Generation Magazine

By Keeley Sheehan
Managing Editor

College students in gym shorts with capes tied around their necks run around an empty field on North Campus, holding brooms between their legs while throwing dodgeballs at each other.

What sounds like late-night drunken shenanigans is actually a competitive sport – Quidditch.

Taking a cue from the “Harry Potter” series, students at UB are putting their inhibitions aside in favor of slightly awkward outfits and fierce competition.

“It’s a game for anyone really, people are just afraid of looking silly,” says Brittany Casino, secretary of the UB Quidditch club. “We get some rude remarks yelled at us while we are playing, but we don’t care.”

Many of UB’s Quidditch players got involved in the sport in high school, a number of them from St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute in Kenmore, N.Y. Michael D’Angelo, president of the club, and a group of his friends formed a Quidditch club at St. Joseph’s in summer 2008, playing at the World Cup competition in Middlebury. Their team placed third out of 16.

“Unfortunately most of us attended different colleges and were unable to maintain our team throughout the school year. Members at Syracuse University, the University of Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and the University of Rochester formed their own teams in our absence,” D’Angelo says. “This year I thought that UB should have its own team.”

The team began practicing as an unofficial club in September and applied for official club status through the Student Association in October, after six UB students competed in the 2009 World Cup.

“We have had great interest from students who have showed up and most of them have returned multiple times and with their friends,” says Chris Savery, treasurer.

D’Angelo says players usually get one of three responses when others find out they play the sport.

“Sometimes they shun us as geeks, usually they are indifferent to the sport and sometimes they are adamant about their will to play,” he says. “We have begun to evolve Quidditch into a legitimate competitive sport.”

Author J.K. Rowling details Quidditch’s fictional history in her companion to the “Harry Potter” series, “Quidditch Through the Ages.” In the universe of Harry Potter, Quidditch is a rough, occasionally fatal mix of ancient German, Irish and Scottish games with such names as Stichstock, Aingingein and Creaothceann. All require broomsticks, though only one – Stichstock – involves protecting an inflated dragon bladder. Players fly around the field trying to throw balls through goals hundreds of feet in the air.

Collegiate Quidditch distances itself from the fictional Quidditch of Harry Potter, borrowing the name and a basic rule structure, but infusing more Muggle – “non-magic folk” – elements to make the game appealing to non-Potter fans looking for new modes of athletic competition.

“I haven’t read most of the books, and I know a lot of people we play with aren’t all that interested in the books, or even the movies,” Casino says. “We don’t bring Harry Potter paraphernalia to the games because we just want to play.”

D’Angelo says they don’t think much about Rowling’s Quidditch when they play.

“Many people immediately think of Harry Potter as soon as we say the word Quidditch, and begin to pass judgment from there, but the truth is that we have distanced ourselves so much from the realm of Harry Potter,” he says.

Alexander Manshel, the first Quidditch commissioner, adapted the rules from the Harry Potter series to form an intramural league at Middlebury College in Vermont in 2005.

Each team plays with a keeper, who guards their team’s goals – a cluster of three per team at opposite ends of the field – two beaters, who try to knock opposing players off their brooms with bludgers (dodgeballs), three chasers, trying to score by throwing the quaffle (volleyball) through the opposing team’s goals, and a seeker, who tries to catch the golden stitch. In Rowling’s Quidditch, the snitch is a small golden ball that zips around the field. The seeker who catches it wins 250 points for their team and ends the game.

In collegiate Quidditch, the golden stitch is a person dressed in yellow with a tube sock holding a tennis ball hanging out of his or her pants, free to run around campus in an attempt to elude the seekers. The seekers’ goal is to grab the tube sock.

Alex Benepe became the Middlebury Commissioner in 2006, and founded the Intercollegiate Quidditch Assoication in 2007. Middlebury College and Vassar College played the first intercollegiate Quidditch match in November 2007, according to the IQA Web site. More than 200 institutions from around the world have joined the IQA or play by IQA rules, including teams in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France and Israel. Benepe is still commissioner, and the IQA distributes rulebooks to interested teams.

Casino says she loves everything about the sport, “the people, the game, the competition and the camaraderie.” She thinks others would enjoy it too, if they give the game a chance.

“I did a lot of different sports in high school, but I don’t think any come close to being as enjoyable as Quidditch is for me,” she says. “I was skeptical at first, but after playing it I was hooked. I hope that other people can get past how silly they think we look and just try it.”

The team will continue to play this semester on the lot next to Governors E. D’Angelo hopes to get a few winter games in but depending on attendance, they might wait until later in the semester when it gets a little warmer.

“I know our attendance got smaller and smaller last semester because of the cold, but we are going to try and plan a winter game,” Casino says. “All you need is some snow pants and no fear of the cold.”

D’Angelo says the team will have a meeting early in the semester for interested students, or that students can just stop by the field if they see them out playing or go to their Facebook page.

“Three people on our team are varsity athletes at UB in one or more other sports,” he says. “We are open to all who have a sense of humor and a desire to be competitive.”

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