The magic of Quidditch returns for the fall season

Hannah Coates
Contributing Writer

This past Saturday, at Clarke Springs Park there was a gathering of many people, all with one thing in common: an interest in an up-and-coming sport called Quidditch.

Quidditch is known from the popular book and movie series, Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling’s imagined game is played on enchanted broomsticks with three types of magical balls and has been adapted so “muggles” (or people with no magical abilities) can enjoy the excitement of a Quidditch match.

In the game, there are seven players on a team: a keeper, a seeker, two beaters and three chasers. The chasers are the offense, whose job is to get the quaffle (a volleyball in the muggle version), through one of three hoops, scoring the team 10 points. The beaters are the defense who throw bludgers (dodge balls) at the opposing team to keep them from scoring.

“In the book version there are two bludgers but for our sake there are three, and the idea behind that is so that one team can’t have full possession the whole time so it evens it out,” co-captain Tommy McPhail said.

The keeper is a goalie while the seeker’s sole job is to catch the snitch, which earns a team 30 points. The snitch is not the golden-winged ball like in the Harry Potter books, but a runner clad in all yellow with a tennis ball in a sock Velcroed to the back of their pants.

McPhail describes the game as “a combination of soccer, dodgeball and any point-scoring game you’ve ever played with a little wrestling element to it.” Once the snitch is caught the game is over and the team with the most points wins.

This magical phenomenon started seven years ago at the world’s first ever real-life Quidditch game at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

It made its way to Richmond in 2008, when VCU student Britni Puccio organized the Quidditch team and became the club’s first president. Now their roster has reached 40 members.

Last year, VCU’s team went to the fifth annual Quidditch World Cup.

“There are over 700 teams worldwide, 100 of those went to the World Cup, and we placed 25. But we’re the top-placing team in Virginia,” McPhail said.

“The world cup is a really an insane experience. It’s a two-day tournament, Saturday and Sunday, we left really early in the morning on Friday and drove up (to New York),” said the team’s treasurer, Lydia Fisher-Lasky.

Not only is the sport a great athletic outlet but it is also an opportunity to build lasting bonds. It is their camaraderie that gives them an advantage on the field, according to coach Scott Behler.

“Everyone is supportive of each other, we all come from different backgrounds, some of us haven’t played sports and some of us are really athletic. We all learn from one another,” said Jacob Denvol, one of the team’s newest members.

But it’s not always pumpkin pasties and butterbeer. There is serious planning and thought that goes into strategizing for a game. “It’s a really intellectual game. There is so much going on at once that you have to sort of conceptualize what a huge number of different people who have different jobs on the field are doing and it’s pretty difficult to keep it all straight,” Fisher-Lasky said.

Unfortunately, the extensive strategizing was not enough to win the first games of the season. The first game’s score was 120 to 60, the second was 100 to 20.  The University of Richmond’s team caught the snitch both times.

VCU’s main scorer this match was Darren Creary, scoring five goals in the first game. Losing two of three games, the team walked away slightly disheartened but hopeful for the Blacksburg Brawl next weekend.

“There’s two things this game counts for, the first thing is the Virginia Quidditch league, which is all the teams in Virginia,” Alex Krall said. “This game affects our standings there and secondly it affects the International Quidditch Association standings. It’s the standings that effect what seed we are going into the regional tournament, which the winners will, in turn, move on to play in the Cup.”

While every loss is disappointing, staying positive is key.

“Just doing it is a way to keep Harry Potter alive because the movies are done and the books are done, but Quidditch is still being played,” co-coach Nikki Curtis said. “It’s becoming a bigger thing now and I definitely think it keeps the magic alive.”