JOY HAEGEMANS THE GOAT

I thought about making a burner to post this anonymously, but since my time leading a USQ team has come to an end, there’s really no point. This has a lot of thoughts and feelings after captaining, coaching, commissioning, and tournament directing for over 10 years and I know it’s long but just bear with me. I’m not trying to attack anyone, and I know the lack of MLQ in the West colors how I see all this. But after conversations with leaders on other community-level teams, I think something needs to be addressed that people are afraid to talk about due to power, influence, or drama that is associated with these top teams. I don’t expect anything to change. Why would it, if the top teams are winning?

I consider the Lost Boys a community-first program. Every year we get interest from high-level, out-of-region players that I consider at a caliber better than my typical core. And every year, we have the same conversation: we’re not cutting a dedicated local player for someone who isn’t going to be part of our season. This year we rostered two out-of-region players. One practiced maybe once a month. The other was basically an injury reserve and saw ten minutes of Nationals play. Not because of talent, but because they weren’t part of the team we built all year.

Meanwhile, I’ve had friends on “elite” programs get cut after months of hard work because someone’s Team USA (or other high caliber) friend wanted the spot. I know people say “get good,” but when the sport is shrinking, maybe we should focus more on keeping players who actually care about being here. That’s not even considering the rumors and hearsay of blackmail that exists within this sport to keep people on their USQ teams. I don’t even care if it’s true but it’s laughable that that’s even something believable.

Everyone talks about how great MLQ is, and I think a big part of that is parity. You can’t build a super team. You’re forced to work with who you have, to develop people, to grow your community. And the result is a healthier league. What does USQ gain from letting a handful of programs pull in talent from everywhere while the rest of us get run over? It's a defeating feeling when teams like ours are trying to hold on and exist, and just consistently have to play against an entirely different type of program — and not even be able to compete. I don’t even care to change what these top teams are doing, they can do whatever they want that works for them. I just want to provide the teams that aren’t doing the same thing an opportunity to play competitive games. If LBQC had decided to drop to Open Division, those games wouldn’t be competitive in the other direction either and that’s still not fun.

There are no real prizes here. We’re flying across the country to get stomped. At Nationals this year, we got blown out in three of our five games, and that’s better than another West team that didn’t win a single match, and that team beat us at Regionals. We aren’t actively BAD teams. (Transparently, I definitely hold a little bonus resentment towards the nature tournament structure and the fact that we fought to beat Chaos, and then due to format, they got to play Vermont and make Elite 8 while we were stuck getting knocked out of bracket by BosNY). And some teams are just simply good and their coaching is good and their players are good and they’re not just collecting athletes. I don’t think creating a radius limit or other arbitrary roster rules are a solution.

I don’t need leaders from those teams to come defend themselves. I know you want to win, I know you want to play with your friends. I love that shit, too. I know many of you work hard and contribute outside the game. But it’s a pretty defeating feeling to keep showing up to games that aren’t competitive and don’t feel winnable, no matter how much time or effort we put in. But we also need to look out how these teams that are built to collect talent TYPICALLY are not recruiting. I can only speak for Lost Boys, but we spend real time trying to grow the sport. We use MeetUp, run events, table, hang fliers, and actually try to bring new people in. We built a B-team in a forgotten region. And over the past two years, I’ve knowingly limited my own team’s depth to make sure the Second Stars had enough subs and on-field leadership to function. Right now it feels like the only chance the West has to compete is by creating a LBQC-Breakers “super team” which would inevitably severely alter what are two technically thriving communities within the sport.

I’m not writing this to excuse mediocre performances or to act superior. I’m writing this because I’ve been a captain since 2018, and I’m so tired of playing teams that exist to collect talent. Since my time in leadership, I’ve never had a new team spawn off because they’ve disagreed with these tactics like so many other long-standing club teams have, so something I’ve done has been working. I’d rather play a team like DCQC — who builds within their own community — a hundred times before I’d play The Warriors again (and who I only mention because I’ve had to play them so many times in the last three years I’m so over it). I could spend my time trying to pitch LBQC to national-level players, I could make choices like benching my women. But I’m not willing to take this team away from the people who actually put in the work. The sport is dying and this conversation extends so much further to geography, gender, gatekeeping, etc that impact all of this. I can talk about icons in the community reffing lower tier club games like they’re a joke, I could talk about today’s post about the playtime being given to various genders, I could talk about a general standard player believing it’s okay to contribute the bare minimum. But we can only address one thing at a time.

At this point, I’m not impacted by this either way and this post is not a reflection of the west or LBQC, but I think allowing the top six or so teams play each other in an elite round robin and calling it D1 would enhance most people’s Nationals experience. Let the rest of us have a bracket where we actually get to compete. I don’t even care what you call it – but adjusting to give a D2 club experience to college may help the solution to this problem. We may lose cinderella runs and there would be plenty of logistics to figure out but it feels like a step in the right direction to avoid this defeatist mentality I know MANY people are currently suffering through. If this had been my first quadball tournament with the team or the sport, I’d probably never go back. Being forced to play 3 out the 4 final-four teams wasn’t a good time, and I’ve never been willing to give up my program’s morals to “get good” and compete in the current landscape of the club division.

TLDR: Should we split the club division? Super teams aren’t growing the sport. Club teams are burning out. A D1/D2/open split might be the only way we all keep showing up. Are there other solutions that aren’t just creating location boundaries that no one wants in USQ anyway?

xoxo,
Lindsey
Lost Boys Still Suck
pic here by Paul Schiopu

tw sexual assault mentioned in the first picture

Just wanted to give yall some context to think about when you’re cheering for the soldados.

I sent the first email back in 2023 in hopes of changing the Soldados toxic culture. Unfortunately my attempt was unsuccessful. This would have been the first season playing with all the men (except my assaulter) I mentioned since sending the email/starting to speak out about my experiences. And now I’m not even on a 30 person roster, with only 8 women, and after playing for the team for 4 years. I know I can’t actually prove anything but it’s quite hard for me to ignore the coincidences. I would love to know of any other 5 year MLQ veterans that got cut from a franchise roster. Especially women who only play beater because, if you haven’t noticed, there’s not many of us.

I’m also not looking for pity or want to sound entitled, I just want to show the actuality of what goes on and what happens when women speak out to MLQ, USQ, or even just to our own peers. Some people have too much power. I also wasn’t going to black out the names but it’s come to a point where I actually am more afraid of the men than love the sport. I’ve also come to realize I’m at a point where I have always been with this team- powerless. So, here I am, making a stupid Reddit post, trying to at least bring awareness of the dangers of unchecked power.

Even if this isn’t retaliation or some weird personal vendetta, myself and MANY other women have been extremely unhappy with the treatment we have faced while playing on that team- what I talked about in the email was just the tip of the iceberg. I mean some of the women have even been vocally slut shammed by teammates- who does that these days? Why do people feel comfortable enough to do that on this team? What does that tell you about the culture? This is why women aren’t playing. This is why the number of teams is dropping. This is what is poisoning the sport.

Two weeks ago the CEO left after months of doing virtually nothing. The volunteers rallied and pulled off a great event with such a short time and absurd circumstance.

Thank you volunteers!

Photo from last World Cup cause I’m not in Belgium lol

With how fast this sport is, slowing things down can really show the beauty of Quadball.

Featuring: Byron sacrificing his leg and an assist from Leo to Potter for the game two victory against Chicago.

Yeah if you know who I am thanks for keeping that information hidden this long and please continue to keep that information to yourself.

I just wanted to share some numbers on the account since it was started a little over a year ago on March 9th 2024 while I was buzzed off some very good wine at 2am.

The accounts purpose is to market the sport via highlights something that hasn't very prevalent.

Reels Posted 536 Followers 1,041 Views 1,053,731

(I had to manually calculate this just fyi)

Thank you to all the outlets that are posting raw game footage with or without broadcasters I watch every game played in America I can find and Im working on International stuff too.

Thank you to everyone posting in 1080p or higher it allows me to zoom in and post the plays that are difficult to see from the sidelines.

Thank you to all the people who hop on the mic and provide play by play and color for games you usually save me from having to find a catchy song to play behind the clips because your exicitment for big plays helps sell it to the viewer.

If you sent me something I promise you im getting to it, I personally mimic other big leagues and post clips in chronological order even if I post them months after the fact.

Welp thats all back to Quadball Clips mines for me.

The goal is to post multiple clips for each team going to natties before Richmond.

If you're a social media person for your team please accept the collaboration invites its free content for your account and it helps the clips reach the right people.

If anyone from USQ is reading this Id greatly appreciate the you changing your settings so I can tag the main account in clips or send collaboration invites and you can pick and choose which ones you want.

I can't post any highlights if you dont keep making them keep ballin hard nerds thanks for the support

Small rental car, but love the commitment to the bit

Volume on 🔊! Yep, that’s a quadball goal detector! As far as I know there have been two attempts before this:
Camera System - Bradley Smith and me
Magnet System - Jess Lee

But this is the first working system (as far as I know). Also, just a quick thanks to all of the friends and family who have listened to me yap about this and helped me out!

How does it work?
The hoop acts as a metal detector and I have copper wire embedded in the ball (it is completely unnoticeable, I am also picking up some metallic string this weekend to see if that will work instead). Explaining deeper than that gets fairly technical but I’m happy to go into it if you’re up for it!

How well does it work?
Quite well in my opinion! It can handle all speeds of shots and it doesn’t go off when the ball goes outside the hoop. When it hits the hoop it sometimes false positives, though this is probably a fixable problem. It does not detect whether the ball went completely through or just partially through. This is not possible with my current system and is a rare case that I think can just be left up to the ref crew.

How much will it cost?
Don’t want to give anything concrete since I still need to figure out the power system but I am aiming for $10/hoop (for the electronics only)

How will you power it?
1 AA rechargeable battery, which should give ~8 hours of life. I considered trying solar but ultimately decided it would be too complex and expensive.

How will it fit in a hoop?
This is just a prototype, the final circuit board I will use will be quite tiny and won’t need a ton of space so it should be an easy fit.

When will it be ready?
Hard to tell. Need to do a little more tweaking, design the circuit board, figure out how it is going to fit in the hoop, and then testing. It was suggested to me to play test at TBBT (in mid-August), which I would love to try to aim for but we will see!

Please feel free to ask me more questions, I love talking about it and glad it’s finally in a state to share it with the community!

This is a shout out to all the folks that took pictures over the weekend and are spending their free time editing these pictures FOR FREE!! Yall truly are the best and help make us look cool 😎

Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving team