In The News
A League of their Own: Quidditch and US Colleges
FansWe have a fun bit of news for you, as the USA Today has a lengthy feature on the rise in popularity of Quidditch at colleges here in the States. Focusing on the team at Middlebury College, the paper notes the college saw an "Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup Fall Festival" complete with "banners, team processions worthy of Olympic opening ceremonies, halftime entertainment and 12 seven-person coed Middlebury teams vying for the chance to play the visiting team from Vassar College." The outcome ? "Middlebury's Mollywobbles defeated Vassar for the championship. A bit of a rout, really. Vassar never scored."
While many Harry Potter fans have long played the magical game at conventions, various release parties, even a few schools, the sport is becoming more accepted at more mainstream universities, as Quidditch is now being played at "Bucknell University, Tulane, Oberlin, Washington state's Whitman College and Vermont's Marlboro College, where the Golden Snitch is not a human but a toy helicopter. (It has to be caught before it hits the ground.)"
Parents who are paying $46,910 a year to send their children to Middlebury say it's worth the price. "Given some of the alternatives out there, this is a good way to relax," says Michael Free of suburban Philadelphia, who, with his wife, Sharon, came to the World Cup games to cheer on their son Christopher, a sophomore in conservation biology. Christopher, 19, was a co-captain of champion Mollywobbles, and his parents couldn't have been prouder. "There are a lot of worse things he could be doing," his dad says.
Saxon Elliott of Northampton, Mass., mother of freshman Conrad Schott, 18, who headed up the Vassar Quidditch team, agrees."I sent him off to Vassar, and never once did I realize he would ascend to such greatness," she says with a laugh. She made the pink capes worn by the New York team. (All Quidditch teams wear capes.)"
Noting that there is even a Facebook group for the Wizarding sport (The Intercollegiate Quidditch Association, which has more than 600 members (middlebury.facebook.com/ group.php?gid=2220478706), administrators are hopeful they will eventually get a proper Quidditch league of their own here in the Muggle world.
"Benepe hopes to have more colleges participating next year, planning an aggressive recruiting campaign in the spring."My vision is to get a couple vanloads of Middlebury players, all of the necessary equipment and Snitch runners, and travel to four to five colleges in the Northeast and get some games going," he says." Colgate, Williams and Amherst are on the list."I think watching Quidditch in real life will really inspire a lot of people so that by next fall, we can have at least five experienced and game-ready colleges."
Finally,TLC reader hobbitfoot also sent us an article about Quidditch at the University of Georgia, which you can read here. Thanks to everyone who emailed!
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There’s also an awesome Quidditch team at the University of Georgia! Go Go Gryffindor!!
That’s amazing that someone could come up with a non-magical version like that…though without all the flying, I think it makes it a different sport in my opinion. :)
Is this article a joke?! I could have sworn that it was from the onion!
We play Quidditch here at Millikin University too. I love how it’s becoming a big thing at colleges. Quidditch rocks!
Now something else to consider in selecting the college you want to apply to. Does it have a Quidditch team? Oh the pressure to decide…..
Yes Sir! Quidditch is taking over the world! This article makes me wanna go to one of those universities so much!
Impossible. I mean really, the rules of scoring for quidditch seemed to be so freaking weird to me. Catching the snitch gives you 150 points? Why bother with the quaffle? A team would have to score fifteen to zero in order to tie the opposing team having a faster seeker. The chasers are mere entertainers keeping the audience busy until the snitch appears.
It’s OK if it’s only for fun and laughs. Do they run with a broom between their legs? That’s got to be uncomfortable yet very funny to watch.
Yeah, I need to see video of this. I don’t see how this would work. I mean I guess it does, since a lot of people are playing it, but a person as the snitch? Unless you’re playing on a wooded field the size of a football field (U.S. football, that is) I don’t see it working.
The snitch as a RC helicopter (or car) might work better, but still.
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Addendum to above post: there ARE videos of this on YouTube. (Of course there would be – there’s videos of EVERYTHING on YouTube).
Anycrap, search for Muggle Quidditch and some pops up. There’s also footoge of ‘Water Quidditch’ from Lumos 2006.
It can probably be summed up by the quote given in the description of one of them, ‘God bless Theatre majors playing sports!’
The University of Evansville also has a Quidditch Club. There’s an article about it here http://www.evansvilleliving.com/currentissue/mar2007/feature3.html
I’ve played a version of Quidditch on the ground, and it’s a TON of fun, though VERY tiring. Our version is sort of a mix between basketball, dodgeball, and keep-away. It’s very…interesting.
We play on campus sometimes as well.
We designate a person as the “snitch,” who runs around the “pitch” and has to be caught by the “seeker.”
We then run around with brooms between our legs while trying to get the “bludger” through the opposite teams hoops, and we have quite a bit of fun in doing so.
Oh this looks like sooooo much fun! I want to play! Why couldn’t there have been a team at Penn State when I was there? Maybe the alumni will start one :-) Then I could have been a part of a famous Penn State University athletics team hmmm.. the Nittany Wizards has a nice ring to it!
I wish there were more Potter fans at my university. This is an amazing idea! Great job guys!
This is too funny. I live 5 minutes from Vassar College. I have to check this out!
This is so cool, I really hope it spreads. I played Quidditch at Wrockstock and it was soo much fun!! It really does make a great sport, at least the way we played it. I’d love to play it more.
We play Quidditch on Sunday afternoons in the metro Phoenix East Valley. We usually have enough people for two under 13 teams and two over 13 teams. Anybody in the area is welcome to join us!
We are QUAPhLE (Quidditch Union of Arizona, Phoenix League East). You can check out our schedule at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QUAPhLE/
And, for those of you who are curious, the pitch is magically enchanted so that the muggles just think we are running around on the ground rather than flying on our brooms.
I can see a quick runner being the snitch as long as the seekers have a broom between their legs. That would make it more difficult and pretty funny indeed. Oh, and I’d love to be a beater in a Quidditch game. I just loved dodgeball when I was a kid.
If people want to see how it is played, there is a great video on youtube…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Af7epnOleBY&feature=related
I wanna play! my grand father literaly while the page was loading called me and said he saw it in the paper
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Awesome! I wanna play!