It's time for a column that I have been putting off for a year now. Some will scoff, others will laugh, but all the pieces are in place, so it's time to come out and say it: Quidditch is a real sport.
Yes, that craziness that takes place on the Res Quad every weekend, with people running around on brooms, is as much a sport as baseball or basketball. In some regards, it may even be more physically demanding.
We'll start with the basics. The Random House Dictionary defines the word "sport" as "an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature." Quidditch fits those criteria. Sure the game is played on brooms, but the only reason we don't question equipment in other sports is that we are used to it. Every sport, when explained to someone with no knowledge of it, seems fundamentally weird. I don't understand anything about cricket, yet half the world loves it. Not only are the brooms a fundamental part of the game, they increase the skill and physical prowess from our definition that a player needs.
But beyond fitting a definition, Quidditch has solidified itself in the sports echelon because the level of play has risen. This past weekend, I traveled to the Quidditch World Cup on Randall's Island near New York City for the second consecutive year to play with my friends from home. It quickly became evident that there is no place in the game for the Harry Potter fanboyism that originally embraced it. Sunday morning, I was trucked through defending a fast break by a man from USC who must have quit football when the school lost its ability to play in the postseason. Every limb of my body is in some way battered, bruised or cut open.
The shift can also be seen in the results on the field. The success of small schools — Tufts, Vassar, Middlebury — in the early years of the competition is quickly being usurped by the state−college juggernauts. Kansas won the Midwest regionals over Pitt and Michigan State. Minnesota, Texas A&M and Florida joined Middlebury in the World Cup semifinals. A game once defined by precision passing is now being decided by who's biggest.
In an interview with our very own Ben Kochman in Monday's paper, junior Howie Levine says that Quidditch is "almost losing a little bit of what made it so fun in the first place." Perhaps that is the most telling statement of just how far the sport has come. In the sports world, a game at its highest level is often about more than fun. When the sport involves as much physicality and as little padding as this one does, that's even truer.
While the NCAA may not take notice (and hey, do we really want it to? Quidditch has a playoff to decide its champion already), the game seems prepared to separate itself into different levels of play. The World Cup had two divisions for different skill levels, and many colleges already have intramural teams, but the conscious acknowledgment of the shift from "nerds" to athletes is not far off. And when Quidditch is played at its highest level by a group of highly athletic individuals, there is no denying its sports status.
Does the inevitable loss of the sports' all−inclusiveness at the highest level sadden me? Of course it does. But I am glad that I jumped on the boat early enough to at least have the chance. As one of my friends put it, "For 48 hours I was the closest to being a ‘famous' athlete as I will ever get, something I have dreamed of becoming since I was a young boy. Hell, I watched young kids imitate me and my fellow Quidditch players."
Even as Quidditch transitions into a full−on sport, it's still fulfilling fantasies.
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Ethan Sturm is a junior majoring in Biopsychology. He can be reached at Ethan.Sturm@tufts.edu.
