26 SPORTS
Real-life Quidditch: More than just a Harry Potter by-product Reported by King Woo Edited by Stephanie Ma
The much-anticipated match commenced with “Brooms Up!” Players darted towards the balls in the centre of the field, makeshift broomsticks held between their legs. On both sides of the pitch stood three ring-shaped, silver goalposts of different heights. Quidditch is a familiar sport for Harry Potter fans, but now, the fictional game has been brought to life. Full-contact and physically intense, the magical sport leaped off the pages in 2005 when freshmen Xander Manshel and Alex Benepe of Middlebury College in Vermont, US, co-created the rules of land-based Quidditch and dubbed it “Muggle Quidditch”. A myriad of university teams are playing the sport from UC Berkeley in the US and McGill University and Carleton University in Canada to recently in Asia, the University of Hong Kong. J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world of Harry Potter continues to strike a chord with aficionados across the world, though
the last installment of the fantasy series was in 2011. Fusing together a variety of elements from rugby, dodgeball, volleyball and tag, a Quidditch team has seven players per team on the field, who must keep a makeshift broomstick — usually a plastic bar or light metal stick — between their legs at all times during the game. In order to score, chasers of each team throw the quaffle (a volleyball) through the hoops as the keepers race to ward off their attacks. Beaters can attack players’ of the opposing team using bludgers (two dodgeballs). The job of the seeker, the position that Harry Potter himself held, is to catch the “golden snitch” — a neutral player who has a yellow tennis ball attached to the back of his or her pants. The International Quidditch Association says the sport is gender inclusive, with no more than than four players of the same sex allowed on the pitch at the same time. Athletes also have the right to choose their gender.
Chris Lau Kwun-shing, chairperson of the Hong Kong University Quidditch Club, brought the game to Hong Kong after trying it out while he was studying abroad in London. Upon his return, he initiated the student project “Fly for Equality” last year at HKU to promote Quidditch in the city and to raise awareness of gender equality and identity. “I think when you play Quidditch and when you play with people of different gender identification or sexual orientation, you can really understand them and know that people can all integrate and play with each other in a harmonious way,” said Mr. Lau. “I think this is a good way to promote the concept of gender equality, because the sport itself represents a value that has been treasured in our society.” Last January, the HKU Quidditch team cooperated with the university’s Equal Opportunities Unit to promote the sport and to break traditional gender