The Idaho club quidditch team, also known as the Moscow Manticores, hosted the second annual Komrade Kup at Valley Road Playfield in Pullman over the weekend.
The Manticores finished with a 1-3 record on the weekend.
The tournament consisted of three other teams: the Sun City Kitties, the Western Washington Wyverns, and the Big Sky Thestrals of Boise State. The Kitties won the tournament by defeating the Thestrals 150-70.
The Manticores finished fourth after a 200-50 loss to the Kitties.
Manticore captain Tim Martin said fatigue plagued the team down the stretch after a competitive first half of the meeting.
“We started off the game strong. We were very pumped but in the end they had more stamina than us,” Martin said. “That’s what really brought us down and we had three players injured so I didn’t want to risk anything by bringing someone back in.”
The meeting was not the only matchup between the two programs. Both clubs played in the second match of the day as Sun City cruised to a 200-60 win with an official game time of 30:31, the longest of the tournament.
Martin said communicating is a challenge in quidditch because team members focus on the moment.
“It’s very hard to plan, you can come up with as many plays as you like, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to work out that way,” Martin said. “Players need to communicate with each other and that particular game, our beaters weren’t communicating that well. So we had two defensive beaters out who were both playing defensive so we didn’t have an offensive chance at all.”
The Manticores were 0-1 when they faced the Boise State-based Thestrals. The Thestrals scored quickly and were in control throughout the majority of the game.
As the game progressed, heavy showers arrived and ball grip became an issue for both teams.
After 16 minutes of game action had passed, the snitch was released onto the field. Capturing the snitch in quidditch earns the team 30 points and marks the conclusion of the match.
Manticore seeker Leon Wu played a key role in capturing the snitch against the Thestrals.
Both teams were tied at 80 in the 21st minute of the match when Wu made his move to capture the snitch to give the Manticores a 110-80 win over the team’s rival.
Wu said it was the first time Moscow had captured the snitch this season.
“We were all super excited on capturing our first snitch catch this season,” Wu said. “We had so many close games that it was all down to a snitch and for the first time, we actually won one because of the snitch catch and it felt so great.”
The celebration was short lived, as the Manticore offense was unable to stop a physical Western Washington Wyverns team in the final match before bracket play. Moscow lost 80-30 in 18:39 and entered the bracket as the No. 4 seed.
“The Wyverns are always pretty good,” Wu said. “We’re evenly matched and we always have a lot of fun playing each other.”
Martin said one of the reasons the team ended up on the losing end was because of a first time snitch.
“The snitch had never snitched before,” Martin said. “Western had much longer arms which proved to be their advantage.”
Despite the loss, Martin said he was proud of his defense staying on tempo with the Wyverns.
“Western has always been a pretty aggressive team and we’ve been trying to match that,” Martin said. “But we ended up playing fairly well. The fact that we were able to keep Western’s score down was really impressive to me. The way our beaters and chasers were communicating made a big difference in this game.”
The Manticores stayed on pace with the Kitties in the first 10 minutes of play, until Sun City’s chasers edged out Moscow’s beaters.
Martin said the team played better against Sun City in this game than in the team’s opening match.
“The biggest change was our beaters started doing a lot of communication,” Martin said. “They started weak in the first game, but every single game thereafter they got better on communicating.”
The Manticores loss marked the team’s final match of the season.
Martin said the team would use off-season practice to prepare for the next season.
Luis Torres can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @TheLTFiles