Quidditch isn’t just a fantasy sport played in Harry Potter. The University of Northern Colorado has brought it to life with the club called quadball.
Quidditch is a fictional sport that was invented by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter book series. The sport in the fantasy world is played by witches and wizards riding on flying broomsticks. The game is played on a large oval patch with three ring-shaped goals on each side.
Quidditch was founded and brought to life in 2005 by a student at Middlebury College in Vermont. UNC brought Quidditch to campus and created a club that has since changed the name to quadball.
Tessa Davis, president of the quadball team said, “Our organization that we run under has gone away from Quidditch and has now called it quadball. So that we can have a little bit more freedom in our advertising and we weren’t getting as far with the copyright issues of using Harry Potter and all that. They also wanted to get away from J.K. Rowling because of her political issues.”
Davis thought it was cool that UNC had a Quidditch team since she was interested in Harry Potter.
“I was always dead set on, if I go to UNC, I am joining the Quidditch team,” Davis said. “UNC and Quidditch were paired in my head from the beginning.”
Davis said that as the president, she is also the coach, plans practices, coordinates volunteer events and travel plans for the team. The team travels multiple times during the year for tournaments such as regionals and nationals. The team has scrimmages against the Mile High club team throughout the year.
The UNC team currently has 10 members. A full roster is 15.
“We’d like to have a couple more,” Davis said.
Stephani Struwe, a Junior on the quadball team says she knew she wanted to join the team after hearing a story about it on the news while she was in high school.
“They told me it was a good first sport because it was like a sampler plate of everything,” Struwe said.
D.J. Horwarth, a UNC junior, said he joined the team because of Stephani.
“Eventually, I just showed up to a practice and I have been on the team since,” Horwarth said.
Davis says that anyone can join the team. She said emailing her, directly messaging the club’s Instagram, going through the campus website, or visiting the campus recreation center’s website are the easiest ways to get more information about joining quadball.
Davis says the team asks that each member comes to practice at least once a week, but it is a low-commitment club. The team practices on Tuesday and Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m. and Saturday from 9-11 a.m.
“After Saturday morning practices, there are quite a few times where we will all go to the dining hall and just eat brunch together, and still stay for another like two hours just kind of talking with each other,” Struwe said.
“It is a good community. It is a smaller team so we are all a lot closer with each other,” Horwath said. “They have become some of my best friends.”
