When you hear the word “quidditch”, you might think of flying broomsticks, witches and wizards and a sport that only exists in a fictional world. Only very few people – so far – think of German championships or a group of students running across a meadow.
Yousef from Palestine talks about what’s so special about quidditch and why he never misses a training session with his team.
Quidditch has existed as a sport since 2005 and was started by students in the United States. Teams have formed in many other countries since then. Most of them are organised by students and belong to a university. The game is characterised by friendliness and mutual respect. Quidditch teams have also existed in Germany for a few years – there is even a national team which participates in international tournaments.
If you don’t know quidditch yet, it might be hard to picture what such a game would look like. As far as possible, the structure of the game follows the “original”, namely the sport which many witches and wizards in the Harry Potter books are so wild about. Just like in the books, male and female participants play together in a team. To make sure the gender distribution is similar in all teams, no more than four people of one gender may play at one time. This means that when four male players in one team are already on the field, the other three players must not be male. What is most unlike the book is certainly the lack of flying broomsticks, since they unfortunately can’t do that in the real world (yet). To replace the brooms, the players carry a stick between their legs during the game.
Just like in the books, a team consists of seven members who play in various positions. Three chasers try to shoot goals with a ball, the so-called quaffle, and get points for their team. The team also has two beaters, who use two balls – called bludgers – to knock out players from the opposing team, who are then eliminated for a short time. Lastly, there is also a keeper who defends the team’s own goal hoops and a seeker who tries to catch the golden snitch. The snitch is played by another person who doesn’t belong to either of the teams, who carries a small ball in a sock attached to the trousers, which the seekers must try to capture. The game is over when the snitch is caught. The team of the seeker who found it receives an additional 30 points. The team with the most points wins the game.