Twenty-one quidditch teams competed for spots to attend the national championship during the 2017 USQ Southwest Regional Championship held at Veterans Park this weekend.
Among those 21 teams were Texas A&M’s own quidditch teams. Texas A&M’s first team played four games on Saturday, losing only one to Texas State. Texas A&M’s second team played four games as well, losing only to the other A&M team and Texas State. Before the Regional Championship Rachel Nicoletti, English senior and chaser for the quidditch team and keeper Keaton Mallory, mechanical engineering junior, said Texas State was going to be their biggest competition this weekend.

“Texas State has been a big competition of ours … Our quidditch programs both started getting really big and became rivals in the past two years,” Nicoletti said.  
Shawn Erwin, biomedical engineering junior and chaser for the A&M Quidditch team, said Saturday the team worked well together despite the low number of players they have due to injuries.
 “Our first game went over pretty well. Texas A&M Quidditch really enjoys playing a very fast-paced game, we like controlling the game and we’re definitely one of the fastest teams out here so we like running up scores on teams but we definitely need to work on our passes,” Erwin said. “We’re doing a really good job playing together as a team and we’re really making it work with the few numbers we have because we are really beat up at the moment.”
Sean Church, sports management junior and chaser who started playing quidditch his freshman year, said he and his teammates have their eyes set on qualifying for nationals.
“The first two games we played well, but it was a little sloppy,” Church said. “Our goal is trying to get this weekend to get us to qualify for nationals.”
Despite Texas A&M’s strong playing on Saturday, Sunday’s games began with a win against Phoenix but ultimately ended with a loss against Texas.
Mallory said through quidditch he was able to find a new athletic activity in college.
 “I guess for me because I swam in high school I messed up my shoulder so I pretty much had no other outlet for like some sort of athletic activity so finding this was something new that I could do and not potentially get hurt,” Mallory said.
Nicoletti also spoke on the importance that quidditch has had on her time here at A&M.
“For me I have met really great people through this program. I’ve met my roommates, I’ve met some of my best friends and I get to hang out with them all the time and play sports with them so I think that’s been the most rewarding for me,” Nicoletti said.
Both teams qualified and will represent Texas A&M at nationals.