Members of MSU’s new Quidditch league don’t use jet packs and they won’t fly through fields, but they are contributing to a skyrocketing interest in Quidditch — a game inspired by the fictional world of J.K Rowling’s “Harry Potter” book series — that has emerged on a local, national and international level.
Quidditch, as described in Harry Potter, is a popular airborne competition among broomstick-riding wizards, requiring ball-like objects such as the spellbound golden snitch, the quaffle and bludgers. The object of the game is to score the most points and, ultimately, catch the golden snitch.
Psychology and math junior Ryan Duffy formed MSU’s Quidditch league this semester, fueled by his 12-year love for the books, which began in third grade.
“I was worried that no one was going to be interested and it was going to look really dorky,” Duffy said.
Despite Duffy’s concern, fear of dorkiness did not stop the 100 people who attended the league’s first meeting. The 55 students who remain involved with the league pay $7 dues and attend meetings and practices.
The league is registered with the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association, allowing MSU teams to compete against 250 colleges in the U.S. and abroad. All teams abide by the IQA Guide & Rulebook, which has translated the storybook game into a muggle, or nonmagical human, sport.
IQA Commissioner Alex Benepe said Quidditch has taken off since he and friend Xander Manshel created the muggle version of Quidditch in 2005 at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt.
The number of teams involved in the Quidditch World Cup at Middlebury College has doubled since last year, Benepe said.
“It’s really fun and it’s rewarding to have 20 teams of colleges from all over the world come play,” Benepe said.
MSU’s Quidditch league has six teams, four of which have chosen their own Harry Potter-inspired names: the Mischief Managers, the Team Nighthawks, the Fizzing Whizbees and the Ministry of Magic. Duffy said the teams will play against one another for the first year to practice technique, and then begin traveling next year. The Fizzing Whizbees will play the Ministry of Magic on Nov. 7 at the field behind the rock on Farm Lane.
“I don’t really want to play regular sports,” said anthropology sophomore Bailey Reidinger, a captain for the Ministry of Magic who has been playing and taught Quidditch for several years through the Girl Scouts camp where she works.
MSU’s Quidditch league — the first official Harry Potter club on campus — is providing an outlet for Harry Potter fans at MSU.
“I think as people get older, they start to feel a little more embarrassed because they are so obsessed with Harry Potter, so no one wanted to start a Harry Potter club,” league member and psychology sophomore Sara Tischler said.
Writing, rhetoric and American culture professor Gary Hoppenstand said Quidditch leagues show how Harry Potter books have impacted young adults.
“It’s these kind of characters that have achieved immortality,” Hoppenstand said. “If we’re here 100 years from now, so will Harry Potter.”
Reidinger said the book has had a sweeping impact on her life. Aside from meeting friends at home, she found Harry Potter created a universal connection when she purchased the sixth novel with a group of foreign friends in Sweden.
“You think you can never play it in real life because you can’t fly,” Reidinger said. “Someone went and created muggle Quidditch and it’s just this really great way to connect to Harry Potter.”
Sociology professor Toby Ten Eyck said he wasn’t surprised about the emergence of muggle Quidditch, but it represents a lack of creativity.
“It is just them taking something that someone has given them,” Ten Eyck said. “They haven’t made it fantastic, they just made it fit.”
Ten Eyck said students imitating the fictional game demonstrates how a pop culture craze can distance people from their free will.
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“Their leisurely activities are being chosen for them,” he said.
But Arthur A. Levine, who published the Harry Potter series, said in falling in love with the series, many kids discover they love reading, too.
“Start with Harry Potter and go from there,” Levine said. “There are other books that you will be able to find that will inspire you, as well.”
J.K. Rowling’s ideas have left the realm of fiction and entered multiple platforms, influencing more than just readers. The series has received attention from varying schools of thought, including politics and scientific history.
Activist organization The Harry Potter Alliance has used the books’ themes to support issues such as same-sex marriage and environmentalism.
Lyman Briggs assistant professor Mark Waddell has incorporated the series in some of his lectures and researched for the United States National Library of Medicine’s exhibit, “Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine.”
“This is what great books do: They inspire you to be better people, to care more about someone else because you read about a character,” Levine said. “… That is what the Harry Potter books have done.”
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