I was inspired to write this after viewing the player list for the upcoming Macarthur Fantasy Tournament, and seeing that not one single female had put Keeper down as their first preference. This is a bit long so hang in there!
When I started playing quidditch a year ago, our team had male keepers. It was just a given. Granted, they were tall and had the most experience, and I didn’t even question it. It wasn’t until NQL Round 2 in May of 2018, that we suddenly needed a female Keeper in the middle of a game, to keep in line with the gender rule. It was handed to the most experienced female player on our team. And that’s what got me thinking, at the time, “Why can’t females be Keepers”?, to now, “Why aren’t there more female Keepers?”
When she took the green headband, she was anxious, but like the powerhouse she is, she handled it well and was confident in telling us what to do. She became our female Keeper. Not often utilised as such, mostly as a “back up” for when the males were down and needed more subs than we could provide.
I looked at the position of Keeper, played by a female, as a sort of “power position”. It made me think: “YES, she is in charge, she is female, and this is amazing.” I was in awe of her. Never in a million years did I think that I could pull that off.
There’s this strange, murky feeling you get as a female, that makes you feel like you need to be “chosen” by the males to be Keeper. That’s what it feels like as a woman: you’re only successful in your position (in any mixed sport/industry) if the males support you. Which is sad, but also reflective of the times, I think. Yes, more women are supporting and empowering other women, but I think men need to start stepping up and support and empower women as well. It’s fine enough to say that you support women and are encouraging, but maybe we need a few of the big name characters whom everyone knows or knows of, to take on a supportive position and be loud about it.
Fast forward to Midwinter in Newcastle, July, 2018. I was in a merc team, and for the first time, I was handed the coveted green headband. “Can you be Keeper?” I was asked by the (non-binary) captain, who I’d never actually met before. Instant fear. Instant. Partly due to my own unrelated anxiety, but also because I’d never actually seen a female Keeper before, apart from the few occasions in my regular team.
A million questions flooded out, “Are you sure?” – “Such and such (male) is way better, are you sure you don’t want him? He knows more.” And I looked around, and another female had a green headband. She was their regular Keeper, it turned out. I accepted the position. I was terrified, I knew I would stuff up – how the heck was I supposed to know where to position people, make plays, and have the audacity, as a woman, to tell people I barely knew what to do?
But with a lot of encouragement, from the females and non-binary members on the team, I actually pulled it off. But I was so doubtful. “Was I right? I know if that player goes there, then X will go there, and Y might be able to drive. I know that if I pull the beaters out, we’ve got more of a shot. I know that if X works with Y, because they’re both fast and great catchers, they’ll succeed.”
I knew it all. I’d known it all along. But I couldn’t say any of it. “What if the males think I’m stupid, don’t know what I’m doing, and shouldn’t be Keeper at all?” Slowly, my voice got louder. And slowly, gender didn’t matter to me. I was confident. I knew I could be Keeper.
I distinctly remember, during the Hug Line, female players from the other team saying how happy they were to see a female Keeper. I had no idea how widespread the “issue” was. It wasn’t just me and my lack of confidence, but a stigma of female Keepers embedded within the quidditch community.
And after Midwinter, that’s what I wanted: I wanted to be Keeper. And I trained for it. I talked more at training, I watched our beaters more, I took notes of what I needed to improve on. And our resident Keeper, a male who had been put into Keeping “just because he was experienced” (but always wanted to be a beater), helped me.
But tournaments came and went, and still, I wasn’t being put on as Keeper. Less experienced, male, players were being put on as Keeper over me. And I was too afraid to ask. Not afraid of our captains, but afraid that our males would think that I wasn’t good enough to be Keeper. So, despite my experience, training, and desire to be Keeper, I kept my mouth shut.
And when I did get the chance: I was so anxious that I knew I wasn’t playing my best, which only fed into my fears about what the males were thinking. But afterwards, walking back to our marquee, another female came up to me and praised me for being Keeper.
Pretty soon it was October, and I was in Newcastle, taking photos for the State Shield. The last game between NSW B and Queensland was a fun game: suddenly the Keepers were females. Why do females only get the chance to be Keepers in “fun”, “nonsense” kind of games?
Who is making these decisions? Is it the captains, coaches, other players? I wondered what it would be like to be a female, in a State team, wanting to be Keeper but only getting the chance in a game that “didn’t matter”.
Fast forward, to QUAFL, December 2018. And up to this point, no male player had ever said I was good at keeping (save for one on my team), no male had ever praised me after a game, like the two scenarios mentioned earlier. And no male had ever encouraged me to keep Keeping (again, save for one on my team).
So when the question of positions for QUAFL came up, and I saw that someone who had never played Keeper before had been put down for Keeping, I was angry. I was angry because even though I’d worked so hard for it, I was being dismissed for a “better player”. It didn’t matter that they were non-male, it was the same feeling I’d felt all year when being passed over for less experienced male Keepers.
Eventually, I did get to play Keeper at QUAFL. I was one of two main Keepers for the majority of the competition. And you know what? It felt amazing. Because by this point, I knew what I was doing, I’d barely missed a training session all year, and I knew where to put our players. It was thrilling to see my hard work pay off, and to be taken seriously. Not just as a female, not just as a Keeper, but as a player.
I recently received feedback from a Queensland team we versed on Day 1, discussing a hard tackle that had knocked me to the ground, “You were a genuine threat,” she said. I have honestly never felt so confident about my abilities as a Keeper or a player before.
In the end, that’s what we (females) want, in any position: to be taken seriously, not to be left unmarked by a hoop and not passed to. I’ve only been playing for a year, but I already know so many female threats on the field, and males just don’t think to say, “Make sure X is marked,” but I know, if they’re not marked, they will score. IF they’re passed to.
Finally, let’s gets to the whole point of this essay: the upcoming Macarthur Fantasy Tournament, the theme of which is embracing female empowerment, giving us the chances we’ve been too afraid to ask for before, and celebrating #girlpower.
Despite all of the confidence I’d built up throughout 2018 as a female Keeper, when I filled in the form to sign up, I still put Chaser as my first preference. Because: what if everyone still thinks you’re not as good as a male Keeper? That is the bottom line.
Not one single female had put Keeper as their first preference. Not. One. Think about that.
In the end, I think two things need to happen:
More females need to take the leap of faith and put their hand up for Keeper, loudly, and be heard. And, more males need to listen to that. They need to support that. They need to understand that they would be just as effective as a Chaser.
Whether it’s seen as a “position of power” in quidditch or not, I’m not sure. But I definitely think it is. And women want it. We want to see other females with it. We want to see the equality on pitch that quidditch prides itself on so much off pitch. We want to be supported and lifted up by our male and non-binary teammates. We want to get rid of ego’s and see teams be teams.
Because that female Chaser who’s standing unmarked by the hoops? Against a team who isn’t as supportive of their women, she’s the biggest threat on the pitch.
— Krys
These are my opinions and views only, based on my personal experiences and may not reflect that of the entire female, male and non-binary populations.
Regarding elements relating directly to my team: I believe nothing was personal, but a matter of sporting culture and what we’ve come to call “tunnel vision”.
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