Muggling Quidditch

We like to say were the best-looking sports team at Macaulay because,really,were the only team, said Jenna Jankowski,20,an English major who helped start the team.

The sport the Marauders play? Quidditch,a real-world adaptation of the sport played in the Harry Potter books and movies.

Macaulay was one of three teams from New York City that qualified for the sixth annual Quidditch World Cup held recently in Kissimmee,Florida.

The other two were a team from New York University and a team not affiliated with any school,the New York Badassilisks. Talking about their training ground,Jankowski said: Its basically a big dirt patch,a dust bowl8230; You cover your mouth and eyes to keep the dust out.

There,the Marauders often scrimmage with the Badassilisks,whose players range in age from 18 to 45. The Badassilisksits name is a play on basilisk,a giant serpent in the Harry Potter booksgrew out of a Harry Potter meet-up group about three years ago,said one of the teams members,Michael E Mason,33,who manages two Doughnut Plant stores. I embody both the jock and nerd side, he said.

In the J K Rowling novels,Harry Potter played the game with his Gryffindor teammates on flying broomsticks. The human adaptation,known as Muggle QuidditchMuggle being Rowlings word for non-magical folkis a full-contact,coed sport that combines elements of dodge ball and rugby on an elliptical field. And yes,the players straddle brooms.

There are seven players to a sidethree chasers,two beaters,a keeper and a seekerand three kinds of balls: a quaffle,a snitch and bludgers. The chasers try to get the quafflea slightly deflated volleyballthrough one of three hoops guarded by keepers. Beaters throw the bludgers,dodge-ball-style,at the chasers. Seekers chase the runner who has the snitcha tennis balltucked into a sleeve attached to his shorts.

The game has spread to hundreds of college campuses. The World Cup,which for the past two years was held in New York,had about 80 teams this year,including squads from Canada,France and Mexico.

Its gotten to be a lot bigger than just Harry Potter, said Alex Benepe,26,the commissioner of the International Quidditch Association,which organises the World Cup and has 250 dues-paying teams. Benepes father is Adrian Benepe,who stepped down last year as New York Citys parks commissioner.

The younger Benepe,a marketing consultant,is known to wear a tuxedo,scarf and top hat at tournaments,along with a cane adorned with a golden snitch.

He was,he said,among the first to play quidditch as a competitive sport,at Middlebury College in Vermont in 2005,when he was a freshman. A friend,Xander Manshel,suggested that they all borrow some brooms and play the game,using the Harry Potter series as a playbook. Soon Benepe was running a college league.

In 2007,after reading about the quidditch World Cup in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,he formed an intercollegiate association and held the first real-world World Cup,with Middlebury taking on Vassar College.

Quidditch is attracting talented athletes who are not Harry Potter bookworms. Tackles are commonplace. So are broken bones and twisted ankles. There was a concussion expert at this years World Cup. Its practitioners say it is serious,but never too serious.

One thing joins us all together: You have to be the kind of person who wants to ride a broomstick, said Bryan Hall,22,one of the captains of the NYU team. You know theres a sense of ridiculousness to the sport and so no matter how competitive it gets,you have to take a step back and say,OK,Im playing quidditch,Im riding a broom.