Dear Quidditch Canada Community,
In December, I had the good fortune to travel to Edmonton, where our first National Championship in more than three and a half years was held. What I witnessed there was magnificent to behold: awesome team spirit, intense competition, and superlative athletic ability. How anyone could watch—or play—quidditch and come to any conclusion other than that this is a real, credible sport with real, credible athletes, I do not know.
What I do know is that quidditch’s future looks bright. The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered sports facilities around the world and might have slowed our organization’s mission to lead, grow, and promote quidditch in Canada, but it did not extinguish our dreams. Like a phoenix, we emerge from the ashes of the pandemic with a renewed sense of optimism and clear purpose.
This past year, we launched our strategic plan for 2022 to 2025, Taking Flight. We recalibrated our operations to match our ambitions. We returned to play across the country. We experimented with a shortened regular season. We announced plans to rebrand as Quadball Canada in 2023, following extensive consultation with members of our community. And we developed new policies designed to improve the safety and security of our players.
Yet our story has only just begun.
QC is a young, scrappy organization. Although our sport has been played in this country for well over a decade, on March 26 we celebrate only our eighth birthday as a federally incorporated not-for-profit organization. And, as with any eight-year-old, growing pains are to be expected. However, in the four years since I joined QC as a member of the Board, I have seen first-hand the progress that we can make when our community of players, coaches, volunteers, staff, and leaders work together in pursuit of a common goal. Now, armed with a shared roadmap in the form of our strategic plan, the sky’s the limit.
Of course, we could not have got to this point without the tireless efforts of countless volunteers. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I thank you all for your selfless devotion to the sport we love. You are our organization’s greatest strength, more valuable than any medal.
Thanks, as well, to outgoing directors Alex Lamoureux and Kristina Seefeldt for their conscientious stewardship of QC over the past four years. Like mine, Alex’s term on the Board concludes this year, while Kristina’s ended in mid-2022. They were strong advocates for the sport and the Board will miss their perspectives.
The advent of quadball is a tremendous opportunity for our sport to reach a whole new audience. So, let us tell our story. Let us invite friends and strangers to watch our teams practise. Let us teach them how to play. Let us show Canadians what we already know to be true: that this isn’t just a real, credible sport with real, credible athletes; it’s also an incredible sport with incredible athletes.
See you on the pitch!
Agathon