They might not be riding real broomsticks or chasing an actual snitch, but the Carleton University quidditch team takes their fantastical sport seriously.
The club, which hosted a how-to-play session at Brewer Park Sept. 9, competes against university and community teams across Canada. They play a realistic version of the Harry Potter pastime, with sticks between their legs instead of flying brooms and a “snitch” dressed in bright yellow shorts.
“A lot of people have a misconception that it’s more akin to Harry Potter cosplay,” said Alex Naftel, a Carleton graduate who has played for Major League Quidditch teams in Toronto and Ottawa. “Really, it’s a competitive sport that’s full contact.”
The rules of the sport are similar to those described in J.K. Rowling’s books. Darren Bell, president and assistant coach of the Carleton team, described the sport as a combination of rugby and basketball.
“This sport is really unlike any other,” Naftel said.
Like rugby, quidditch is body-to-body. Players wear no protection, with the exception of a mouthguard. Tackles are commonplace.
The sport is also akin to basketball with hoops for scoring set up at both ends of the pitch. There are three hoops, side-by-side, with the middle hoop taller than the outside two. Ten points are awarded each time a chaser throws or dunks a quaffle—a volleyball to non-wizards—into a hoop.
In traditional terms, chasers are the offense and beaters are the defense. Beaters throw dodgeballs at opposing chasers. If they get hit, chasers are forced to drop any ball they’re holding and touch the centre goalpost on their side.
Then there’s the golden snitch: a small orb with wings in the books, but a person dressed in yellow shorts in the real world. The snitch has a tail attached to their shorts and one person from each team, called the seeker, tries to grab it. The first to do so earns points for their team.
At all times, players have to keep their sticks between their legs.
Bell, a fourth-year computer science student at Carleton, said he’s not a Harry Potter fan but enjoys sports and wanted to stay active after high school.
“I’ve only seen like two or three of the movies and I haven’t read any of the books. I came in because I’m a sports lover,” Bell said. “When I first trucked somebody and dunked on somebody, I was hooked.”
Bell said the sport attracts a mixture of both Potterheads, the popular term for fans of the series, and sports people. He described it as a Venn diagram of nerdy and active.
John Danin, a first-year computer system engineering student, attended the how-to-play session and said it was his first time ever playing quidditch. He said he falls on the fandom side of the sport.
“Of course I’ve read the Harry Potter books, so it caught my attention. I decided to come out and try it,” Danin said. “I like it a lot. It’s different than any other sport I’ve played.”
Katelyn Croy, also a Carleton student, said she has watched the movies and read the books but isn’t a die-hard fan. She said she enjoyed the how-to session and planned to try out for the team.
“It seems a lot more welcoming than a lot of other sports that are more involved,” Croy said. “There’s also a wider range of where people are coming from.”
Quidditch is a more established sport than what meets the eye. Carleton plays against other university and community teams across Canada and finished fourth in the country two seasons ago. There’s MLQ—Major League Quidditch—with 16 teams from Ottawa to San Antonio, Texas, and everywhere in between.
There are also national teams, which Naftel played for in 2016, when Team Canada travelled to the world cup in Germany and played against 20-plus countries from all around the world.
When COVID-19 shut down the sporting world—quidditch included—in March 2020, many teams maintained the social side of the sport with Zoom hangouts.
“There’s a real community of people who play this sport,” Naftel said.
As far as returning to the pitch goes, Carleton’s quidditch team couldn’t be more excited.
“It was nice to play it and be active again,” Naftel said. “It feels amazing. I was really debating [not playing], and as soon as I played for 15 minutes, I was like, ‘no, I love this. I gotta keep playing.’”
Featured image by Anya Swettenham.
