Thirty students gathered under the moon Wednesday, broomsticks in hand, and brought a sport called quidditch to UF.
Quidditch, famed by the “Harry Potter” book series, is a mix between dodgeball, basketball and capture the flag.
Amy Lobasso, a UF sophomore, saw YouTube videos of college students playing a modified version of the game and started a Facebook page to see what response it would get from UF students.
“I thought everyone would laugh at me,” she said.
But within two weeks, more than 300 students joined the group and posted comments about their excitement on the page.
In the books, the game is played by witches and wizards flying on broomsticks. In the nonmagical version of the game, broomsticks are required, but flight is not.
Students at Middlebury College in Vermont started an intramural quidditch league in 2005, and interest gathered quickly.
The Intercollegiate Quidditch Association was founded in 2007, and a rule book was formalized. There are now more than 200 teams from colleges all over the world.
“UF is such a big school,” Lobasso said. “It’s not right for us not to have one.”
Each team has seven players, explained Gerri Sterne, the team’s webmaster.
Three offensive players called chasers pass a volleyball dubbed the quaffle and try to throw it into one of the three hoops guarded by a keeper at the end of the field for 10 points.
Quidditch is a contact sport where one-handed tackling and grabbing are allowed while teams wrestle for the quaffle.
Two beaters throw dodgeballs called bludgers at the opposing team’s chasers to try to tag them out of play. If a chaser is hit, he or she can continue playing after taking a lap around his or her team’s goalposts.
The last member of a team is the seeker, whose job is to catch the snitch. In the books, the snitch is a small golden ball with wings that flies around the playing field. In the nonmagical game, the snitch is a neutral player who is often dressed in yellow and keeps a tennis ball in a sock in its back pocket that others try to capture.
A seeker captures the snitch by grabbing the sock or ball out of the snitch’s pocket. The capture is worth 30 points and ends the game.
The snitch is allowed to run around campus and do almost anything to evade capture, including climbing a tree or riding a bike.
“The snitch is the entertainment factor,” Lobasso said.
The chasers, beaters, keeper and seeker must have a broom between their legs and one hand on the handle during the entire game.
Nick Murado, a first-year law student at UF, knows what it takes to play quidditch.
He has played since 2003, before Middlebury College created its league, in tournaments at Harry Potter conventions. He said the intensity of the game is what he loves most about it.
UF’s team formed too late in the semester to apply to Student Government for recognition as a formal club, but Lobasso said she plans to apply in the Spring semester and hopes to receive some funding.
Lobasso said if the team receives funding, she would like to have full uniforms with capes and travel to compete with other schools.
