Results of Ruminations

The last two years have been historic at my school. Now in its tenth year, our strongest athletic program is the girls' soccer team. Last year, they came in second in state; this year, third. I'm sure there's a lot of desire for those girls to take first next year, and I'm confident they can do that. Their coach and my good friend is currently in withdrawals from the end of the season--though his boys' soccer team starts up in a few weeks, so the mood won't last long. He's expressed on social media some of his feelings, and I get the impression that he's in that bittersweet cusp of appreciating what happened, wishing it could continue, and sadness that it's over. I could be wrong, but I daresay that's where he is. The last year has put me in a similar mood. As I mentioned before , I really fell in love with quidditch when I happened upon in it in January of 2012. I didn't know it would change me so much, and I didn't know that I would, ...

I really miss quidditch--the real-life sport that I've been playing (and was interviewed for in a documentary ) for a few years now. Due to the strains of being a dad, a teacher (and quidditch coach), a husband, and a writer, I couldn't find a way to continue to justify the time expenditures of practice and travel with people I deeply cared about to play a sport I never knew I would love so much. The miracle of quidditch came into my life when I, partially joking, asked the Harry Potter Winterim I was teaching (January 2012) if they would like to play the sport. The rules had been invented a few years before out at Middlebury College, and the sport had really taken off (no pun intended). It took a little bit of research to figure out the rules and what I could do to get a team started at my school, but before the end of the 2012 school year, I was hooked. My brother and I found a community team in Salt Lake, fell in love with the people and the sport, and have been avid fan...