ATHLETICS
Quidditch for the muggles Geneseo students bring Harry Potter’s favorite magical sport to life.
PHOTO BY KEITH WALTERS ’11
Joseph Monoenko ’13 gets ready to hurl the quaffle past an opponent at a recent match of Quidditch, a sport adapted from the Harry Potter book and film series. Unlike the wizards, Geneseo players can’t fly, so they run with broomsticks. The team won an East Coast tournament last semester.
By Madeline Smith ’14
hen Matthew Cavanaugh ’12 tells peers that he participates in Harry Potter’s favorite game of shooting through the sky on wooden broomsticks while harnessing his power to hurl metal balls and using his agility to catch golden snitches, everyone’s first question is, “How do you fly?” Since no one has discovered the secret to flight, Cavanaugh and his teammates recreate Quidditch for muggles — or the nonwizard way — by running with brooms between their legs for the entire match. “It can get a little tiring … but you get used to it faster than you think,” says Olga Iodka ’12, president of Geneseo Quidditch. Iodka and Cavanaugh, who is vice president and coach, have worked together to build up a fledgling intramural club that has grown both in size and skill since its founding in 2009. The team now boasts 21
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members. Last April, the team outplayed several East Coast teams to win the 2011 Butterbeer Classic at Vassar College. Geneseo’s team is part of the International Quidditch Association, which governs 1,000 clubs worldwide; it is one of more than a dozen intramural sports offered at Geneseo. Last year, about half of all Geneseo students — nearly 2,800 — participated in an intramural sport or tournament, according to Intramural Director Brooks Hawley. Quidditch is the only intramural sport adapted from the Harry Potter $15 billion
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Organize your own Quidditch game in 7 easy steps! go.geneseo.edu/muggles Players introduce the game — go.geneseo.edu/quidditch
empire, but members aren’t necessarily Potter fanatics. “One misconception,” says Nick Tobey ’12, “is that Quidditch is a Harry Potter fan club that does this on the side, but it’s really the other way around.” The team is more of a close-knit group of friends who love to compete together. The game is fast, physical and strategic. Each team fields seven players whose mission is to score goals by hurling a “quaffle” (aka volleyball) through three hula hoops erected atop aluminum poles. To score, three “chasers” from each team pass the “quaffle.” Each time they land a quaffle in a hoop, they earn 10 points. The “keeper” guards the hoops. “Beaters” throw “bludgers”— dodgeballs — at the opposing chasers to prevent them from scoring. Entirely separate from the competition on the field, each team has one “seeker” whose only job is to capture the elusive “Golden Snitch” — a neutral player, dressed in yellow. Whichever seeker grabs the sock that hangs from the snitch’s back pocket earns 30 points and the game is over. But it’s a tricky task seeing as the snitch has free rein to run and hide all over campus. “The snitch is allowed to throw, trip and do all sorts of physical tactics to prevent you from catching him,” said Michael Hsu ’12, an experienced seeker. “The snitch likes to mess with people,” says Iodka. They often enjoy climbing trees to playfully tease frustrated seekers. Last fall, the team competed in its largest competition yet — the International Quidditch Association World Cup in New York City, where they faced teams from Arizona, Ottawa, Florida and Delaware. One hundred teams and 20,000 spectators attended the event. “It’s not as serious as the other sports,” Cavanaugh explained. “It’s a made-up game, it’s fun, it’s entertaining and as much as some of us love Harry Potter, it’s more about playing a sport with people you love.” Winter 2012
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