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Ohio University Quidditch Off To Good Start
By: Erick Starkey
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The Ohio University quidditch team is the newest club sport on the Athens campus. The team just became an official club sport a few weeks ago. The quidditch team began as 3 different university organizations, all with the same goal. Since each of the three organizations all had the same purpose, they joined together to increase their numbers.
Being the newest club, the team hasn’t seen too much of a change between being an organization and a club sport.
"We are just now starting the paperwork and we have gotten all that in, but I mean immediately off the bat, we are communicating with the university all the time, I've had to fill out a lot of forms and I know AJ has had to fill out a ton of forms," Ryan Altenbach, a quidditch player and one of the founders of the team said.
The quidditch team joins a group of other club sports at Ohio University like ultimate, rugby, and crew.
The team, now recognized by the university as a club sport, is in its current season against quidditch teams from other schools.
The concept of quidditch came from the popular game from the Harry Potter movies, but are adapted to be played on the ground. Each player has to have something that resembles a broom between their legs the whole time. The general concept is to have players throw a volleyball through the opponents rings. Each time the ball is successfully thrown through the hoop, 10 points go to that team. One player per team tries to get the snitch off of one of the referees and that signals the end of the game and the team who got the snitch gets an extra thirty points.
The seeker spends the whole game trying to find and wrestle the snitch, or a tennis ball, off of one of the referees.
"As the team seeker, my favorite part of quidditch is catching the snitch and ending the game, just the feel of pulling the snitch off the Velcro and hearing the sound of it tearing," AJ Davis, president of the quidditch team, said, "It gets you all riled up and pumped up, it's a great feeling to have everyone rush over to you and give you a hug."
Ohio Universities team has been pitted against other universities through the year and on the field there is a fierce battle, but off the field, there is a community about the sport.
The OU team just competed in a tournament this past weekend at West Virginia University and finished 3-1, their best showing this year. They finished second overall out of the schools in attendance even though they only took nine of their 21 players, causing them to only have two substitutions for the four games. The Athens based team has had more success than other schools in their first official year.
"As far as this team goes, we are miles, light years, ahead of the talent level of other first year teams this year," Altenbach said.
The Ohio University quidditch team is hoping to use this successful first year as a spring board to be better in years to come.