Muggles, mount your broomsticks: It's Quidditch time

Elizabeth Pacheco Sports Editor

If you passed by Joss Beach last Sunday afternoon, you might have been confused to see a group of Vassar students running around with brooms between their legs. These students were simply practicing Quidditch, the sport created by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series.

Adapted to the Muggle world by Middlebury College in 2005, the sport is slowly spreading across the country, with other programs at schools such as Bucknell University and Marlboro College. Having formed its own team, Vassar will hold practices for a few weeks before joining other colleges and universities on Nov. 11 for the Middlebury World Cup Game.

On Oct. 25, Josselyn House Vice President Woodrow Travers ’09 e-mailed students to announce a general interest meeting and explain the sport’s rules. Travers started the program at the urging of his best friend Xander Manshel, the junior at Middlebury who wrote the original rules. Since then, Middlebury’s teams have been featured on the cover of The Wall Street Journal as well as in ESPN The Magazine.

Travers plans to establish the program and then allow another student to take control. Conrad Schott ’11 has already volunteered to be the unofficial team captain, running practices and handling organizational details.

Just as in Rowling’s game, there are seven players on the field: a keeper to defend the hoops, three chasers who pass the quaffle (a slightly deflated volleyball) down the field and try to shoot it through the hoops, two beaters to peg the opposing team with the bludgers (three dodgeballs) and a seeker to catch the snitch.

Unlike in the wizard world, the snitch is an athletic individual with “a tennis ball placed into a long sock which is then tucked into the back of [his or her] shorts,” according to the Classic Muggle Quidditch, a manual written by Manshel. The players must keep the broom between their legs for the game’s duration, something “that has been very difficult,” said Schott. “We kind of have to run around slightly crouched, like field hockey players.”

Scoring in the Muggle game is also similar to the novels. A team is awarded 10 points for shooting a quaffle through one of the opposing team’s three hoops, while an additional 50 points are awarded to the team whose seeker catches the snitch (to avoid large scores, the snitch points were reduced from the original 120). Although Middlebury’s rules give step-by-step directions on making the hoops, Vassar’s team is currently using makeshift equipment, tilting garbage cans on tables and chairs.

Interest in the game has been high, with about 20 students showing up to the meeting and about the same number at the first practice. To accommodate teammates’ varying schedules, they will meet every Wednesday and Sunday on Joss Beach for practice. With funds from Josselyn, Travers was able to supply the team with the basic equipment, and Middlebury will reimburse the team for gas
money and team uniforms for the World Cup.

Schott hopes that even after the World Cup students will continue playing. “I think everyone is enthusiastic enough to keep playing,” he said. “The game is fun and it’s hilarious. Everyone is really getting into it.”

Schott has had even more students express their interest in playing. “Pretty soon,” he said, “We’re going to have to ask people to bring their own brooms to practice!”