"The hardest part about the game was figuring out how to run with the broomstick between your legs," Anson Moxness '11, a participant in Saturday's game, said.
Quidditch, the fictional sport of the wizarding world in J.K. Rowling's best-selling Harry Potter series, now has a presence on college campuses across the nation. Since its founding at Middlebury in 2005, the Intercollegiate Quidditch Associations's Facebook group now includes 64 member institutions, including Dartmouth, Cornell University, Yale University and Stanford University. Middlebury's league still boasts the most members, with more than 400.
Middlebury's club is currently in the midst of its week-long spring tour, travelling to eight college campuses across the Northeast to garner new opponents for the annual World Cup.
"All the schools we've visited have been really welcoming and receptive," Middlebury freshman Shannon Engelman said.
Quidditch teams must have at least seven members, according to IQA rules. Two beaters throw bludgers, or dodgeballs, to impede their opponents; three chasers score points by throwing the quaffle, a volleyball, through gold painted hula hoops at either end of the court, guarded by a keeper; and a seeker tries to catch the snitch. A game of Quidditch ends when the seeker successfully captures the snitch.
In lieu of the winged golden snitch used in Harry Potter's world, the IQA substitutes a student dressed in gold with a black sock tucked into his or her shorts in college contests.
"The first time I saw Quidditch, I was watching a match where my friend from the cross-country team was playing the snitch," Donny Dickson, a Middlebury freshman who plays as the snitch, said. "He ended up getting injured, so I stepped in for him."
To entertain the audience and players alike, snitches sometimes flap their arms while running around the court and, after disappearing at the beginning of the game, re-enter creatively. Saturday's snitches escaped behind Baker-Berry Library, hid behind Rollins Chapel and even drove around the Green in the Middlebury team's van.
Moxness -- who was a seeker in the game -- said catching the snitch was harder than he expected because the snitch doesn't use a broomstick.
Moxness said he was preparing for a bike race when his friends told him to join the match and he was struck by the intensity of the game.
"It was surprisingly almost violent," he said. "There was a lot of pushing and shoving that I wasn't really expecting. It was a ton of fun, though."
Dickson, who also played beater, said Dartmouth's team put up a particularly tough fight.
"The Dartmouth team was definitely the most aggressive we've played," he said.
While Dartmouth does not yet have an official Quidditch club, Leah Williams '09 said she hopes to create one by the end of this term. Williams said the idea of Dartmouth Quidditch started last fall as a joke among her friends.
"I'd read about Quidditch at Middlebury and thought it would be really fun to do something like that here," she said. "I started a Facebook group at the end of fall term, and as more and more people at Dartmouth joined it, I started thinking it could really happen."
The team is still in the planning stages, but Williams said she thinks the administration will respond positively.
"I can't imagine that they wouldn't support us for something like this," she said.
Williams also said that everyone on campus is welcome to join, especially students with experience planning intramural sports.
The hilarity of the game and its connection to the popular fantasy series draws students of varying interests, Rafael Velez, a freshman keeper at Middlebury, said.
"It's great to see so many people getting involved at the schools we visited," he said. "We're all a bunch of kids at heart."
