This past weekend Blacktop Comedy was invited to provide color commentary for the International Quidditch Western Cup IV. I'll be honest, before their invitation I didn't know anything about quidditch outside the Harry Potter books. For instance, I had no idea so many teams existed. Did you know Iran has two Quidditch teams? We didn't see Iran at this tournament. We saw representative's from California, Washington, Oregon, and Canada. They all arrived at Maidu Park in Roseville, 9am, ready for victory. Of course, victory means winning numerous matches, and these matches we quickly found out, were intense. Stanford chose to wear helmets, and I understand why. Concussions happen on the Quidditch field. These broom holding competitors were quick t tackle each other.
However, they weren't quick to work as a team, which surprised me. There were a lot of participants who wanted to be heroes, but few who wanted to assist a hero. Now, there were a handful of united teams, intent of scoring points. These teams focused on making each other look good, gladly giving up their long distance shot, passing the quaffle to another with a better shot. You could see it in their eyes, "better an assist, than a miss."
Do you know what happened? You can probably guess. The fans from Sacramento, Roseville, Rocklin, San Francisco... even Seattle and Portland, were treated to a beat down. These team orientated players crushed the competition. It wasn't even close. Sure, a few individuals scored on the other team, and they'd beat their chest, and scream (I'm not kidding), but they looked ridiculous, because they were down 200-10.
What's the point? It doesn't matter if you're on a field or stage, playing quidditch or improving, teamwork looks good. And, the results are pretty great too.