Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Hail Vermont

My parents' alma mater is renowned for its world-class foreign language programs, highly acclaimed Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and national championship caliber winter sports teams (not to mention its foundational role in birthing Gheorghe: the Blog). In keeping with its fancy/elitist New England college pedigree as a haven for the most liberal of the arts, Middlebury College also offers the sons and daughters of the 1% a safe place to test the boundaries of their creativity unemcumbered by the messy burdens of public school life.

It was in this nurturing environment that the Muggle game of Quidditch was born in the mid-2000s, and in the Green Mountains where the game's first and only dynasty thrives today. The Middlebury College Quidditch squad captured their fifth consecutive Quidditch World Cup a few weeks ago, defeating the University of Florida in the finals and returning the ceremonial Cup to its rightful home in Vermont. Middlebury trailed Florida by 10 before their Seeker captured the Golden Snitch and with it the 30 points that secured the record-setting victory.

Despite its humble (painfully nebbishy?) origins, ground-based Quidditch has become something of a sensation on North American college campuses, with more than 100 teams participating in the 2011 World Cup at New York's Randall's Island. Time featured the sport in a 2010 article, saying, "Quidditch is a sport striving for legitimacy. It has a rule book, a governing body (the International Quidditch Association, a nonprofit) and its own live streaming webcasts. Its players move with the grace and ferocity of top athletes; the best of them look like lacrosse players and hit like linebackers. All told, 46 teams from the U.S. and Canada vie for the Cup, and hundreds more franchises are just getting started. For a five-year-old sport, it's a remarkable ascension.”

65 comments:

Danimal said...

Quidditch. As in quit it.

T.J. said...

This event baffles me.

zman said...

Is someone invented a light saber when we were in college I guarantee we would come up with something equally nerdy and twice as dangerous to do with them.

Marls said...

Quaffle. As in awful.

Marls said...

This appears to be ultimate frisbee forr the next generation.

I say we bring in blotter.

Danimal said...

i watched 90 seconds and could watch no more. vermont founded sports are dumb.

i noticed something today about a lady that has worked here in our payroll dept for a year or so. she is involvd with a magician and has been for some time now. her license plate reads, "alakazm". i thought that was nifty.

TR said...

Point of correction - Quidditch is not a muggle game - it is a wizard game. The video shows muggles attempting to pley the game without the gift of flight. Poorly, I might add.

rob said...

yes, tr, but this is muggle quidditch. don't be such a parselmouth.

TR said...

(shaking my head and burying it in my butter beer)

rob said...

don't feel so bad, tr. mark's still recovering from learning that florida has a world-class quidditch program.

T.J. said...

danimal, she's dating Gob Bluth?

zman said...

I just watched the video. I never read any Harry Potter books or saw any of the movies so forgive me if this is a stupid question but ... why are they pressing brooms to the undersides of their nuts? Someone will pull a John Starks playing this game.

rob said...

i may have misread zman's question, but is he saying the women quidditch players have nuts?

zman said...

I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to the gender of the particpants. So I shall rephrase the question:

I just watched the video. I never read any Harry Potter books or saw any of the movies so forgive me if this is a stupid question but ... why are they pressing brooms twixt their labia? Someone will pull an Alyssa Jones playing this game.

Danimal said...

in z's defense, they do kinda look dudes though no? it took a minute for me to decipher.
i am glad that middlebury beat florida though. the gator leaning press failed to report that down here.

and teej - she wishes. more like gob's creepy uncle who is also a hoarder.

rob said...

jesus, you morons. the teams are coed. just like at hogwarts. the hell is wrong with you people.

Danimal said...

if a guy is playing that, i'm sorry but he's either a chick or he's a quirr. vermont & quidditch are fucking dumber than i ever knew. let me guess - bernie sanders is their coach?

zman said...

I'll put it another way. Why are they carrying brooms? They don't appear to hit the ball with the broom. Is it some wizard thing? Like in Fantasia?

Danimal said...

"ever" is defined as anything between 6 a.m. this morning and now

rob said...

i'm guessing it's a wizard thing, z.

Squeaky said...

Zman, part of the scoring involves seeing how many splinters you can lodge into your groin area during play. Player with the most gets bonus points for their team at the end.

And in the books, they actually played the game on 2X4's but that really isn't very wizardly. The more you know ...

Almighty Yojo said...

i'm sure they said all these things about snow-boarding, maple syrup, and ice climbing . . . and look what's happened with them.

mayhugh said...

Exhibit A that there should be limits to how much tv and movies influence our lives.

Mark said...

"It's players move with the grace & ferocity of top athletes." Um, no they don't. Because they're not top athletes. If they were they wouldn't be playing a really nerdy intramural sport.

As for Florida, the administration continues ruin a once epic party school by continually raising academic standards. The amount of dorks was getting out of control when I was in grad school. I can only imagine how bad it is now.

zman said...

The same goes for W&M. By the time I graduated people were playing foursquare on the back porch of a frat house.

zman said...

Mark - I've seen photos of the students at UF games. If those young ladies are dorks, then dorks are a lot hotter these days. Or maybe dorks are just hotter in Florida?

Danimal said...

so i got on the spotify today. what do i do now?

rob said...

time magazine wouldn't lie mark. you take that stuff back.

rob said...

rock out with your cock out, danimal

Squeaky said...

So was watching the Bruins hockey game last night and got a quick glimpse of the goalie mask Tim Thomas was wearing. Just plain awesome: http://goo.gl/7hqLn

Good to see some support for Movember. Got to be one of the best hockey goalie masks in a while.

T.J. said...

How would you know? You never left your room.

Squeaky said...

Said room has a TV, silly T.J.

rob said...

hey, w&m's taxletes won their 11th national championship in tax accounting: ow.ly/7C3um

tribe, y'all.

zman said...

Squeaks, I think Teedge was defending the propriety/fratiness of Unit M's foursquare court circa 1996.

Mark said...

I'm guessing dorks are probably hotter in Florida, and the south in general. Believe me, Z, students at Florida are increasingly way too into their studies.

T.J. said...

Fuck You Squeaky!

Kidding, ron is right...I was referring to that thing he said.

Mark said...

You don't go to Florida just to study. There are lots of colleges where you can do that. You go to Florida to study a little in between binge drinking, attending footbal games, looking for slurry girls to hook up with and experiment with high grade narcotics.

Mark said...

Stupid autocorrect changed slutty to slurry. Slurry girls to hook up with kind of works too though.

T.J. said...

Slurry girls are the best...they can't actually say no.
/omgijustsaidthat

Squeaky said...

TJ, my bad.

T.J. said...

Now, back to twitter...

zman said...

Who the fuck is ron? And I'm the one who made the foursquare crack. And Teedge's thoughts and opinions on my college activity levels are spot-on based on his amazing panoramic view from his glass house.

Clarence said...

Ron is Rob with a mustache.

T.J. said...

Settle down zsensitive...and if you don't get the ron joke yet, well, you don't get it.

rob said...

hey zman, how's our quest for t-shirt riches coming?

rob said...

kyle orton waived by the broncos. don't fuck with the tebow.

Mark said...

Orton's going back to Chicago. Better regrow that neck beard.

rob said...

mark - what can you tell me about jeronne maymon? he's in full beastmode this afternoon.

Mark said...

First I've seen of him. Didn't play (from what I can remember) at UT last year. He's a beast inside though.

T.J. said...

Speaking of feastmode, love the fatty big man on UCLA. Common name...fat game...

zman said...

ron is the autocorrected version of rob, right? That's what happens on my phone.

Tshirt riches are slowing developing. It's gonna be fly as shit. Maybe even some Kunta Fly Shit. In the meantime, get some tshirts at www.projectrepat.org and help my friend's non-profit.

Mark said...

Josh Smith? He's really skilled but he's a lazy piece of shit. Scouts basically told him to come back to UCLA for another year, get in shape and he'd be a top 15 pick. So what did he do? He came back in worse shape.

He'll be lucky to be the next Oilver Miller.

T.J. said...

Um, I called him a fat fuck, did I not?

Mark said...

I'd buy a t-shirt if it was www.projectpat.org

mayhugh said...

Mark, maybe autocorrect was thinking of Li'l Lisa's Patented Slurry??

Dave said...

watching that quidditch match just ruined the entire harry potter series for me. ugly and the hoops need some kind of net so the fans can see if there's a score. just an awful game, aesthetically and strategically.

T.J. said...

Nice tags on this post, tiny douche.

TR said...

Updating a Garmin GPS is an unbelievably tedious task.

TR said...

Random show recommendation: Dave's Old Porn Show. Dave Atell hosts it on Showtime. He watches disco-era porn with (usually) a comedian and a porn legend. He's had Adam Carolla, Nina Hartley, the woman who starred in the Devil in Mrs. Jones and some new porn starlets. Highly entertaining, although not very erotic.

T.J. said...

Here's a random mention..watch some fucking college hoops on ESPN and their family of networks. It's a good week for that.

zman said...

Don't get me started on GPS's.

Clarence said...

Following up on Teejay's recommendation, drink some beer this week. And if a sexy girl walks by you, maybe look at her. And also, breathe.

T.J. said...

Fuck y'all

T.J. said...

Um, you guys should go on tumblr at this hour...

TR said...

After seeing Jon Huntsman's three daughters, I am reconsidering my view on his candidacy. There's a lot to like there - a cute blonde, a cute brunette and a trashy blonde who looks like she could suffer from self-esteem issues.