Quidditch: 'Harry Potter' Generation Spawns Its Own Game

As "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" swoops into theaters on Friday, nearly 750 muggles (non-wizards, for you non-"Potter" fans) mostly from North America are recovering from a sporting event inspired by the mega-hit film series. The schools are playing organized Quidditch, too. Not bad for a fictional sport. At DeWitt Clinton Park, Middlebury College won its fourth consecutive World Cup, beating out the Tufts "Tufflepuffs" in the championship match 100-50. "I think we'd all like to win this tournament, but the point of this game is really just to have fun," Middlebury seeker Ryan Scura told Stony Brook, N.Y., newspaper The Statesmen as he warmed up. "It's really hard to not see the goofy appeal in all of this, but that's what we love about it." In the "Harry Potter" movies, Quidditch is a polo-style game played on flying broomsticks by students of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; in the real world, it involves elements of rugby, soccer, basketball, dodgeball and tag played on a field comparable in size to a soccer pitch. Familiarity with Quidditch, as portrayed in the movies or books, is beneficial to understanding the rules of the game, which involves two teams consisting of players assigned specific duties ("chasers," "beaters," "keepers" and "seekers" - the latter being Harry Potter's position).

quidditch2.jpgquidditch2.jpg The game is played with seven players on a team and more than 700 rules. Three mounted hula hoops serve as goals on opposite ends of the field. Each team has three chasers, who run and throw a volleyball, basketball or dodgeball up and down the field to score by passing it through the opponent's hoops - which are guarded by a keeper. Each team also has two beaters, who throw balls at the chasers to temporarily knock them out of the game. The twist comes with the seeker - one player on each team whose job is to chase down the "snitch," a neutral runner who belongs to neither team. The snitch (a winged golden ball in the movies and novels who is replaced by a player dressed in gold and sometimes adorned with wings) does whatever it takes to avoid capture, including leaving the field of play. Once the snitch is caught, the game is over and the points are tallied. All of this is done with a broomstick between each players legs, which - in the words of one muggle - "adds a level of difficulty and silliness that makes the game awesome."

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