Quidditch Drills

I am not the most sporty person ever, quite far from it, really. The most I have ever done, team sport-wise, is a little tennis is grade 10 and some football (not American football) in grade 8. In fact, I am very new to the whole team sport world. Quidditch is a team sport, and I cannot be happier to be on that team. Our group is starting to grow closer than ever. But, this is not a story about team spirit or the lasting friendships this will build, no, I am going to talk about the day when chasing Canadian geese became a drill.

On Wednesday 25 January, I got to the pitch for practice like normal. It being only 17:00, there were not many people there yet, so we started to play dodgeball, our "drill" for beaters. It went all well and good, nothing major happened until we regrouped after the game. A couple of us turned around to the usual flock of geese only to see it grew in berth, just a little. And by little I mean there might have been 200 geese. So, then, I asked if anyone wanted to chase them...


Two teammates and myself mount our brooms and start charging the gaggle. At first, I am pretty sure none of the geese had any clue of what was going on; rather than run, they just kind of waddled away from us. I swear, I could have picked one up.  But, the faster we ran and the longer we kept at it, the more they realised that they needed to move, fast. Suddenly, A huge group of them began to take to the skies and start honking. It went like this: *waddle waddle* *waddle waddle* *waddle waddle* *run* honk honk honk HONK! honkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonk *fly away*.

Now, we got most of them up off "our turf", but there was still one group, so, Michelle and I charge them, her coming from behind, me coming from the front. They begin their routine of honking and flying, but then they notice me and flip out. In that moment of panic, the gaggle of flying geese begin to shit at me. Try to picture the situation: Michelle running full blown at the geese, me as well, but the geese start flying at me, to which I slow down a little. Then, they begin to start bombing me with shit, to which I start running away.

Once the geese were properly distributed, we limped back, in stitches from laughter, victoriously, to our waiting teammates. Chasing geese is quite a work out.

P.S. I did not get any goose shit on me, and later in the practice I actually came up with quite a decent beater drill that was more than just a round of dodgeball.