Anyone who's seen the Harry Potter movies or read any
of the wildly popular novels by J.K. Rowling knows a thing
or two about quidditch. The official sport of the wizarding
world, it's a physical, fast-moving aerial game, played
by characters on flying broomsticks.
Well, quidditch has come down to earth. In November, Eastern
Michigan's Flying Squirrels Quidditch Team competed against
the world's best at the Fourth Annual Quidditch World Cup
in New York City. The competition featured about 20 teams
playing over the course of two days on four fields in Manhattan's
Dewitt Clinton Park.
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QUIDDITCH CREW: Members of Eastern Michigan
University's Flying Squirrel Quidditch Team
practice
the competition made famous in the Harry
Potter
books and movies. Nathaniel Gibson
(center) runs
the quaffle down the pitch while
Nicole Manzanares
(far left) prepares to hit him
with the bludger.
The team recently competed in
the Fourth Annual Quidditch World Cup in New
York
City. |
Middlebury College beat Tufts 100-50 in the championship
game. Even though the team didn't make it to the finals
bracket, the Flying Squirrels Quidditch Team acquitted
itself well, said Wendy Gouine, an EMU professor of English
language and literature who is adviser of the Harry Potter
Book Club.
"They played well," she said. "They were good games with
close scores. They take it very seriously. They're devoted
and dedicated, and I'm really, really proud of them."
In muggle quidditch, players don't fly, but they do run
around the field holding a broomstick between their legs.
"It's hard the first time you do it but, after that, you
really forget there's a broom," said Amy Loviska, Flying
Squirrels team manager and co-founder. "We do spend the
first day (of practice) teaching people how to ride a broom.
Everyone's giggling because we look ridiculous but, pretty
soon, you forget it's there."
And the snitch — a tiny, flying ball with a mind
of its own in the Harry Potter books — is replaced by a
crafty and agile human dressed in as much yellow spandex
as the team can lay its hands on.
The game is actually more like two different contests
running concurrently. On one hand, it is a no-holds-barred
game of hide-and-seek between the snitch and each team's "seeker." On
another, it's a soccer/lacrosse/dodge ball type game on
an oval playing field. On the field, players try to throw
the quaffle (a volleyball) through one of three hula hoops,
supported at opposite ends of the field by PVC pipe. Players
disrupt each other by throwing bludgers (semi-inflated
playground balls).
"The game on the pitch is kind of like a cross between
soccer, lacrosse and dodge ball," Gouine said. "It's full-contact
and it is very aggressive. It's not a game for wussy bookworms."
The game ends when one of the seekers "catches" the snitch,
typically by grabbing what amounts to a flag football flag
tucked in to the snitch's belt.
The World Cup experience left the Flying Squirrels with
a taste for the more physical style of quidditch played
by East Coast teams. East Coast style involves more tackling,
said Loviska. Midwestern style leans a bit more toward
self-preservation, though she stresses that EMU plays an
intense, competitive brand of quidditch. But now that the
EMU team knows what it takes to compete at the international
level, they're all in.
"It was a real eye-opener to how serious this sport is," Loviska
said. "We had no idea. There were sponsorships from
Adidas for some schools. It really legitimized us, made
us feel like a real sport and made us want to work harder."
The Squirrels are like any other athletic team, but with
a special, nerdy twist, Loviska said.
"I've only ever been involved in marching band. I was
never really a sporty person," she said. The great thing
about quidditch is that you can get nerds involved. We
don't have tryouts. We let anyone play if they're committed
to training and come to practice."
But muggle quidditch is steeped in the cult of Harry Potter.
So, while athletic prowess may not be a must, Potter literacy
is.
The Flying Squirrels evolved from a Harry Potter Book
Club activity, and Gouine said all the team members are
hard-core Harry Potter fans. The team, which formed in
fall 2009, plays a pick-up schedule during the school year
that includes opponents from the University of Michigan,
Michigan State and several colleges and universities in
Ohio.
For now, home matches are played at Frog Island. But Loviska
is working hard to gain use of the athletic bubble, particularly
if the team can assemble a slate of Big Ten opponents (Michigan,
Michigan State and Ohio State) for a tournament this spring.
