Quidditch players are leaving Harry Potter behind as they aim for athletic credibility

BY JESSICA CONTRERA June 29 at 7:37 PM

The Nike-clad coach barked out the words as they appeared on the screen: Rules! Opponents! Officials! Teammates! Self!

Her audience was still attentive more than an hour into her presentation. They soaked it up as she encouraged them to prove themselves, to be what they knew they could be: athletes.

Athletes, with coaches and referees and rule books and tryouts and fans.

But also with brooms.

And a guy who runs around as if he is a magical flying ball.

No capes though — they tossed that idea years ago, they promise.

Welcome to the third annual conference of the International Quidditch Association, held this weekend at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

Quidditch, of course, is a game invented by J.K. Rowling and detailed in her seven “Harry Potter” novels. In the game, wizards fly on brooms to score points by catching, throwing and shooting balls through elevated hula hoops.

Adapted by muggles (non-wizarding folk) at Middlebury College in Vermont in 2005, the phenomenon has grown to include more than 4,000 players on 300 teams around the world, mostly based at colleges and universities, although several cities have community teams as well.

The game is typically played on a 30-by-48-yard field on which athletes run with brooms or PVC pipes between their legs, throw volleyballs or dodgeballs at each other and through hoops. Scoring is complex, and the highest-value maneuver involves catching a human embodiment of the “snitch,” who sprints around the field of play.

“Attitude is what matters most,” the coach, a paid speaker, was saying now. “Especially when you want to be taken seriously.”

To be taken seriously, the quidditch players have been adapting the culture of more respected sports by certifying their coaches, standardizing the rules and recruiting talented athletes. The conference this weekend, where some 40 players gathered to improve their coaching, refereeing and team-management skills before playing in a small tournament Sunday, was part of that effort.

But they’ve also been trying something else to gain respect: ditching Harry Potter.

In recent years and in conferences such as the Washington gathering, the players have been actively disassociating themselves from the fantasy world in which their sport was born.

Though most still love the series, they have decided that the sport has outgrown its children’s-novel roots.

And they’re not alone. Seven years after the final book was released and four years after the last movie premiered, the fan base for the Boy Who Lived — on Web sites, at conferences and in this college-popular “sport” — is carrying on the Potter legacy by leaving Harry behind.

Enduring and adapting
Record-breaking sales, the highest-grossing film series of all time, Diagon Alley replicas . . . you remember.

For more than a decade, the world was taken with the magical universe in which 11-year-olds could steal their dads’ flying cars, discover invisible rooms, fight evil wizards and, of course, learn inspiring lessons from it all in the end.

The Potter mania hasn’t faded quickly, especially with Warner Bros. adapting Rowling’s fictional encyclopedia “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and the Universal Studios Potter attractions.

The fan-based institutions that brought together the diehard Potter lovers are still alive and well. But they too are shifting away from Harry Potter to survive.

At its peak, top Potter fan site MuggleNet.com had more than 50 million visitors per month. Its founder, Emerson Spartz, said traffic dropped in half after the last movie came out in 2011.

But in the three years since, the stream of visitors has been consistent, even as posts shifted focus from the books and movies to news about the movies’ actors, theme park and J.K. Rowling’s new novels. “Look at ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘Star Trek’,” Spartz said. “Those series have all taken pauses from an official perspective, but their community of fans remain strong and vibrant.”

A similar fan site, The-Leaky-Cauldron.org, was known for organizing each year the world’s largest Harry Potter conference, called LeakyCon. Today, LeakyCon advertises itself as an event for multiple fan bases, from Disney to “Twilight” to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Quidditch has followed suit. It was once common for players on college campuses to wear capes, dress as characters from the books and talk about “bringing fantasy to real life.” Today, Harry Potter isn’t mentioned in the online history of the International Quidditch Association.

Instead, hoping to attract former varsity athletes, the group highlights that the activity is a full-contact sport. This year, they are even changing the rules so that all quidditch coaches must be tested and certified.

“As we’ve pushed to be more of a sport, and as the average college team has become more competitive, it becomes more intimidating for the casual Harry Potter fan who has never played a sport before to join,” said Logan Anbinder, who has played for the University of Maryland team and the Silicon Valley Skyfighters, a community team. “And that’s kind of sad.”

Homage to the original star
The day after the quidditch coaching session, the conference continued with meetings on injury prevention, tournament planning and referee training.

But for one hour on Saturday afternoon, 15 players gathered in convention center room 147A for a discussion on Harry himself.

The group was made up primarily of the players who came to quidditch first as Potter fans. They are no longer the majority of the participants.

One had tried to start a team in the second grade. Another still runs a blog where she writes in character as Narcissa Malfoy. One bought a new Hogwarts robe every time she outgrew the previous one, so that she could keep dressing as Hermione.

The question on the table was right up her alley: Who was a better friend to Harry — Ron or Hermione?

“Hermione is way more useful. I mean, what does Ron do?”

“Just because they fought, true friendship is sometimes hating each other’s guts.”

“Hermione isn’t under the same pressure and circumstances as Ron!”

A few players flipped through tattered copies of the books to make their points, their inner fandom now out in full force.

Back and forth they went: Is Voldemort redeemable? Is it fair for J.K. Rowling to say Dumbledore was gay after the series ended? Does your house affiliation matter after you graduate from Hogwarts?

And then it was time to be done. They gathered their books and headed over to the next room, where for the first time they could be certified as official quidditch coaches. The questions took a different form: When can a team be disqualified? When can a player be banned from the league? Does a medical professional need to be present at each match?

They would always be Potter fans, but these days, being athletes mattered more.

 Desubot wrote:
Is the snitch a greased up pigglit?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Ultimate frisbee isn't seriously considered a sport by anyone except the people who play it. Its a game.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Ultimate frisbee isn't seriously considered a sport by anyone except the people who play it. Its a game.

n 1979 and 1980 the Ultimate Players Association (UPA) was formed. The UPA organized regional tournaments and has crowned a national champion every year since 1979. On May 25, 2010 the UPA rebranded itself as USA Ultimate.

The popularity of the sport spread quickly, taking hold as a free-spirited alternative to traditional organized sports. In recent years college ultimate has attracted a greater number of traditional athletes, raising the level of competition and athleticism and providing a challenge to its laid back, free-spirited roots.

In 1981 the European Flying disc Federation (EFDF) was formed.[9] The first European Championship tournament for national teams (Open division) was held in 1980, in Paris, France. In 1984 the World Flying Disc Federation was formed by the EFDF to be the international governing body for disc sports.[9] The first World Championships tournament was held in 1983 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Ultimate Canada is the National Governing Body for the sport of ultimate in Canada.[14]

In 2006 ultimate became a BUCS accredited sport at UK universities for both indoor and outdoor open division events.

 jasper76 wrote:
Sure, I guess it could be considered a sport. So could competitive masturbating.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
Sure, I guess it could be considered a sport. So could competitive masturbating.

Never quite understood competitive masturbating. You win if you finish quickly?

nkelsch wrote:
Anything goes... Imagine as if you had baseball and the mascot was allowed to run on the field and interfere with play as much as he wanted.

 Bromsy wrote:
And yet Cheerleading struggles to be recognized as a sport.

 Bromsy wrote:
And yet Cheerleading struggles to be recognized as a sport.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
And yet Cheerleading struggles to be recognized as a sport.

It gets struggled to be recognized because there is a ton of money behind keeping it from being a sport.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
And yet Cheerleading struggles to be recognized as a sport.

It gets struggled to be recognized because there is a ton of money behind keeping it from being a sport.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
And yet Cheerleading struggles to be recognized as a sport.

It gets struggled to be recognized because there is a ton of money behind keeping it from being a sport.

Everyone knows women don't play sports Next people will be claiming there are girls on the internet

 Jihadin wrote:
Replace the guy running around acting like a magic ball and replace him/her with a remote drone operator using a RC Buggy capable of going 65 mph. Actually no. Drone operator might have prior experience as a Predator operator. Make the RC Buggy 25 mph

The brooms, we just used a pvc pipe. I wrapped mine in digicam duct tape. decorating your broom to be as outlandish as possible is half the point to be hoenst. Plus as said above it forces you to do everything with only one hand, which I will say is dang challenging, especially because you need to be able to use either hand. I probably shouldn't admit this but by this point I feel weird doing any kind of athletic activity with two free hands just because I've played so much quidditch.