COLUMN: Quidditch not a real sport, not magic but still a lot of fun
There’s been an ongoing debate around The Statesman sports desk about the integrity of certain activities — mainly whether or not something qualifies as a sport. It’s a wide debate.
There are so many sports and pseudo-sports that it’s hard to give them all the coveted status — the title of “Sport.”
Most are fairly easy to categorize. Then there’s Quidditch.
Yes, the favorite sport of the fictional wizarding world in J.K. Rowling’s mega-series has now been adapted for those of us lacking in magic — we muggles.
Yeah that’s where I lost everyone in the office, too. There seems to be too many improbabilities.
A real-life version of the game played on gravity-defying broomsticks? And then there’s the golden snitch, the pesky flying gold ball that when caught ends the game.
I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. I proudly own the entire series and a “Care of Magical Creatures” textbook. I’ve read the “Quidditch Handbook” cover to cover and still I couldn’t figure out how the magical sport could be adapted to the muggle world.
One quick look at a queued-up YouTube video rests my case. The sport exists and its following is growing.
Started by Potter fans attending the East Coast school Middlebury College, the game now has a network of more than 200 teams.
Since the game’s beginnings in 2007, Middlebury is the only school to have taken home the world cup. Right now they are 6-0 in world cup games, after taking home last week’s title over the University of Florida.
This year’s cup featured 100 different teams from the U.S. and Canada in an international circus coming to a head in Randall’s Island, New York.
Will Browning, a Yahoosports contributor, describes the object of the game as being “a cross between rugby and basketball with a twist thrown.” There are some physical limitations presented when a magical sport makes the jump to the muggle world.
Since flying is pretty much impossible, players travel on the ground with a broomstick between their legs. The Snitch is a person holding a yellow cloth that the seekers desperately try to get control of to end matches.
There’s an International Quidditch Association, a governing body to ensure uniformity among teams, and even a separate website devoted entirely to the world cup held each year. There’s even been talk of granting the sport NCAA sanction, but those days are a long way off.
It’s clear the players are more than a bunch of nerds with broomsticks between their legs. Many of them have considerable athletic ability, but I still find it difficult to take them seriously.
With that said, the muggle version of the game has only continued to grow since its conception.
I can’t imagine collegiate athletes taking the pitch in their schools’ colors, but it has provided me with hours of YouTube entertainment.
– Meredith Kinney is a junior majoring in broadcast journalism and an avid hockey fan. She hopes one day to be a big-shot sideline report working for ESPN. Send comments to meredith.kinney@aggiemail.usu.edu