High School Quidditch

What I love about quidditch has always been writing about it. Before I discovered quidditch, I loved college basketball and I had always loved college sports. Quidditch was all so cool and new to me: the gameplay, the strategy, the teams. I jumped right into blogging and two years later, I am writing for the IQA and my blog has 10,000 views. I have never played real quidditch. I have never felt the exhiliration of racing down the pitch with the quaffle. I have never felt pre-tournament butterflies. I have never given a scouting report to my team in the huddle.

This year, I am graduating Eighth Grade. When I went to World Cup IV, high school seemed like the promised land for playing quidditch. I knew forming a team in Middle School would be hard, especially considering how many assholes there are in Middle School, so I told myself I'd wait until high school. At World Cup V, I was a year closer to playing high school quidditch, so shouldn't I have taken more interest in the ten or so teams playing? No. Generally, they were less exciting, slower and more boring. I hadn't heard of any of the high schools whereas I knew the names of almost all the colleges from other college sports.

I blogged and blogged covering the top college teams in the nation, recapping tournament and interviewing team captains. I devised my own rankings and predicted which teams would make World Cup VI. I left out high school teams because frankly, I didn't care. College quidditch continued to expand. Fantasy tournaments, Olympics and Interregional Challenges took place; it was all over the Internet. Since World Cup V, I don't think I've heard of one high school tournament.

The quidditch community has figured out, I think, that college kids can't play against high schoolers. And it just so happens that the IQA was founded by college kids, more college kids play quidditch and college quidditch players are very vocal on social media. High school quidditch has been forgotten.

Kidditch has perhaps outweighed high school quidditch too. Yes, Kidditch is cute, but it's not "building a future" for quidditch. It's just giving kids an hour or so of quidditch and then, chances are, the kids forget about it. High school quidditch gives colleges incoming freshman, who know the game and are interested in joining the team. This is what colleges should be focused on! Instead of going out and organizing a Kidditch game in their area, contact quidditch captains from local high schools. Bond with them! Help them! Practice with them, even!

Now, this blog will always be devoted to covering the top college quidditch tournaments, but I'm going to try to be the voice of high schoolers. I'm still in Eighth Grade, but next year, I will form a team, and organize tournaments and the like. I have a gift, in my readers, and I can help put high school quidditch back on the map, I think.