Dartblog

This weekend I witnessed a game of Quidditch being played on the Dartmouth Green—that’s the wizard sport from Harry Potter. It was quite a sight, broomsticks and all. The Dartmouth Quidditch Team, organized by the Dartmouth Outing Club, was competing against Middlebury. Quidditch seems to be growing popular in the Ivy League. Last week there was a match at Princeton, also against Middlebury, whose team, and as I understand it, is currently on some kind of Northeast Tour.

It struck me that what the… er… athletes were actually doing is not a very good approximation of J.K. Rowling’s sport. The article linked above claims that there were three Bludgers (all Quidditch terms are capitalized) in the Princeton match, though there are only supposed to be two. They should be red, rubber dodgeball-type balls, only handleable by the Beaters, who would throw them at the Chasers. Any Chaser currently in possession of the Quaffle (probably a soccer ball or volleyball) who is hit by a Bludger should be required to drop the Quaffle and not touch it for ten seconds. Also, despite the fact that a fast, fluttery, auto-aero-propelled ball would be difficult (or expensive) to make, approximating the Snitch by a person, even a track team member, seems a bit of a stretch. I propose instead a remote-controlled airplane flown at an altitude of about ten feet, with a five-foot long string of twine attached. Thus catching the Snitch would be bringing down the airplane by successfully jumping to grab hold of the attached twine. To simulate that the two Seekers only catch sight of the Snitch every so often during the game, the airplane would not be constantly flying over the field, but would be released only at random, lengthy intervals from random points on the perimeter of the field. Some effort would be made to keep secret the point of release, at least until just before release time. After each release, the airplane would fly over or around the field in a random path for a random, short amount of time, and then, if not caught, fly off the field to be released again later in the game.