The Quidditch World Cup

For those of you who are muggles (people who have not read Harry Potter) you may not be familiar with the popular sport of quidditch.  Even for those of you who love Harry Potter (people who have stood in line for hours in a ridiculous getup to see one of the movies at midnight), the fact that quidditch is now a real sport played by humans might come as a surprise to you.  It certainly did to me, even though I count myself in the latter category.  What a delightful surprise then, to discover that the Quidditch World Cup was being held just blocks from Lincoln Center this past weekend.  I cleared my schedule and headed to the field!

The rules are slightly altered in muggle quidditch, since the wizard version requires a variety of magical objects that do not exist in real life.  I will not go over the original rules of quidditch, since all you need to do to figure those out is to read 4175 pages of Harry Potter novels and then spend roughly 9.7 years of your life hotly debating them on internet message boards and chat forums.  Simple!  I will however, try to explain the rules of what I saw yesterday.

Basically there are 6 players on each team, three hoops on each end of the field, and 5 balls.  Each team has a Keeper (goalie), two Chasers (trying to get the ball through the hoops), two Beaters (it’s not what it sounds like), and a Seeker, whose job it is to catch the Golden Snitch.  Catching the Snitch ends the game and gives your team 30 points.  Yes, yes, I know in the books you get way more points for catching the Snitch, but as I already mentioned, I am not discussing the rules of the books, so please be quiet.  Shouldn’t you already be in line for Thursday midnight anyway?

The five balls are the Quaffle, which you want to toss through the hoops for 10 points each, and three Bludgers.  These are the balls that the Beaters peg at you as hard as they can.  Man it looked fun to be a Beater.  Basically it was like one-sided dodge ball, and if you get hit with a Bludger, you have to go back and tag one of your hoops before you can resume play.  Oh, and of course there is one more ball – The Golden Snitch.  Did I mention that the Snitch is a person?  A person dressed all in yellow running around the field with a tennis ball strapped to their belt.  The Snitch’s job is to not let the Seekers grab their ball.  And one more thing: every player has a broomstick between their legs and thus has to play the whole game one handed!  A better name for this game would have been “One-handed Rugby with Sticks.”

Here is a photo of one team preparing for the start of the match.  You can see their hoops, and their broomsticks on the ground.  Also, most teams were in ridiculous costumes, which was also awesome.  Many of them had capes, or goggles, or funny names written on their jerseys.  All of them were clearly having the time of their lives.

The announcers were clearly having fun as well.  We had color commentary that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.  They let the crowd know not to worry about being seen, because the field was invisible to muggles and all they would see was a quilting bee and also suddenly remember that their oven was on at home.  At one point one of the announcers switched completely to Parseltongue, for the non-English speaking wizards in attendance.

The games were really fun to watch, and it made me wish I were playing rather than just watching  The best part was clearly the Snitch, because he could do whatever he wanted.  Generally he would run off the field and into the crowd and hide for the first half of the game.  During one match I saw, the Snitch ran over to the supply tent, grabbed a referee shirt and came back to the field in disguise.  No one noticed until he took off the shirt and revealed his snitchiness on the field, and the crowd went wild. 

Some matches lasted over 20 minutes, and some as short as 90 seconds.  In fact, I took a video of a whole game.  It was very short.  I suppose it depends on how fast your Snitch is.

The World Cup final match was played between Middlebury College and Tufts University.  It was really no contest.  Middlebury had invented the game as it is currently played, and they were the only ones not wearing goofy outfits or smiles.  They clearly took this very seriously, and it showed.  After about ten minutes the score was 80 to 20, with the Snitch nowhere in sight.  Suddenly, having previously disappeared, the Snitch burst back onto the field, but with him he had 10-12 other Snitches, all forming a tight circle of defense around him.  As the Seekers approached the clump, the Snitches burst forth and scattered all over the field.  Decoys were everywhere!  No one could tell which one was the real Snitch!  Seekers darted this way and that, flying through clouds of yellow, trying to make out the real target.  Eventually the false Snitches left the field and the Seekers were free to chase the Snitch as they saw fit.  The Tufts Seeker spent his time body checking the Middlebury Seeker to the ground every time he got close to the Snitch.  Everyone knew that if the Seeker was caught then Tufts would lose, no matter who caught it, because they were more than 30 points behind.  After Middlebury scored twice more with the QuaffleMiddlebury Seeker, knocking him to the ground, and grabbed the Snitch ball for Tufts, ending the game with a score of 100-50.  I think it was about saving face at that point.

And so ended another great year of quidditch.  Almost 50 teams from all over the world (well, ok, one from Canada)came to compete for the title, and they did not disappoint us.  Until next year, I leave you with this thought: anybody want to start a quidditch team with me?

To learn more about muggle quidditch, please visit www.internationalquidditch.org