McGill University was the only Canadian team that competed in the College Quidditch Cup Oct. 25 (Photo: Andrea Hill)
Muggle Quidditch – as adapted from the Harry Potter series – looks like a cross between dodge ball, rugby and a costume-mandatory Halloween party. It’s a sport where team cheers are called spells and poorly performing players are said to be confunded. It’s a game where fans are often in as much danger as athletes and capes are part of the team uniform.
Despite the fact that muggle Quidditch has evolved from a fictional world and may appear bizarre to onlookers, the sport is becoming more popular amongst post-secondary institutions, especially in America.
On Oct. 25, the third annual College Quidditch Cup at Middlebury College welcomed 21 muggle teams. Players came from as far away as Texas and, for the second year in a row, the McGill University team crossed the border to be the only Canadian competitor in the tournament.
“Five years ago, on this field, Quidditch was born,” announced tournament organizer Alex Benepe from the Middlebury campus. “We didn’t even have enough hoops so we were playing with garbage cans. Players had towels around their necks. One guy thought it was BYOB – Bring Your Own Broom – and brought a lamp from his dorm room.”
Much has changed in the last few years. At the Oct. 25 event, four oval pitches were painted on the Middlebury campus and three golden hoops, not trash receptacles, stood at each end.
Not that the painted fields mean much for a Quidditch game.
(Photo: Andrea Hill)
“The lines you see are very aesthetic,” said referee Mike Downey. “They have no real meaning.”
Downey was referring to the fact that players frequently run off the field, often colliding with fans, and as many goals are scored from behind the goal posts as from in front of them.
Like the wizards in the original game, all seven players on each team are mounted on broomsticks that must be kept between their legs for the duration of the game. Three chasers pass a volleyball or soccer ball between them, attempting to get the ball past the keeper into one of the three hoops for a 10-point goal.
Three slightly deflated dodge balls serve as bludgers (because two bludgers was “too boring,” according to Downey). Two beaters on each team whip these balls at opposing players. When a player is hit, he has to drop the ball he is holding and run back to his own goal post before rejoining the game.
The ball that varies the most from the magical version of the game is the golden snitch. Instead of being a miniscule, winged ball, the snitch is played by a nonpartisan, fast runner decked in gold. This player disappears at the beginning of the game and runs (or cycles) all over campus, usually returning to the pitch about 10 minutes into the match if he has not yet been caught. The job of the seeker is to pull a sock from the snitch’s pants – a difficult feat as the snitch often responds aggressively to attempts to capture it.
George Heinrichs, a snitch from Middlebury College, said he loves his position.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “I mean, imagine fighting with people your own size but they can’t fight back. It’s like picking on little children but without the guilt.”
While in the wizarding world a captured snitch earns the victorious team 150 points, a snitch is worth considerably less in the muggle version of the game.
“In Harry Potter the snitch is worth, like, 6,000 points,” a commentator explained at the beginning of the day. “That just makes the rest of the game wholly uninteresting.”
Hence, in the muggle game, a captured snitch is worth only 40 points.
Between the four balls and the flashy snitch, spectators sometimes have a difficult time figuring out what to watch. Often, they simply have to pay attention to what is going on directly in front of them to avoid being knocked to the ground by an escaping snitch or hit by a stray bludger. More than once, emergency crews had to attend to onlookers who were trampled by the intense play.
While no fans met any serious harm, one player received a broken collarbone early in the day and, later in the afternoon, another player was taken off the field on a spine board. Many other players undoubtedly suffered cuts and bruises due to the aggressive nature of the sport.
Fortunately, the Canadian team returned north relatively unharmed. McGill’s team gave a strong performance, advancing as far as the semi-finals where it was defeated by Middlebury. Middlebury went on to defeat Emerson College in the finals to win the championships for the third consecutive year.
“I’m very proud of us,” said McGill coach Ben Cohen, a second-year physics and philosophy student who played on the team last year but was prevented from doing the same this year because of an injury. He said he was pleased that McGill was able to bring more players and fans to the tournament this year and hopes interest in the sport will continue to grow in Canada, where there is no comparable Quidditch tournament.