THE KINCARDINE INDEPENDENT, Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Page 23

Quidditch for muggles bewitches KDSS

By Kristen Shane
The whistle blows and
about a dozen teens divided
into two teams charge at each
other on the Kincardine and
District Secondary School
rugby field.
One player grips a ball
and dodges members of the
opposing team as he sprints
to the other end of the field
to score.
“Keep your broomsticks
between your legs,” yells the
teacher refereeing the game
from the sidelines.
Huh?
This isn’t your average in-
tramural sport. It’s quidditch
for muggles.
Huh?
That’s Harry-Potter-speak
for a magical sport created by
the books’ author, J.K. Rowl-
ing, that American college
students four years ago first
adapted for humans to play
in real life.
Almost all of Rowling’s
seven top-selling Harry Potter
books feature a rousing quid-
ditch match in which teen-
aged witches zoom around
the sky on broomsticks dodg-
ing or chasing after enchant-
ed balls.
Laura Brown is a Grade
12 KDSS student who, like
many others her age, grew up
imagining quidditch games
in her head while reading
the books.
Then, in August, while
preparing to lead Grade 9 ori-
entation activities, she and
three other senior students
realized their mutual love for
Harry Potter.
When school rolled around,
they made a club out of it,
dubbed Dumbledore’s Army
after a similarly named stu-
dent group from the books.
“Then we decided, ‘Well,
you can’t have Harry Potter
without quidditch.’”
So club co-creator Kaitlyn
Hundt e-mailed the Inter-
collegiate Quidditch Asso-
ciation, a quidditch league
started among American col-
leges that has snowballed to
include more than 200 groups.
A league official sent Hundt
the quidditch rulebook, and
the KDSS games began.
“It’s a lot similar to the
quidditch in the Harry Potter
books, except we can’t fly,”
says Brown with a chuckle,
“but we still have broom-
sticks between our legs.”
Some are scraggly straw
witches’ brooms bought in
costume stores at Hallow-
een. Other students boast
blue-bristled plastic push
brooms.
At KDSS’s first real quid-
ditch game last Wednesday
(Dumbledore’s Army previ-
ously played two exhibition
matches for practice), Grade
9 student Jason McDonell
sports a corn broom whose
bristles look as if they’ve
never once swept a floor.
“I keep it in my locker,” he
says. He’s planning to paint
it green soon, to match his
house colour. McDonell is
a member of the Slytherin
House, one of four teams in-
cluded in the Rowling books.
Some players wear t-shirts,
trackpants or sweaters in
their team colour. McDonell
sports a green garbage bag
tied around his neck as a
cape.
They try to mimic the
game described in the books
as closely as possible.
But without magic, mug-
gles sometimes have to im-
provise.
In the books, the ‘snitch’
is a small winged golden
ball that darts from place
to place in the sky, eluding
the ‘seeker’ from each team
tasked with catching it. The
one who does, wins the game
for his or her team.
“That’s not really possible
because we can’t make a ball
fly,” says Brown.
So Grade 12 player Taurian
Roy is the next best thing. The
volleyball, basketball and
track athlete likes to run.
“They kind of made me do
it just because I’m fast. It’s
fun though. It’s a way to exer-
cise at lunch,” he says, before
Lubi Horvathova, second from left, tries to hit Lauren Scott with a bludger. Meanwhile, Mickey
Collins, far right, runs to catch the quaffle that Gryffindor keeper Zi Han Wang, second from right,
is about to throw as Slytherin chaser Kaitlyn Hundt tries to intercept. (Kristen Shane photo)
a shrill whistle signals the
start of last week’s game.
As the snitch, Roy sprints
around the playing field and
beyond, until one of the seek-
ers manages to catch up and
rip off a flag attached to his
waist to score 50 points and
win the game.
Meanwhile, on the playing
field, Brown and other ‘chas-
ers’ try to throw the ‘quaffle,’
a mini soccer ball, past the
other team’s ‘keeper’ (goalie)
and into one of three hula
hoops duct-taped to the top of
plastic piping and used as nets
on each end of the field. Each
time a player scores, their
team gets 10 points. The team
with the most points, when
the teacher blows the whistle
at the end of the lunch hour,
wins, if the snitch has yet to
be caught.
In the books, two ‘beaters’
on each team use wooden
clubs to hurl other balls,
called ‘bludgers,’ at the oppos-
ing team’s chasers to knock
them off course.
In muggle quidditch, the
game is tamer. Beaters throw
squishy plastic balls, and if
they hit a chaser carrying the
quaffle, the chaser has to give
up the ball.
The whole game is fast-
paced and, to some, seems
akin to rugby or soccer.
Not to McDonell.
“It’s in its own category;
it’s too great to be compared
to any sport,” he says.
He may wear a garbage
bag cape and carry a broom
between his legs, but McDo-
nell isn’t afraid of what other
students think of him playing
quidditch.
“My friends think it’s pret-
ty cool. They like to come out
and cheer me on,” he says.
“We’re kind of considered
nerds, but we’re proud of it,”
says Mickey Collins, a player
in Grade 10. “We don’t really
care what people think – we
just have a lot of fun doing
it.”
And their enthusiasm for
the game has caught on. As
players rush across the field
on a sunny November af-
ternoon, about 50 students
hang out in groups watching
them.
Why the crowd?
“It’s a new thing and it’s
just something different,”
explains Brown. “You don’t
get to watch quidditch every
day.”
For now, teams only face
off twice a week if they’re
lucky – Mondays and Fri-
days at lunch. The regular
Harry Potter book club meets
Wednesdays to concoct po-
tions, answer trivia questions
and discuss the finer points
of the books.
Brown says she hopes the
quidditch teams can play
about five more games, take a
break in the winter and con-
tinue in the spring. Which-
ever team gains the most
points at the end of the year,
through quidditch, trivia and
other competitions, wins the
House Cup (another feature
drawn from the books).
After Wednesday’s match
against Slytherin, Gryffindor
has the upper hand – but just
barely.
The team is down 30 points
before the whistle blows and
referee Vince Yenssen says
keeper Brady Risteen has
caught the snitch and boosted
the score 60-40 for Gryffin-
dor.
Players walk off the field
panting, but exhilarated.
Looks like the beginning
of a bewitching season.

Members of KDSS quidditch teams, from front left: Lauren Scott and Jason McDonell; second
Seeker Brady Risteen chases after snitch Taurian Roy. Risteen row, Kaitlyn Hundt and Kerri Adams; third row, Tawny Robinson, Mickey Collins, Lubi Horvathova,
eventually ripped the flag from Roy’s waist, therefore winning Laura Brown, River Roy and David Yun; back row, Zi Han Wang, Michael Ferguson and Kyle
the game for Gryffindor. (Kristen Shane photo) Threndyle. (Kristen Shane photo)