Quidditch game brings magic to campus

Broomsticks and bludgers, seekers and snitches, keepers and quaffles, wizards and witches.

These are not your usual high school-sports terms, but thanks to Ms. Allison’s and Mrs. Fowler sense of creativity, these odd terms were being thrown back and forth during a number of Quidditch matches on both the Great Lawn and football field last week.

This was all part of a unit on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, one of the books read by Fowler’s Children’s Literature class, and while this was most of the seniors’ first time playing Quidditch, the wizarding sport does possess a rather illustrious history. “Quidditch is actually an up-and-coming, prevalent sport in many colleges” said Ms. Allison.

If one were to burrow his or her nose into a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages, it wouldn’t take long to learn that this magical sport was first played (in the Muggle world) in 2005, within the small borders of Middlebury, Vermont. Since then, Quidditch has grown to become a relatively popular sport around the world and is still quickly growing, with more and more colleges and universities starting their own intramural Quidditch teams and tournaments. The rules are far from simple, but I’ll do my best to explain.

Two teams of seven face off on a rectangular pitch, with three goal-hoops for each of the team’s sides. The keeper is the player designated to protect the team’s goals, much like a goalkeeper in soccer. The chasers (two per team) are responsible for passing the quarrel (a large, leather-covered ball) and scoring for their team by throwing it into any of the opposing team’s goals, a feat which awards the scoring team ten points. Each team also has two beaters, who are meant to hit opposing team members with bludgers, another kind of leathery ball, in order to prevent them from scoring. Finally, each team possesses a single seeker, whose sole purpose is to find the elusive snitch, a tennis ball that is held by a pre-determined snitch-runner who is meant to do whatever it takes not to be caught by the seekers. If the snitch is caught, that seeker’s team is granted thirty points and the game ends. Simple enough, right?

I was able to spectate two matches during last Thursday’s fourth period, in which Hufflepuff barely defeated Ravenclaw with a last-minute grab of the snitch, and Slytherin won out against the favored Gryffindor team. Griffin Hughes, who, naturally, played for Gryffindor House, was upset with his team’s results. “Slytherin was a good team. We put up a valiant effort… they just caught the snitch first. But we worked hard and can’t complain about it” said Hughes.

On the other hand, Josh Katz, a passionate Slytherin, was understandably proud of his team. “It was all about defense for us, waiting for the keeper to get the snitch. And he did, just in the nick of time” said Katz.

All in all, the games I watched were entertaining and joyously energetic. While one may deem such an activity “nonacademic”, I could tell that it helped spark interest in the Harry Potter series for several students. And whether its a broom between the legs or a turn of the pages that captures your imagination, what matters is that you’re transported somewhere special, were the world around you just seems that little bit more magical.