USQ All-Star Weekend returns to Middlebury, honoring quadball’s roots

US Quadball will bring its first USQ All-Star Weekend to Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, on October 10-11, returning the sport to Battell Beach, where the first game was played on October 9, 2005. The new weekend lands in quadball’s 20th anniversary year, and USQ is using it to stage a legitimacy test as much as a showcase, putting the sport’s current best players on the same ground where its first chapter began.

The inaugural event will bundle a regional all-star tournament, a community fantasy tournament, Major League Quadball all-star programming and community celebrations with special guests from throughout quadball history. USQ has built the tournament around five regions, West, Midwest / Great Lakes, Southwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic / South, with each regional roster set at 21 players, four alternates and two to three coaches. Those rosters must include both college and club players, a structure that fits the sport itself, where teams can carry up to 21 athletes and seven are on the field at once.

The selection process is designed to feel more like a community vote than a closed honors system. Anyone may nominate an athlete, verified nominees moved into fan voting, and the top six vote-getters in each region earned automatic roster spots. Selection committees then filled the remaining places by weighing competitive balance, college and club representation, positional needs and diversity. USQ’s timeline set nominations to close July 2, fan voting to run July 5-14, committee selection to run July 17-22 and rosters to be announced July 24.

Middlebury gives the weekend a second layer of meaning. USQ says the first U.S. championship tournaments were also held there in 2007, 2008 and 2009, making the college not just the birthplace of the game but one of its earliest title homes. The 2026 event also arrives after the sport’s 2022 rename from US Quidditch to quadball, a shift announced by US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch and tied to a broader break from its Harry Potter-derived branding. In that context, the all-star weekend does more than crown regional stars: it ties the sport’s present-day athletes to the places, names and choices that turned a campus experiment into a durable, if still niche, athletic culture.