Like many Princeton students, I grew up wishing I could be a character in Harry Potter. From age 8 until a few years later (when I finally understood certain facts about the Weasleys’ existence) I considered myself a member of the family, Harry and Hermione my cool older friends, and Hogwarts the first school to which I would submit my Common App. J.K. Rowling was a monumental figure in my childhood.
That is why, when my friend notified me that she was going to a Quidditch tournament on Randall Island in New York on November 13th to watch her sister play for the U. Michigan team, I jumped right on board. And so, at noon on Sunday, I and a troupe of my hall-mates took the overpriced water taxi across the East River to the most magical sport tournament of the year: the 5th annual International Quidditch Association World Cup.
If you don’t yet know about college Quidditch:
a. Crawl out from under that rock
b. It’s a sport that was devised at Middlebury in 2005, based on the enchanted athletic activity in the Harry Potter series. The basic rules? There are three “chasers” on each team, who aim to throw a “quaffle” (aka volleyball) through three hula-hoop-ish goal posts on their opponent’s defensive side. A “keeper” blocks these posts. Two “beaters” on each team chuck three dodge balls, known as “bludgers,” at the other team’s players, who, if hit, must return to their end of the field and touch a goal post before continuing play. There is a “seeker” on each team, who strives to catch the “Golden Snitch,” a neutral and hyperactive cross-country runner dressed in bright yellow with a tennis ball dangling in a sock velcro-ed to the back of his or her shorts, who runs around the field and the surrounding areas. All players (Snitch not included) spend the game with a broomstick between their legs. If they dismount for any reason, they must grab their broomsticks and touch a goal post before reentering the game.
So it’s clear why I was so excited.
Upon arriving, we found that people had camped out there overnight in tents, a la the fourth book – a feat of considerable dedication and stupidity, considering the weather. We walked between several games, noting the line of Deathly Hallows-themed jewelry and t-shirts being sold on the sidelines. I was approached by a member of the USC team, who attempted to sell me a bracelet that read “Snitches Before Bitches.”
There was a stage erected behind the fields, on which side acts like Snape and Bellatrix of “A Very Potter Musical” (inquiring minds should search Youtube) and the wizard rock band Harry and the Potters performed. Snape took a question from the crowd: “How did you come back to life?” to which he responded: “I died? Am I dead?” “No!” shouted the audience, “We’re all so ALIIIVE!” shouted Snape, empowering-ly. As for Harry and the Potters? My friend summed it up best when she said, “wizard rock is really hit or miss. But mostly miss.” A girl from UMass walked by in a sweatshirt that said “UMass. Because Hogwarts doesn’t accept FAFSA.”
The Chasers of the Michigan State team, dressed in their personalized jerseys, informed me that they traveled 13 hours to get to New York. They practice once a week and have intramural Quidditch, to determine who was best fit to move on in representation of their school. The captain and founder of the University of Victoria in British Columbia’s team explained that she started the team one year ago “for three reasons: I am the Harry Potter generation, it seemed like fun, and I like programming.”
One of the most enjoyable features of the tournament was the selection of sportscasters presiding over the games. By and large, they were college kids with dry wit appealing to their own demographic using just enough cynicism to describe the game accurately while still reminding everyone that taking this seriously was a questionable plan. After a particularly action-packed game, one declared, “and that is how nerds stay in shape.”
Their best performance, in my opinion, was at the Harvard-Charleston playoff match, where my friends and I situated ourselves in the bleachers and started up a cheer of “GRADE INFLATION! (clap-clap-clap-clap-clap),” that we repeated whenever Harvard scored a goal. As the score was tied and the players became more aggressive, an announcer boomed into the mike, “you don’t want to mess with Charleston, because they will chew you out!….. And you don’t want to mess with Harvard either, because….. they have a ton of money.” They said the “Hah-vahd” team was still reeling from its loss of the Winklevoss twins, who have since gone on to the higher pursuit of venture capitalism, and that a particularly impressive goal was scored by a “J.P. Morgan and Chaser.”
So, I asked the players, is the primary motivation to join a Quidditch team a deep love of Harry Potter? The overwhelming response was, surprisingly, no. Alan, a Snitch from McGill, said that his team spends more time making fun of hardcore Potter fans than they do talking about Harry Potter. This was reiterated by all the teams to which I spoke; the consensus was that about half of each team obsesses over Harry Potter, while the other half thinks Quidditch is a fun way to work out, an off-beat athletic activity. The captain of the U. Victoria team told me that she used to love the books and reread them constantly for comfort, but that she stopped doing that around the time Quidditch started. “Now that I’m living in it, I feel like don’t need the books and all the other stuff anymore.”
It’s not all fun and games though. Like any other sport, Quidditch carries with it the risk of serious injuries. Alan the Canadian Snitch told me that he had been kicked in the Achilles tendon the day before and had spent the rest of the evening limping, and that one person had been carried away on a stretcher on Saturday. EMTs and ambulances stood by the perimeter of the field, and were called upon when a member of the UCLA team sustained a head injury during their game against USC. All the members of both teams dropped to one knee while they waited to see if the chaser was okay. After a while, the USC players went over to hug the injured boy’s distraught teammates.
And that camaraderie was by far the most remarkable aspect of the event. The competition and team rivalries were clearly secondary to the general sense of unity and glee among a set of people who, like myself, were thrilled to be able to extend their childhoods for an afternoon. We knew it was crazy. We knew the players looked ridiculous running around with brooms between their legs (by the way, most teams have standardized, personalized brooms. There was not a Swiffer in sight). We knew the butterbeer sold at the concession stand wasn’t magically enchanted to warm up its drinkers and that the Snitches’ antics – wrestling with the players, poking them with their own brooms, gloatingly jumping through the hoops – were actually kind of douche-baggy. But we were willing to suspend disbelief for one afternoon, as we did on long childhood afternoons spent reading The Goblet of Fire, and cheer on our favorite teams in friendly, nerdy encouragement. And when an eager local high school team beat a college team looking to practice between rounds, their team hug was joined by the members of the defeated team, as well as the Snitch, one of the announcers, and half the spectators. The other announcer, cutting through the overwhelming optimism and jubilance of the now bouncing group hug, commented in a deadpan, “It’s like an orgy of Quidditch.”
My friend turned to me at one point and said, “This is the biggest inter-collegiate event I’ve ever been to.” And it was true: it’s so rare that you can get so many people, from all across the world, to show up. And it’s even more impressive that there were thousands of college kids in one place without any noticeable bitterness in the atmosphere. The magic instilled by J.K. Rowling’s books into our childhoods had transformed, somehow, into this new kind of spell.
So my question is: where is Princeton’s Quidditch team? From my understanding, it was a force to be reckoned with back in 2008, when it hosted the first intercollegiate match against the then-undefeated Middlebury (Middlebury remained undefeated, beating Princeton 100-0. It remained undefeated all the way from 2005 until this Sunday, when it lost to U. Michigan). Sadly, our team fizzled and died shortly after. Now, there is a movement to revive the team for serious and passionate debate on Facebook. A new team is officially in the works. In my opinion, we should waste no time. Quidditch not only inspires thousands of college students to relive their fondest childhood memories and provides a wonderful opportunity for low-pressure inter-college socializing, but in the words of the U. Victoria captain, “it’s great because a bunch of people who would never hang out in any other situation get together to do this thing, and now we’re really like a family.” It is the ultimate blending of good-natured athletics and literary nerdiness: a phenomenon not unwelcome to the Princeton community.
For the time being, my friends and I returned to Princeton’s Hogwarts-esque campus, with our cheeks pink from the cold and the chorus of Harry and the Potters’ “Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock” stuck in our heads, believing once again in a little bit of magic.