Some­body Catch That Snitch; Maryville’s Quid­ditch team

 For those who don’t know, Quid­ditch is a sport fea­tured in the au­thor J.K. Rowl­ing’s best-sell­ing Harry Pot­ter se­ries. Since 1997, When Harry Pot­ter and the Sor­cer­er’s Stone was first pub­lished, many peo­ple dreamed of play­ing Quid­ditch. In 2005, this dream be­came a re­al­ity. The first United States Quid­ditch game was played on a beach at Mid­dle­bury Col­lege in Ver­mont. From then on, the sport con­tin­ued to grow with in­creas­ing pop­u­lar­ity. By 2008, the sport was fea­tured on MTV and USA To­day, which con­tin­ued to in­crease in­ter­est in the sport. By 2012, al­most 100 teams were fea­tured in the fifth an­nual World Cup.                                       

Quid­ditch at Maryville

New to Maryville, the or­ga­ni­za­tion is founded by Jor­dan Cz­erniejew­ski, a fresh­man cy­ber­se­cu­rity ma­jor. As in the se­ries, all mem­bers of the Quid­ditch team would be sorted into 4 houses. “A new plan has been formed how­ever. “We will cre­ate a club ver­sion of the team that would go out and play other col­leges.” Cz­erniejew­ski “When asked about the long term goals for this club, Jor­dan an­swered, “The long term goal is to just have fun play­ing Quid­ditch with some new friends and to maybe end up join­ing the in­ter­na­tional Quid­ditch As­so­ci­a­tion. From there maybe go­ing on to be fairly good or maybe even win the na­tional tour­na­ment.”

Rules

Now that you know about the back his­tory of Quid­ditch, it’s time to dis­cuss the rules.

Play­ers

In Quid­ditch there are seven play­ers on each team. There is one seeker, three chasers, two beat­ers and one keeper. The seek­er’s job is to catch the snitch, which is a run­ner dressed in com­plete yel­low with a tail at­tached to it. Once the tail is pulled off of the snitch, the game ends. The chasers’ jobs are to score goals worth 10 points each. The keeper is es­sen­tially the goalie and pre­vents the other team from scor­ing goals. One im­por­tant rule is that each team must have a max­i­mum of four teams that iden­tify as the same gen­der on the field at one time. Please note all play­ers are on broom­sticks. 

How can you be a part of Maryville’s Quid­ditch Team?

Maryville’s Quid­ditch team is still re­cruit­ing mem­bers! To be a part of the team, visit their Orgsync page or email Jor­dan at jcz­erniejew­ski@live.maryville.edu. Catch that snitch!