Article: Quadball Podcasts and Being a Better Person (Or At Least Trying To): A Reflection on the First Year of The Small Hoop

The Small Hoop is the pet project of myself, and my friends Brandy Gomez and Nicodemus Robles.

The name “The Small Hoop” actually has its origins with Maya Hinebaugh, a Texas State Alum, who thought about doing a podcast with that name. When we were envisioning what the show would be about, we quickly decided “The Small Hoop” was symbolic of the underdog, the little guy, the counterculture of Quadball.

When I made the choice to start the show, it was just me and Nico. To give some context, I had been fired from my job that provided my housing and meal plan. Suffice to say, it was the lowest I had ever felt. Which proves a theory I have that if someone starts a podcast, it means they are at a terrible point in their life and should not be allowed to purchase a microphone.

The format of the show is something that Nico and I had many disagreements on throughout its run. When we started we only knew that we wanted video, because no one else had video, and that we wanted to do interviews. As a big fan of the H3 Podcast, I knew I wanted our show to have the same elements of audience participation, group discussion, interviews, almost like a variety hour special. It was also important to me that I leave room for the audience to get to know us and our personalities. While it could be easy to cut out our colorful interactions with one another and skip to the “business”, the scenes of us having fun and joking around are what I think separate us from all the other Quadball podcasts.

Nico and I decided to bring on Brandy as a part of the operation as a co host at the Slamta Fantasy Tournament in January 2023. When we were thinking about who our third mic should be, we wanted to broaden our horizons a bit. We didn’t want to only have Texas State people on our show, and Brandy at the time played for Texas Hill Country Heat, so we thought it would be good to get the extra club perspective. We also knew that people would absolutely love Brandy’s personality and humor, which they did.

The first episode of The Small Hoop is a rough watch, mostly due to the many, many editing errors I made in my rush to get the episode out “on time” (I wanted to get the scoop on Heroes Vs. Villains and Brooms on the Brazos before Third Bludger Interference got to it on their show.) I always had a bad habit of comparing myself to others, and many times in my life I’ve been involved in very one sided rivalries. This is a habit that affects all aspects of my life and that I’ve tried hard to work against, but every now and then I let things slip, and it snowballs into me having an extremely inflated sense of importance in the things I do or create. This would not be the only time the quality of the show suffered because of my overly ambitious goals for the show.

Behind-the-scenes-delusions-of-grandeur aside, you can also see in this episode how not exactly prepared we were to cover the events that happened at HVI. It’s a lot of switching between teams, looking for names, and myself, Brandy, and Nico all looking at each other to see who’s being forced to talk next. Once we start talking about Brooms, though, Brandy is able to come into her own while talking about Sam Houston’s win over UTSA. 

In this first episode we briefly take a detour from talking about other teams to talking about our game against UTSA and how we felt. This would be a recurring segment in later episodes, where we debrief on what was going through our heads, what we were thinking while playing, how it felt, etc. I love when we get to do this because Quadball, I think, is a uniquely emotional sport. Everytime I make a new friend through Quadball, I immediately think, “I can’t wait to play against them!” Getting to know someone as an individual as well as an athlete you’re trying to steal a bludger from, or stop from driving on your hoops, is a uniquely rewarding relationship. It makes them fun to watch play forever, because you know how much they hate losing, or how badly they want to win, or you know that they’re having an absolute blast every second they’re on pitch. 

This episode also features our first interview segment with Caleb Williams. Something H3 does, and something I tried to implement, is switching between whatever clip they’re watching and the discussion that can be drawn up from the clip. It makes more sense for them because they’re on a livestream, and their show is more stream of consciousness anyway, so I think the implementation of the format in this instance was sloppy. In later episodes we do a similar style, but keep it focused more so on the interview clip, which I think works better, but honestly we did away with the short interview segments because they felt like filler.

The second episode of The Small Hoop is by and large our most successful, the calm before the storm, if you will. We knew Maya would be good to have on since we knew there were some good topics we could get the chance to talk about, and Maya having quite the extensive Quadball resume would give her plenty of experience to draw on during the episode. 

It felt like things just lined up absolutely perfectly for this episode, between the librarian taking our microphones, Nico “storming out”, and the non-male discussion, I’d say this is the episode I am most happy with. It’s dense with plenty of Quadball related content, although I think the focus on predictions for the upcoming Southwest Regionals highlights a big problem with some of the early episodes. The problem being that we don’t really know what our show should be yet, and we are pulling ourselves in many different directions. I’ve come to terms with the fact that we are not the premier Quadball analysis platform, nor would I want us to be. That’s why segments like this get dropped in favor of the more personal conversation about the sport in later episodes.

That episode was about as “inflammatory” as Quadball podcasts had gotten at that time. However, In the days leading up to Southwest Regionals, 3BI posted an episode of their show where they go down the lists of the top ten players in each position as voted by the three hosts of their show. I remember that episode sparking a lot of conversation within the community. There were a few criticisms leveled against the episode, including that they have the implicit bias of being leadership on their respective teams, and so are obviously more inclined to put their players, as well as concerns about the way they talk about male players vs. female and gender non-comforming players.

My take on that episode is that the list is not nearly as important as the community’s reaction to it. When I looked at the list, I came to the conclusion that because Southwest Regionals was so soon, they wanted to give their players (and maybe even some players on other teams) shoutouts to help them feel confident going into the most important tournament of the season, which is an honorable goal. Although, I would advise anyone wanting to create a top ten list of their own to post publicly, go ahead and omit yourself, it’s just not a good look. Once I saw the community start talking about the list, I became frustrated that what essentially felt like rage-bait ended up working. Everyone was talking about their show, and they tuned in because everyone wanted to hear the list for themselves. I couldn’t help but feel that our show deserved the community wide attention theirs had gotten, which admittedly had an influence on the decisions that were made in the production of episode three.

The reaction to our third episode was not great. I feel like we never quite repaired our connection to the wider Quidditch community since the fallout of that episode, and because of this, I have since stopped posting our vlogs and episodes on AQD. When you look at the YouTube comments, or old threads on AQD, you can see I tried to double down and justify the things I said. The comments read as very defensive, mostly trying to clarify that I don’t mean things I say on the show as personal attacks, but as commentary on a sport I love. I’m not completely proud of how I handled that situation, no matter how “important” the story felt to me. It crossed my mind that I might get into hot water with some people, but it didn’t cross my mind that some people would be genuinely hurt by the things I said.

Following the third episode, we took a three month hiatus, mostly due to backlash from the prior episode. We were genuinely unsure if people would like to listen to us again, and I also knew I wanted to switch up what we were doing. The fourth episode was the first to not be interspersed with supplemental footage throughout. It was just me and Brandy talking, which I think lends itself to a more personal relationship between us and the audience. I knew that people liked hearing us for who we were, and so this episode I just wanted both of us to be ourselves and give updates on where we are in the world of Quadball.

The Quadball World Cup vlog was my proudest achievement on the channel this year. The week of the World Cup was the most fun I’ve ever had while at a Quidditch event, and I wanted to document every second so that I could share it with everyone who wasn’t there. The magic of watching Team USA in the finals against Germany was something I hope I was able to replicate in our video for those who couldn’t attend.

That is the type of content I love to make. Content that shows the beautiful memories that me and my friends create through playing this sport. The Small Hoop is not a Quadball analysis show, or even a Quadball Podcast for that matter. It’s a show about the people who play Quadball.

For the remainder of the year, we honed in on that concept. The next video was a vlog where my friend Pierce Wilson and I documented our trip to THE Fantasy Tournament, hosted by SWA. I wish I got more actual game footage, but that, along with some video from the Texas State pool party, made for a nice wholesome vlog.

Episode five of The Small Hoop was the first to be filmed in the Tri-Theta House, and in the new “set”, by which I mean the flag of our logo and our dining room table. We reminisce about the World Cup, reflect on our season with the San Antonio Soldados, and this is where Brandy announced she would be returning to Texas State that Fall semester. Manny also drops by and talks about the discussion that was taking place on AQD, where club players expressed concern about the switch to 3-Max gender rule. I have always thought Manny would be the perfect person to have his own show, he’s definitely the person I know that is the most passionate about Quadball, and you can hear it when he talks about it.

This episode we also briefly discuss the position we are in as players who also have a show where we want to talk about relevant topics in the Quadball community. As much as people want a show where we talk about the “real shit”, it seems like we, as well as other Quidditch podcasters, get caught in a winless situation everytime we want to bring up something that is even slightly off color or controversial. Obviously the solution is to get the sport big enough to where there are actual sports writers who don’t have any attachment to the people they are talking about, thereby eliminating the factor that makes a lot of Quadball discourse seem so personal.

The sixth and most recent episode of The Small Hoop primarily focuses on us talking about our team and the additions we have made to it since the start of the semester. Truthfully, I love our team, and I could talk about each person on our team for hours. What luck that as good of a group as we can ask for found their way to our Quadball team. As much as we don’t want our show to be “The Texas State Show”, I want to share more of our team with the greater Quadball community, so hopefully we can get some guest spots featuring some of our newer talent very soon.

I consider The Small Hoop’s first year a success. It would be very easy to look at the views and the fact that in a year we managed to crank out about 6 and a half hours of content, and say otherwise, but I firmly believe the content we did make was much better than if we forced ourselves to churn out an episode every week. To the fans of our show, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for seeing Brandy and I's vision for the show. We want to make it even better for y'all, and we hope we manage to do so in 2024.

This show is what I've been working on for the past year, and I couldn't ask for a better creative opportunity. To get to make content I love with my best friends is a dream, and I hope you join The Small Hoop as we go into 2024 with new ambition and a clearer goal. If you read this article and now think I am a petty, narcissistic person, you would not be completely off base. I like to think people can change, and to quote Jules from Pulp Fiction, "I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd."

Life comes at you fast. One moment you're taking your first steps onto campus as a college freshman, the next you're playing in the D2 Finals game at the Quidditch National Championships in Conshohocken, PA.

Starting a show about Quidditch from the ground up was not something I was expecting to do when I first stepped onto the Texas State campus. I've always wanted to have my own show, though I always envisioned myself hosting something more akin to H3. I'm glad however, that I'm getting the opportunity to do something with the people I love the most, about a sport that I have fallen in love with since coming to college.

This is my (now) annual year-end review of where I have been focusing my creative energy. This has been the greatest year of my life, but also one of the most difficult. I count my blessings everyday that I am in the position I am. I don't know what I would've done had I not found this sport and the friends I made through it. I don't know what the future holds, and I don't know if next year's review will be about The Small Hoop, or about another creative venture I am pursuing. I take comfort in knowing that I was exactly where I was supposed to be this year, and I trust next year I'll also be where I need to be, with the people I'm meant to be with.