Quidditch season started with a bang as the Macaulay Marauders took home a 4-1 record in the first official tournament on October 20.
“I think the team performed well in our first official tournament,” said Team Captain Sheneque Tissera. “While we made a few mistakes, we were able to learn quickly and prove that we can compete at a high level.”
In Quidditch, there are seven players on the field per team at one time. A keeper who defends the hoops, two beaters who throw bludgers to temporarily remove members of the other team from play, three chasers who throw the quaffle into their opponent’s hoops for points, and a seeker who catches the snitch. Once the snitch is caught, the game is over, and the team who caught the snitch earns thirty points to their final score.
The first game of the tournament against the NYDC team ended in the one and only loss for the Marauders, with a score of 110 to 30 after the snitch was caught.
“The tournament was filled with great competition, especially NYDC’s team,” said freshman Beater Steven Ficurilli. “Those guys were pretty amazing, but that’s just going to make us work harder to beat them later in the season.”
The next two matches against the Horntailed Horcruxes and Rutgers ended in Macaulay wins of 110 to 0 and 50 to 20, respectively. Both also ended with an impressive snitch grab from freshman seeker Abhishek Samdaria.
“Macaulay has historically had the best seekers in New York and the Northeast in general,” said Tissera. “Every year we’ve made great additions at seeker, and this year we proved once again that we have the best seeker core in the Northeast. Freshmen Abhishek Samdaria made two clutch grabs to give Macaulay their first two wins of the season.”
The fourth match against the New Haven Nightmares ended with a score of 110 to 50 and the fifth match against Stony Brooke ended with another Macaulay win of 70 to 20.
“I couldn’t be more proud of this team,” said Tissera. “The amount of dedication each player has is truly inspiring, and is the reason why Macaulay is the best Quidditch program in New York.”
In the interest of full disclosure, Ziva Rubinstein is on the Macaulay Marauders Quidditch Team.
