If you grew up reading the Harry Potter series, you are familiar with the game of Quidditch, which is a sport played in that universe. What you may not be familiar with is the fast expanding game of collegiate Quidditch which takes some of the key elements of the fictional game and makes it possible for those of us not attending Hogwarts to play. Quidditch is roughly ten years old as it is played on the collegiate level and more than many other sports it boasts a uniquely inclusive environment, embodied by the “Four Maximum” Gender rule. However as a new sport, Quidditch faces some of the same challenges regarding eligibility as other college sports did at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
In Quidditch as it is played now, there are two main kinds of teams, excluding MLQ (Major League Quidditch), community teams and college teams. College teams are exactly what they sound like with the players being composed of current students from the respective schools. Community teams are usually made up of players who no longer are in school. That itself isn’t the issue but players on community teams are usually the players who have been playing the sport for the longest period of time and as a result the general rule is that community teams have a competitive advantage over teams solely consisting of current college students.
This is not unlike nineteenth century college football teams who played with graduate students having competitive advantage over their undergraduate counterparts. United States Quidditch has arrived at a solution that is very similar to the one that college football programs arrived at, although thankfully it has taken much less time. USQ has proposed a split in division between College and Community teams with members on college teams having to provide proof of enrolment for the upcoming seasons. This is virtually the same solution major college football came up with in order to deal with its problem of rogue transfers who would jump school to school, season to season.
Whether they did so intentionally or not Quidditch is now taking steps to legitimize itself as a major college sport on a well-beaten path which is good for the game. It may not have happened as deliberately as say an artist trying to emulate Baroque art style looking at Bacchus by Caravaggio for inspiration but this is still a huge step. By addressing issues of parity just a decade into the sport’s founding USQ may have same themselves some more severe growing pains later on and one day very soon their mission of universal awareness and acceptance of Quidditch as a sport will be realized. Brooms Up !
Featured Image via Youtube/Instyledress
