Meet Lindsay Marella, Rutgers’ very own Quidditch star
10 points to Gryffindor
Meet Lindsay Marella. She’s a mathematics major graduating in 2017 and she also happens to be president of the Rutgers Quidditch team. Yes you heard right, Rutgers is actually Hogwarts and platform 9 3/4 is right behind Scott Hall. I wish.
If you’ve read the books, and if you haven’t you should, you know that Quidditch is traditionally played on flying broomsticks. In this case with magic not on our side the players are “running their asses off” as Marella put it.
Pic: Marina Montenegro
Pic: Chiddy Powers
The ball used to score is called a quaffle and the balls used to get players out of the game are called bludgers. Don’t worry it’s more of a dodgeball. The positions are as follows: chasers, beaters, keepers, and seekers. Try saying that five times fast. The players have to stay on their brooms for the entire match. The objective is to get the quaffle through the opponent’s hoop for 10 points.
Instead of using bats to hit flying bludgers, you just throw dodgeballs at people to make them dismount from their brooms and touch back in at their own hoops.
“It’s most closely related to rugby, or a combination of football and basketball because of its physicality and continuity of play. Instead of using bats to hit flying bludgers, you just throw dodgeballs at people to make them dismount from their brooms and touch back in at their own hoops,” Marella said.
Pic: Jessica Jiamin Lang Photography
Pic: Hersh Ranade
The snitch is a big different too. Instead of a wicked-fast and down-near impossible to see ball flying around, they have a person wear a special type of shorts (with a ball-in-sock sort of attachment at the butt) fight off the two teams’ seekers. This person is usually fast, able to run for a long time away from the seekers, and strong, able to wrestle with the seeker and toss them to the ground or rip their brooms out from under them (requiring them to tag back in at their hoops).
Quidditch is actually a sport played on college campuses across the country and internationally. The reigning league is called the IQA, or International Quidditch Association, and then each participating country has their own league. There are about 200 official teams in the league, representing near every state including Hawaii.
“Last Spring we went to a tournament with nine players (normally you bring 21). Despite the countless setbacks and difficulties we had to deal with as a program, this past fall we were finally able to qualify for the National tournament in November at Mid-Atlantic Regionals in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Not only that, but we won our day one pool and were given the #1 ranked seed,” Marella explained.
The team play in any weather from cold snow to extreme heat. Quidditch is no joke. Their biggest tournament this semester is Nationals. The trip is a bit expensive so if you’re up for donating some silver Sickles, gold Galleons, or bronze Knuts to the cause to help bring home the Quidditch Cup here’s the link.
Rutgers isn’t Hogwarts to much of our dismay but The Rutgers team is actually a club so anyone can join. If you want to live out your Harry Potter dreams pick up a broom and go for it.