Look out for the flying — OK, running — golden snitch! On Saturday, Nov. 13, the International Quidditch Association will host the fourth annual Quidditch World Cup in New York City, less than a week before the premiere of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.”
This is the first world cup the IQA has hosted since it changed its name from the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association. Forty-two colleges and universities, three high schools and one community group from the U.S. and Canada are participating in the two-day event.
“Muggle Quidditch” began as an intramural league in 2005 at Middlebury College in Vermont. The rules were adapted from J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels to play on the ground. Since then, the sport has grown wildly popular with colleges, universities and high schools across the nation. More than 400 colleges have since joined the IQA.
Some of the schools participating in this Saturday’s tournament include Harvard University, Yale University, University of Minnesota and Middlebury College.
University junior Charmaine Ng, founder of the University Muggle Quidditch League, hopes Oregon’s team will one day have the funds to participate in the Quidditch World Cup.
“The World Cup allows you to connect with other teams, most of which are much more established than us,” she said. “We’d be able to learn from their expertise and play a sport we all enjoy.”
University junior Emily Wilson said the Quidditch World Cup is “a chance for us nerds to unite!”
Ng started the University Muggle Quidditch League in November 2009 as a project for a public policy class. The term project was to go into an existing group and reorganize its outreach efforts.
“The Quidditch team was a Facebook group that was left out to dry, but so many people were always posting on the wall, saying that they were interested,” Ng said. “So I contacted the founders and got their OK to scratch everything they did and take over.”
The league soon became a popular campus club for Quidditch lovers, with 246 members on its Facebook group. The league regards Quidditch as a sport and welcomes anybody with any athletic ability to come to its weekly Saturday practices.
Muggle Quidditch has become more reputable as a sport since its founding. A student from the University of Maryland has even launched a campaign to get it recognized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The main object of the game is simple: Score the most points. The game has five positions: keepers, beaters, seekers, chasers and the human “flying” golden snitch. The number of players in each position changes depending on the number of people on a team. However, the seeker (which is Harry Potter’s position) who catches the snitch first automatically earns 150 points and often wins the game.
The IQA has the official International Quidditch Association Handbook posted on its website.
Though Quidditch has become wildly popular in the U.S., ironically it is less popular in England, where the books were created.
“You’d have thought that because the creator of the game is a British novelist that it would be pretty huge over there,” said Rose Ingrams, an international exchange student from England. “There are actually only about three Quidditch teams in the whole of Britain that I saw listed on the official site the last time I looked.”
The event serves as the perfect precursor to the premiere of the second-to-last film in the Harry Potter series, which opens Friday, Nov. 19, at midnight.
Ingrams said she is excited for the Quidditch World Cup, even though she will not be going.
“I think it’s great that a magical sport like this can be adapted for us to play and bring the magical world of Harry Potter alive and on such a wide scale as the Cup this weekend,” she said.
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