamonds in the rough in the form of player development and the top lines already have the potential to dominate the division if healthy and available.
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| Photo by Willow Elser. |
Beginning with the beaters, Matt Brown is returning from injury and Tad Walters is expecting to have greater availability in 2022, two facts that significantly improve the outlook for the Intensity and boost morale around the team. Added to Dany Yacoub, who thrived in their absences last year, and Ben Peachey, who switched positions and became a starter for Boom Train during the USQ season, the Intensity should have the deepest beating corps in the division. One substantial concern is the losses of Catherine Rogers, Alyssa Irwin and Sam McNew, which leaves Indy with only one woman beater on the roster in Linnea Schultz. Early in the season especially, it is worth exploring whether a female player who is listed primarily as a chaser like Kennedy Murphy or Mary Owen, both of whom have experience at beater, could pinch hit at the position so Indy is not wedded to running two male sets nearly all the time.
In terms of the half-court offense, the duo to watch is Nathan Digmann and Cole Collins. What Digmann can do is well-known. For Boom Train, he accounted for the overwhelming majority of the offensive production against top opponents at tournaments like the Crescent City Invitational and the Sin City Classic with his ability to beat defenders one-on-one and his accurate midrange shooting. But few players in the league are more underrated than Collins, who was overshadowed by playing on the same line as Creighton phenom Darien Murcek-Ellis for the Kansas City Stampede in 2021. Collins has aggressive instincts and a deep arsenal of pump fakes and double moves around the hoops. He will likely join Digmann on the starting line for the Intensity. When they sit, players like Monica Marion and Josh Horchem, both of whom were members of the practice squad in 2021, are key for stabilizing the goalscoring output. They have a knack for fighting through contact and finishing at the hoops.
Ultimately, the Intensity come into the 2022 season with slightly lower expectations because the key members of the roster have fallen three times in a row to the same group of players: the core of the San Antonio Soldados and the USQ club division champion Texas Hill Country Heat. While there have been injuries and losing to the national champions is no cause for shame, the Soldados and Heat have utilized the same style of play, a counterattacking strategy that has revolutionized high-level quidditch by taking advantage of possession-oriented offenses. Like the gegenpressing of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool in soccer, the Soldados and the Heat want to turn defense into offense and will spring an aggressive high press when they generate the slightest advantage in the beater game. It is not clear that any of the competition in the North Division has the personnel to pull off the kind of gameplan that has caused problems for Indy, but the Intensity will need to develop a response specifically for opportunistic teams that are willing to try.
Out of all the teams in the North Division, the Minneapolis Monarchs are perhaps best prepared to follow the blueprint of the Soldados and the Heat against Indy. While they developed their own formula for knocking off the Intensity en route to winning the division last year, the Monarchs have lost key veterans like Sean Pagoada and Luke Zak and Indy will pose a much tougher test with Brown and Walters in the lineup. Still, the upset potential is high with the last two North Division MVPs in Max Meier and April Grabner on the roster. Meier approximates what Soldados and Heat star keeper Miguel Esparza can do with his speed in the open field and his ability to stick with plays that seem dead. Grabner likewise can play the part of Team USA beater Bailee Fields in clogging up the middle of the field and eliminating passing options during the press. With a combination of speed and length in half-court defense and an ability to create fast break opportunities, the Monarchs will certainly be a tricky team to break down.
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| Photo by Willow Elser. |
A team that came close to defeating the Minneapolis Monarchs away from home last season, the Detroit Innovators are returning under mostly new leadership in 2022 with Kaegan Maddelein in the role of head coach and David Banas, Cam Kniffen and Emma Vazquez joining the staff as assistants. Each member of the coaching staff is key for their on-field contributions but they have already put the team in a strong position by recruiting well from the Michigan and Michigan State programs. In particular, a whopping ten players from the Michigan roster at the most recent US Quidditch Cup will be plying their trade for the Innovators this summer, a great chance for growth and development over the course of the season.
In the mean time, Detroit will look toward Banas to wreak havoc, Kniffen to organize the defense, and Vazquez to keep the ball moving in the half court and force rotations from the defense. The Innovators still need a solution at the point of attack, someone who is both an accurate distributor and an effective driver, and Maddelein is typically more comfortable working behind the hoops, but Detroit has the pieces that can make life difficult for any opponent.
In the eastern half of the North Division, the Rochester Whiteout are returning from a two-season spell alongside the powerhouse programs of the East Division. They are bringing a roster that has almost completely turned over since the last time they competed against midwestern teams, when they won a division title in 2018. But last season especially, they showcased for the entire league the benefits of entrusting young players with key minutes against top opponents, as relatively unknown names like Mitchell Vargas and Ben Stonish accounted for just as much of the total goalscoring as more established figures like Sollie Gominiak and Alyssa Giarrosso. It was an equal opportunity offense, with lots of intricate passing and unpredictable movement.
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| Photo by Mike Iadevaia. |
For the Whiteout to translate highly attractive quidditch into wins however, several things need to happen. Emily Hickmott has to continue to play like one of the most reliable beaters outside of Texas, unfazed by the speed that Ben Strauss and the Cleveland Riff beaters will bring and unbothered by physicality from her years in the Lone Star State. The backup beater pair of Josh Tombline and Madeleine Fordham has to build upon their progress last year, when they were thrown into the deep end from the opening weekend of the season against Charlotte and New York and able to hold bludger control for significant stretches.
Most importantly, Basem Ashkar, the leading scorer and assister for Rochester in 2021, has to find a way to assert his will in close games like he famously did in the 2018 USQ nationals college division final against the University of Texas, all without taking away from the metronomic rhythm of the Whiteout offense. Finally, Kit Powpour has to take advantage of the fact that Snitch of the Fall Justin Barnard is a member of his team and pick up new moves in practice. Powpour learned from coach Harry Greenhouse during his time at Boston University and has shown every indication that he is capable of making a jump. His strength and conditioning is crucial, as Rochester cannot be pulling players like Ashkar and Gominiak from the chasing game too often because they need a snitch catch in 2022.
Outside of Rochester, the Toronto Raiders are probably best positioned to challenge the Indianapolis Intensity and the Minneapolis Monarchs from the east. The Raiders finished tied for second place in the North Division in their debut season way back in 2019. Unfortunately, they have not been able to play across the border since then but they have presumably been following the ups and downs of their division rivals. If they have used the time away from the league wisely, they should have a huge competitive edge in the first couple series because none of their recent games are on tape and all of their opponents have had their matches filmed and posted on YouTube for more than a year. Along with the Scavenger Showdown in late July which will determine the best MLQ team in Canada, the Raiders have an exciting and long-awaited season on the horizon.
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| Photo by Chiddy Powers. |
Finally, in the absence of the Toronto Raiders, the Cleveland Riff automatically qualified for the MLQ Championship after finishing fourth in the North Division last season but they made the most of their opportunity in the play-in bracket with a memorable and closely contested match against the League City Legends. The strong performance followed their lone victory of the regular season in a massive upset over the division champion Minneapolis Monarchs. The recipe for each of the significant triumphs was different, as different players were available at different times, but it seems like all of the key pieces are back in 2022.
Ben Strauss, who missed the MLQ Championship, is one of the best beaters in the division and perhaps the most capable of wearing down the depth of the Indy lines. The veteran keeper John Gaffigan came out of retirement to stabilize the Riff offense and showed that his distribution is just as multifaceted as ever. And Carrie Brittson was a revelation for her ability to juke defenders and dunk at the hoops. The Riff might not defeat the Rochester Whiteout at home in their opening series of the season, but with time to practice, they have proven to be a team that is dangerous to underestimate. They will be a difficult draw for a team from western half of the division at the North Division Championship in South Bend.
My picks:
Indianapolis Intensity 5-1
Minneapolis Monarchs 3-3
Detroit Innovators 1-5
Rochester Whiteout 5-1
Toronto Raiders 3-3
Cleveland Riff 1-5
Watching the Throne
With the recent title of Texas Hill Country Heat in the club division and the split series with the Austin Outlaws last season, it is tempting to think that the San Antonio Soldados should be favored to win the South Division heading into the 2022 campaign. While there is lots of time for development over the course of the summer from players like Matt Blackwood and the rest of the UTSA core, San Antonio enters the season as a relatively top-heavy team, pretty dependent on reigning South Division MVP Miguel Esparza at keeper and rising star Daniel Williams at beater. Esparza pushes the pace like no other ballcarrier in the league and sacrifices very little in terms of efficiency for his aggressiveness. He has outstanding field vision and the moves to get around most defenders. Williams was hyped in the forums after USQ nationals as the best beater in the world, which may very well be true. He will be tested in a new way however without Bailey Fields, who is now a member of the Austin Outlaws.
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| Photo by Chiddy Powers. |
Otherwise, the Soldados will miss the contributions of several former players from the Pegasus roster in the USQ club division, namely chaser Austin Villejo and beaters Ryan Nawrocki and Kylie McBride. Even as a wing chaser, Villejo was the most consistent scoring threat for San Antonio at the MLQ Championship last year with Esparza unavailable to play. Nawrocki going down with an injury in the quarterfinals against Indy significantly lowered the chances for an upset of New York in the semifinals. And McBride was the rock of the defense, luring her opponents into deep positions and winning beater battles to consistently spring the fast break. Along with Fields, she also enabled the Soldados to play their vaunted 18-wheeler lineup, an unconventional look with the capacity to throw teams off guard. But for every absence (which I normally do not like to dwell on!) there is an opportunity and players like Tim Nguyen, Kris De La Fuente and Maya Hinebaugh will look to step into the big shoes left behind.
If San Antonio will be trying to plug some holes in the early part of the season, the Austin Outlaws are the clear favorites, not only for the South Division but for the whole league once again. The experience that the large University of Texas contingent on the roster gained over the past few months should not be underestimated, as a group of young players encountered their fair share of adversity and battled through tough games and nagging injuries to become college division national champions. Kyzer Polzin and Kasye Bevers especially showed up in the finals under the lights, making quick work of the overextended Creighton beaters and taking care to place their beats out of the reach of quaffle blocks by Darian Murcek-Ellis and the other Creighton ballcarriers. They were locked in, intently focused in the way that they will need to be for the Austin Outlaws this summer.
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| Photo by Chiddy Powers. |
The continued growth of the current Texas group is especially key for the future of the esteemed Austin Outlaws program because of the increasing number of veterans who are stepping away. With a few exceptions like the former Team USA chaser Simon Arends who has now transitioned very nicely to beater and the indomitable Augie Monroe who is doing his best Tom Brady impression, many of the safety valves are gone for the three-time champs. At the MLQ Championship last year, the two most reliable sources of half court offense for the Outlaws were probably Louis Sanchez and Andrew Axtell. Sam Haimowitz was their second leading scorer during the regular season. None are on the roster in 2022.
In their stead, two other veterans, Kaci Erwin and Erin McBride, will continue tackling and scoring with characteristic consistency, but younger ballcarriers like Josh Johnson and Sammy Garza will need to improve their efficiency and physicality in the course of stepping into larger roles. They will need to find the balance that Monroe has mastered over the years of avoiding turnovers while putting real pressure on the defense by repeatedly driving with the intention to score. With respect to the beaters, Fields will slot into the heavy minutes logged by Hallie Pace last year and Taylor Tracy is ready for the challenge of matching up against the trickiest assignments from the opposing team every game in the absence of Cole Travis and Jackson Johnson. Still, Austin does not appear to be the juggernaut that they were in 2021, especially in comparison to teams outside the division. The Outlaws might have enough to win the South Division but their depth will be relatively untested against East Division foes in particular.
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| Photo by Chiddy Powers. |
With a slight opening at the top from the relatively inexperienced rosters of San Antonio and Austin, all of the second tier in the South Division should feel cautiously optimistic heading into the season, able to realistically envision an upset victory in a low-scoring game. Composed of the Creighton core that just surged into the college division national championship game as well as veterans from the Kansas and Missouri programs, the Kansas City Stampede likely have the best chance. Backed by beaters who will restrain themselves from the riskiest throws and play more conventionally under head coach Adam Heald, the aforementioned star chaser Darian Murcek-Ellis will be able to shine on the offensive end like last year without immediately giving up a fast break goal going the other way. It will also be interesting to see Creighton keeper Joe Goulet in the Stampede setup as well after he had a small but key role off the bench for the Minneapolis Monarchs in 2021.
For the League City Legends, the name to know is Hayden Boyes, who was one of the youngest players in the league last season but became the go-to option in the half court offense at the MLQ Championship despite being pretty undersized for a chaser. Boyes has a bright future in the sport and it is exciting to think about how fast he already processes the game. Under first-year head coach Ashton Jean-Lewis, League City will have to scrap and claw through the beater game to give their chasers an opportunity, a tougher task in the South Division than anywhere else.
While lacking offensive firepower, the New Orleans Curse have certainly demonstrated in the past that they have the capacity to scrap and claw in the beater game, a formula for giving trouble to any top team. They return experienced pieces Josh Mansfield and Sarah Kneiling, although they only have four full-time beaters and one part-time beater listed on the roster right now. The Curse will look to build on the momentum of stealing a game from the Kansas City Stampede in their final regular season series last year en route to qualifying for the MLQ Championship for the first time.
My picks:
Austin Outlaws 12-0
San Antonio Soldados 8-4
Kansas City Stampede 6-6
League City Legends 2-10
New Orleans Curse 2-10
Jack McGovern is Press Coordinator for Major League Quidditch.
