Quidditch named new Rec Sports intramural sport

Quidditch teams will storm Dunn Meadow with their brooms Saturday for the first-ever Campus Recreational Sports quidditch tournament.

After a year of deliberation CRS decided to make quidditch, a sport adapted from the Harry Potter books and films, into an official intramural sport.

“Every year all our team members and student leaders give consideration to information from surveys, focus groups and participant feedback to help find what activities students would enjoy having on the calendar,” CRS Director, Kathy Bayless, said. “One of the ideas, about a year ago, was quidditch.”

Ever since the Harry Potter films premiered, there has been an interest in the game, which has spawned the International Quidditch Association, Bayless said.

The IQA has a governing board with rules, regulations, competitions and clinics, causing teams to sprout up across the country.

“It’s novel,” Bayless said.

Since quidditch is a relatively new sport on college campuses, Bayless said she hopes it will attract more students.

“It’s non-traditional in that there aren’t a lot of traditions around it yet to frame peoples’ understanding about skill level,” Bayless said. “It’s very accessible in peoples’ thinking whereas football or basketball, the media images sometimes make it difficult to feel like you belong.”

As an intramural sport, quidditch will start with one tournament to determine how much student interest there is, CRS assistant director and quidditch tournament organizer, Satoshi Kido, said.

The tournament will occur at the Woodlawn fields, with the first game starting Saturday at 2:15 p.m. The teams will be put into a pool and play a couple of different teams, then break into single elimination, Kido said.

Today is the final day for teams to register. So far, Kido estimates six or seven teams have already signed up.

The Midnight Snipes Quidditch team is currently a student life and learning club and was founded in 2011. Bayless said they have been a huge help in determining rules and regulations for CRS to use in the tournament.

“Rec Sports asked us for help putting the tournament on,” Co-President of the Midnight Snipes, Caroline Alexander, said. “It’s not so much our club is becoming an intramural as it is we are helping adapt the rules for intramurals.”

Alexander said the team isn’t afraid the sport becoming intramural will diminish the Midnight Snipes club.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for us because not many people know about us,” Alexander said. “People are starting to realize we’re a presence on campus, and Rec Sports is giving us a chance to market out team. I think it’ll bring in more people, so I’m pretty excited about it.”

“I hope people can realize it’s a legitimate sport,” Alexander said. “We play a combination of rugby, basketball and soccer, so it’s pretty intense. I think if we get anything from this, it’s that people would realize that more.”