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Walking into Dumbach Hall’s room 125 on a hazy Wednesday evening, I knew I had found the right room. Looking to my left, the word “Quidditch” was emblazoned across the blackboard encircled by stars and moons. Someone sitting in the back cracked a joke about Dementors that elicited much chuckling from those present. No, this wasn’t a regional Harry Potter appreciation club. This was much more serious. This was the first meeting of the official Loyola University of Chicago Quidditch team.
Originally beginning as an intramural league at Connecticut’s Middlebury college by the first commissioner Alexander Manshel, the IQA (Intercollegiate Quidditch Association) became an official league in 2007 after the first intercollegiate match was played between Middlebury and Vassar Colleges on Nov. 11 of that year. Since that first game, the sport that previously existed only in the pages of the wildly popular Harry Potter novels has become an international phenomenon. With more than 200 colleges and universities worldwide putting together teams in very short periods of time, the league continues to grow each week as the sport makes its slow but steady westward progress across the country.
With the majority of its teams in the U.S., the IQA has carved the country into the five separate conferences of Northeast, Southeast, Midwest (wherein our beloved Ramblers will compete), Southwest and Northwest, all of which are mandated by the official rule-book of the IQA and the individual constitutions required of each sanctioned team.
The rules, designed to resemble the high-flying, full-contact nature of the sport played in the novels as closely as possible, place 14 players at seven per side on a soccer pitch with three raised hoops at each end. Each team has two Beaters whose job it is to use dodgeballs to knock other players temporarily out of the game. Three Chasers crisscross the pitch throughout the match attempting to thread a soccer or volleyball into one of the three hoops behind the other team’s Keeper, who attempts to prevent scoring similarly to a soccer goalie.
The Seeker and the Snitch, the ball whose capture by the Seeker marks the end of a match, is the piece of the game that differs most from the Quidditch played in the novels (besides the lack of flight). That’s because the Snitch is a person, not a ball and that’s what the Seeker must catch to end the game. The Snitch may leave the pitch at any time as long as he or she returns at intervals of at least every 15 minutes, shorter if a game is taking too long to complete.
The concept of forming a competitive Quidditch team at Loyola was the brainchild of current juniors Thanwan Ploy and Marianne Zolnowski while the pair were sitting in French class one day. Despite their lack of experience in the fantastical game, they are confident in their ability to piece together a more than competent squad.
“While I’ve never played the game before ... I’ve read a lot about it. I feel like I’ve got a pretty good grip on what the rules are and how it’s supposed to be played,” said Zolnowski at the first official recruitment meeting, “It will be a great learning experience.”
While there was a solid turnout at the first meeting, there are further obstacles that any Loyolan wishing to play on a legitimized team must face first. As of now the Loyola Quidditch Team is only a student organization, and not a club team. This means that they do not yet have access to Loyola funds or the ability to travel and compete against other IQA sanctioned teams. It may take more than a little wand waving to get this would-be club sport off the ground, so to speak.
When asked how Loyola on the whole had reacted to the implementation of a sport played in a book notoriously banned by many Catholic institutions, Zolnowski had this to say: “There were two types of reactions: complete enthusiasm and then disinterest. Along the way we did get a few people who were concerned that we were going to be a wizard cult and perform magic spells on people, which was completely shocking. I never thought that Quidditch could be taken that way.”
In order to gain status beyond that of a student organization, the fledgling Quidditch club must first demonstrate to the administration that they are serious and that they indeed do not intend to curse, hex, jinx or otherwise magically impair the normal functioning of a decidedly non-magical Jesuit University. If accepted as a club, the Loyola Quidditch team will begin practices and the nomination of captains during the upcoming semester.
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