This post has been a long time coming. I was actually planning on posting it a few days after my MWRC Recap post, but then I realized I suck at talking about these “emotion” things. Anyway, I’ve been planning this one in my head for about two months, and it’s going to be long, so buckle up.



I figured it was about time that I told you all who I really am.Over the course of this blog, I’ve made some enemies, made some friends, been wrong about some things, and been right about some things, but I never really sat down and let the quidditch world really KNOW me. This is that post.

I went to a small private high school. My graduating class had 63 people. The school itself had about 220 students. Any of you who have been in a school like this know that it’s very easy to be categorized into a clique, and once in, it’s damn near impossible to get out. I wasn’t a top athlete in high school. I warmed the bench my first two years in soccer, saw minimal playing time my Junior year, but Senior year, I started developing better as a player, and was a starter for every game. In tennis, I played a little bit of 2nd doubles my Sophomore year (didn’t play Freshman year), but didn’t letter until my Junior year when I was consistently playing either first doubles, second doubles, or third singles. My senior year, I was set to be first singles, but I was kicked off the team due to bad grades (more on that later). Really, the sport where I was the star was bowling. Yeah, bowling. My school was one of the first in the state with a varsity bowling team, and I captained it my Junior and Senior years (unofficially, there wasn’t actually a set captain, but I was the best bowler and am a natural teacher, so I helped everyone out). Unfortunately, I had my worst game of my career at Sectionals my senior year, and though I followed it up with a great game, I failed to advance to districts. Whatever. The point here is that I was not a star athlete, and I definitely didn’t fit in with the “jock” crowd.

As a result of that, I was relegated to having friends that weren’t really involved in sports. That left me with the choice of either the nerds or the druggies. Sad, but that’s how this school worked. Here’s another thing, and I promise it’s relevant, I’m smart. Like, very smart. I was never challenged in school…ever. As a result, I got bored in class easily and stopped paying attention. This, however, came back to bite me in the ass my Freshman year in Honors Algebra. The teacher, Ms. Henry, was renowned for her teaching abilities, and is an incredibly smart lady. However, the start of this class, like every other class I had ever had, was too easy for me. So I stopped paying attention. This doesn’t work in a Ms. Henry class, as she moves very quickly through material. If you missed a couple of days, you were likely over a chapter behind. This was no problem for the first few weeks, and I performed very well on the first couple of quizzes, which reinforced the whole “don’t pay attention” attitude I had. Then it hit me. Two months in, I was totally lost. My grades slipped, and I failed a test for the first time in my life. I did very poorly on the midterm just before winter break, and over that break, I smoked weed for the first time as a coping mechanism.

Then it was settled, I was in the “druggie” clique. And I couldn’t get out of it. For the rest of High School, I experimented with a lot of drugs, and my grades, though I was able to keep a 3.0 for most of HS, suffered. I lost my drive to do work, I really lost my drive to do anything. I became incredibly depressed, I didn’t have any real friends. My best friend, David, the one who had got me started smoking, ended up hooking up with my “gf” (in quotes because we weren’t like, officially dating, but we had been talking every night for months, had been on several dates, kissed, everything that really makes you a couple. What I know, is that I loved her at the time, and David was my best friend), and that was almost a breaking point for me. Problem was, in a school like that, you can’t just stop being friends with your group of friends. I didn’t have a choice but to keep hanging out with David, even though he had absolutely betrayed my trust. My depression got worse, and I found myself cutting myself on a fairly regular basis. I was angry at my friends for not being real friends, at myself for not being a good enough student, at my parents for being too controlling (though looking back, they were great parents), and really just angry at everything. Nothing could really calm me down except doing more drugs, which in turn made me more depressed when I couldn’t, which made me want to do more drugs. It wasn’t a good time for me.

But, I still managed to get into Ohio State, even though after I got my acceptance letter, I kind of just stopped doing everything. My last semester of HS, I had a 1.1 GPA. My overall GPA fell from a 3.05 to a 2.6 in one semester. But I got into OSU, and I was happy about that.

I tell you all of that because it’s important that you know my past in order to better understand me today.

When I got to OSU, I made a decision. I wasn’t going to put up with the same bullshit I had put up with in High School. I was still dealing with anger issues, and was still rather anti-social from the abuse I received in HS, but I wasn’t going to take that anymore. I reinvented my personality. I started going out on weekends and actually talking to people instead of sitting in a corner smoking weed. I made friends on my floor, though not good friends, that concept was still beyond me.

Really, the turning point for me was when I went to the Involvement Fair my Freshman year. I was still trying to find my place at OSU. I signed up for the dodgeball team, (though I didn’t go to any practices for the first month or so). I snagged some free stuff, and tried to find other clubs that looked interesting. I signed up for go club, some weird board game which I never went to the meetings for. Eventually, I was feeling like there was nothing left there for me, and started heading home. But, as I was leaving the Oval, I saw the booth for the quidditch league out of the corner of my eye. I kind of looked at it weirdly, like, how do you have a quidditch club? Is that a real thing? Carly Kestler, at the time the president and founder of the club, caught me looking and said the words that changed my life, “You know you want to play quidditch!"

I replied with "You know what, I kind of do,” and signed up. I went to the first meeting, and though I hate to admit this, I decided that the quidditch club was the one for me when I saw that the first meeting drew 32 people, and all but three of them were female. I paid my dues the first day. Our next meeting went over the rules of the game (the club was JUST starting, this was its first year in existence) and just kind of chatted for a while. I was having fun. This wasn’t a typical experience for me.

Then, we had our first practice. Now, this was roughly three months into the year. We were really not a well-organized club at this time. I had been going to dodgeball regularly at this point, and first tried my hand at beater. But, eventually, our keepers got tired, and I was curious to try another position, particularly because keeper was my primary position in soccer (though I played mostly center back for my HS team, I rotated in at keeper for both my school and club teams). I went in and made an immediate impact. Nobody could score on me except future club president Dan Miller (not the one from Ringling, though they did end up drinking together at WC IV, more on that later), and even he only managed a goal or two. Everyone was praising my play. This was a new experience for me. I was used to being okay, but not extraordinary. I never really made mistakes in sports, but I was never the one that put the team on my back. That day, I did.

For the first time in my life, I was a standout athlete, and I loved it. I knew right then that I would stick with quidditch no matter what. A few weeks later, we had our first ever match, against Eastern Michigan. We hosted them over the winter, on an indoor soccer field. And since the field was small and we didn’t have seeker floors yet, we decided to play a timed game instead of a game with a snitch. The thought of it now appalls me, but at the time, I just wanted to play quidditch. We played two 30 minute halves, and I never left the pitch. Dan Miller scored almost every goal for us with some incredibly tough play. That was the day I realized that quidditch was not a light exercise game, it was a legitimate sport. EMU ended up winning, 150-130.

After the game, we took EMU to Raising Cane’s restaraunt, local to our area, it’s an absolutely delicious “fast” food chicken place. Not everyone went, but we got about half of both our teams there, and that was my first real quidditch team dinner. It was weird for me, not thirty minutes ago I had hated these guys and had wanted nothing more than to make them bleed. Now I was trading stories and laughing over some orgasmic Cane’s sauce (the thought of it is making my mouth water right now). That was the day I realized that quidditch was more than some club. It was a family. We would go and beat the shit out of each other, then laugh about it over dinner. Good times.

Unfortunately, that’s all the stories I have about Freshman year quidditch. That was our only significant match (we may have played Denison or BG, but that was before BG was even close to good, and Denison has always been…lackluster to say the least).

Fortunately, I have a lot more stories, because this post isn’t long enough yet, right?

My Sophomore year I had been elected team captain. Now, I had no idea what I was doing with this. I had no experience coaching in the past, and what might as well have been no experience as a captain (lol bowling). I was still trying to figure out what quidditch was all about. I mean, I ran some drills, and did some good things, but I didn’t have any kind of grasp on the strategy of the game at all, and it showed. Though, we were able to handily defeat every other Ohio team at that time, we had no idea what was in store for us at World Cup.

Ahh, WC IV. Wasn’t that just the most well reffed tournament? Said no one ever. Now, even though I wasn’t a good captain, I still knew the rules of the game, These refs had been pulled from a volunteer pool for the most part. That wasn’t good, but that’s not entirely the point I want to make here. The bad reffing plays a role, but the real thing that happened at WC IV is that we really came together as a team for the first time. We explored NYC together, spent 11 hours in a car with each other both ways, and had a blast the whole time. Two great stories from this WC.

1) We had a player at the time, Andrew Minarik, who everyone called “Minsy.” On the way to WC, we had figured out that Minsy was rather homophobic, and so naturally, we had to torment him relentlessly. We would just start stroking his things, and just get closer and closer to his crotch and watch him try to contain his freakout, but he would inevitably fail. At one point, he had to piss in a bottle on the way there, so as he was, Dan started stroking his hair and sides. He freaked out and kind of got piss all over my car. Whatever, totally worth it.

2) We were eliminated on day 1 with a 1-2 record (Lost to Carleton and BU, beat Purdue). So, naturally, we decided to get plastered in the hotel that night (to any university officials reading this, it was only members 21+ who were drinking). Ringling joined us, as they too had been eliminated, and we ended up staying up for quite some time playing Never Have I Ever. It kind of turned into a contest to see who had done the most though…. But, anyway, the funniest part was later that night. We had all passed out, and all the players not drinking had gone to the other room to do HW and sleep. Then, in the middle of the night, our current treasurer, Kristin Malhotra, hears some trickling sounds from in the room. She turned on the light to find the treasurer at the time, Emily Toutkoushian (try saying that name, I dare you, I still don’t know how) peeing in one of the hotel room dresser drawers. She then closed the drawer and proceeded to pass out on the floor. Naturally, she got woken up and forced to clean it. Later, when asked why she closed the drawer, she replied “it’s just drawer etiquette!”



WC IV was a blast, but I still hadn’t quite figured out how extensively awesome the quidditch community was. However, due to the absolutely horrible reffing, I started going to the IQA forums. A lot. At first just to complain about the refs, but that evolved into debates about the rules, and, of course, nonsense chats. Because what’s quidditch without getting off topic? That was when I started to understand that quidditch was more than one awesome team that I could love, it was an entire community, an entire country.

It was also a wake-up call that we weren’t as good as we thought we were, though that really came for me when we played Jetpack Ninja Dinosaurs (RIP) later that year in the first Ohio Cup. It was just a small tournament, OSU, JND, and BG. Denison was going to come but backed out. But it was an experience for me, getting to host schools to OSU, even though we got destroyed by JND (which was mostly MSU, but they didn’t have enough players or something to warrant it being their actual team, or they had players not from the school or something, I can’t remember.), we took away some sound strategy knowledge, and that’s when I was able to turn my captaincy around.

In my Junior year, we had three pracitces to prepare 8 returners and the rest freshmen for Midwest Cup. OSU started very late when we were on quarters, and it gave us almost no time before Midwest Cup, which was a required event for the first time ever if you wanted to go to World Cup. I busted my ass preparing practice plans that would teach our players everything they needed in order to compete, and switched myself to beater, after realizing that without a beater who knows the game, you can’t compete. It worked, very well. We dominated in pool play, going 3-0, and earned the 4 seed headed into bracket play. We unfortunately lost in the quarterfinals, but I was so damned proud of A) myself, for getting the team ready B) the team, for being ready C) our freshmen, who absolutely stepped up even though for most of them, it was only their 4th time ever playing quidditch. That was when I realized that OSU could be a really good team.

Also, that was the tournament that spawned naked time, the best quidditch tradition ever.

Then, we had a month to prepare for World Cup V. I knew we could do well. I didn’t really have high hopes for winning it, as we were (and still are) a very young team with a lot to learn, but I knew we could get out of pool play. Funny, that the game which I view as a major turning point in my quidditch career had no impact on whether we advanced or not. Our match against Emerson. It was our 3rd match, their 1st. The way it worked out, this game had no impact on who advanced from the pools. It was all coming down to our game the next morning against Richmond. But, Emerson was ranked 5th in the world at this time. We wanted to prove something. This was the most fired up for a game I’ve ever been. Anyone who has ever talked quidditch to me in person knows this story, and I really don’t think it’s appropriate for tumblr, but suffice it to say that there was some questionable reffing in an extremely tight, physical game, which culminated in an Emerson snatch, giving them the win 50*-20. After the game, I was livid, not with my team, with the officiating.

I had already offered my services as an assistant ref, and had bludger reffed a lot at WC V up to that point, but I had never head reffed a game before that, so Beesley didn’t give me any head ref games, and understandably so. But, I was a damned good beater ref, and ended up reffing in the legendary Midd vs A&M game in the semi-finals. And, for the record, I’ve watched that footage a lot, and just watching me, I can tell you the refs definitely missed some calls…. in A&M’s favor. Yes, in Midd’s favor too, but that’s sports, not everything gets called correctly. That’s not important here though.

After WC V I was determined to become a great head referee so that nobody would have to go through what I did against Emerson. And I did exactly that. I had already dedicated myself to knowing the rulebook inside and out, so really, the only thing I had to learn was how to make calls when I had to. I learned that at ShamRoc cup, when I let a call go I shouldn’t have and though it was inconsequential, I still felt horrible about it. I implemented a referee rating system at Ohio Cup, and gave myself the toughest games to ref. I received nothing but 5/5 reviews. I was very happy with myself.

I went to Quidcon over the summer almost solely to become one of the first ever certified referees. I nearly aced the written exam (afaik, still have the high score on it, but that’s probably not true anymore) and I did ace the field exam. Not to mention, that Quidcon was where I really fond my home in quidditch, with my hotel room bar, Puzzles. I had the best quidditch weekend of my life that weekend, and met so many amazing people, shared so many amazing stories, and still have so many amazing memories. Quidditch will never be the same for me.

By this time, I had started writing this blog. And though it started out being heavily criticized, I eventually made a name for myself in the quidditch community as at least a decent analyst, and was approached over the summer by Ethan Sturm about writing for The Eighth Man. Obviously, I accepted, and I love it. Not only do I get to write on a very legitimate site about something I love, but it gives me some published works to put on my resume, which may help me fulfill my dream, previously been placed on the back burner, of being a sports writer.

Then this season started, and I traveled everywhere I could to ref. That helped me meet some amazing people every single weekend for seven straight weekends (sometimes we were playing, but I reffed every single weekend). My reffing got my noticed. I was the referee coordinator for the MWRC I reffed the finals of the MARC, which may be my crowning achievement as a referee so far.



But, more importantly, my reffing got me approached by Danielle White, who was wanting me to go ref a game for MSU. Unfortunately, I couldn’t, but very fortunately, we kept talking. And kept talking. And then started dating. And now I’m kind of head-over-heels in love with her. I wouldn’t have any of that without quidditch.

Quidditch has given me a life. It’s given me friends, a home away from home, a love, a passion, maybe a job, and so many amazing memories. Quidditch turned my life around, and I wouldn’t give up quidditch for anything.