Warwick Quidditch soar into Europe

It’s official: Warwick has the best quidditch team in the South of the UK.

Warwick Quidditch Club went to the Southern Cup with their sights set on gold. They had just come off a fantastic season in which they surpassed everyone’s expectations—including their own—by ranking second in the UK and fifth in Europe. This is quite an achievement – just one year earlier, the club was ranked 15th in the UK.

However, they were tired of constantly falling short of a trophy and bearing the ‘silver medal curse’. As Captain Hannah Dignum put it before the tournament began: “The team deserves to be recognised for the players they are – their hard work cannot be in vain for a second season running. We’re going to keep fighting. We’re going to keep going until we are finally on that podium. We will train harder, longer and we will never give up. This time we won’t fall at the final challenge.” Fall short they did not.

The pool stages of the Southern Cup went smoothly for WQC, which they owed in part to being placed in a group they were confident they could top. In the three round robin games played, they scored a total of 55 hoops and conceded just four. It was the knockout rounds that would test their skill, cohesion, and fitness.

In the quarterfinal, WQC met the team they had lost two finals to—Oxford’s Radcliffe Chimeras. The Chimeras brought a very different roster from last season since many of their key players—a majority of their previous starting lineup, in fact— had graduated and transferred to different teams. WQC capitalized on this and won what ended up being an uncomfortably close match. The score line of 100*-30 seemed straightforward, but this was only after catching the snitch, thus adding 30 points to their score.

Their semifinal against the London Unspeakables was a stark contrast to the quarterfinal. The London team slowed the game down to minimize the amount of hoops scored against them, but still WQC managed eight goals and a snitch catch without conceding at all to win 110-0. Then came the final, with Werewolves of London as the opponents.

With the combined forces of a lucky beat and a talented seeker, WQC made what may be the quickest clean catch in a major QUK tournament.

It was a game that most of the Quidditch UK community described as ‘chess-like’. Unlike most of the action-packed finals you see at official tournaments, it was extremely slow-paced and tactic-oriented. Both teams had clearly done their research on one another and created plays that were specifically designed to shut down attacks from each other’s top scorers.

By the time the snitch came on the pitch Warwick were losing 20-10, making the snitch catch the deciding factor. With the combined forces of a lucky beat and a talented seeker, WQC made what may be the quickest clean catch in a major QUK tournament. At long last the ‘silver medal curse’ had been lifted and Warwick Quidditch Club was Southern champions.

Southern was only the start of what is looking to be WQC’s best season yet. By placing in the top three of one of UK’s regional tournaments, the team has again qualified for the European Quidditch Cup taking place in Antwerp, Belgium on 25-26 March 2017. By not placing last, WQC has also automatically qualified for the British Quidditch Cup taking place in Rugeley, on 11-12 March 2017. Needless to say, the team will use Southern as motivation to bring home more gold medals.