They don’t have baseball, basketball, football or soccer at Hogwarts, the fictional school attended by Harry Potter. Instead, students play quidditch, a sport where players throw balls into goalposts while flying around on broomsticks.
Ana Strgar and Breanne Thomas don’t have the magical powers necessary to bewitch broomsticks, but that’s not stopping them from starting the University’s first quidditch league.
The idea came to Strgar and Thomas, both freshmen in the School of Journalism & Communication, last week while cramming for midterms.
“We just wanted people to feel like they have a place to talk about Harry Potter and play quidditch, since most of us have never played,” Strgar said.
They got word out with a Facebook group titled “University of Oregon Muggle Quidditch” – “muggle” is author J.K. Rowling’s word for non-magic people – which currently has more than 75 members. Nearly half showed up to the first meeting Monday night on the Living Learning Center lawn.
Among them was freshman chemistry major Jasper Cook.
“It’s very odd,” he said. “It’s not every day you see a muggle quidditch team, so I thought I’d check it out.”
Thomas said she was both amazed and excited at the turnout, especially on such short notice.
“We know it’s gonna be really big from the response we’ve got in the past five days,” Strgar added.

In the “Harry Potter” series, quidditch has three balls: quaffle, bludger and snitch. Each team’s keeper guards the goalpost, while the three chasers attempt to score with the quaffle. The two defensive beaters try to block the chasers by hitting them with bludgers. The seventh player, the seeker, ends the game when he or she catches the snitch, a tiny golden ball that flits around the field.
For those without magic wands, the goalpost is made with a hula-hoop and PVC piping. Soccer balls or volleyballs typically substitute quaffles, and the bludgers use Nerf bats and balls. The snitch is a person dressed in yellow whom the seekers must find within a designated boundary. And of course, players will run in lieu of flying on brooms.
Strgar and Thomas found the rules on Wikipedia, as several quidditch leagues have formed at high schools, colleges and summer camps around the country.
“It’s a good way for people to get into sports if they’re not into sports like football, basketball, whatever,” Thomas said, calling muggle quidditch a fun way to keep in shape and meet new people.
Strgar and Thomas are currently working to get funding for equipment and uniforms – shirts that say, “B.Y.O.B.” for “Bring Your Own Broom” – through the residence halls. Eventually, they would like to make quidditch a club sport and play against other schools.
At the next meeting, the time and place of which has yet to be determined, players will be sorted into teams. Strgar and Thomas hope to start playing within two weeks.
For updates, log onto the University of Oregon Muggle Quidditch group on Facebook.com.
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