College Quidditch World Cup
Middlebury College
Sunday 26 October 2008
Middlebury, Vermont
Middlebury College, where students adapted J.K. Rowling’s imaginary game of quidditch for the real world several years ago, hosted the second annual World Quidditch Cup – and Brontë and I were there! In between games, visitors enjoyed entertainment from The Flying Fists, a stilt-walking, flame-throwing troupe, and the Mountain Ayres, a Renaissance a capella group that sang while a Middlebury chemistry professor exploded potions.
As for the games themselves, well…. Before we went, my Editor wrote the following in her
GO DOGS GO! blog: “The game of quidditch itself (in this world as in Rowling’s) looks pretty rough-and-tumble. The photos I’ve seen online suggest a madcap combination of soccer (the footwork), basketball (the throws), and dodge ball with an out-of-control second-grade class (what with the multiple balls on the field at once).” Having been to the world cup, I can say that her description only begins to do justice to the controlled mayhem of a real-world quidditch match!
