“Brooms down, eyes closed,” bellowed the announcer. “The snitch is loose,” he called out.
The Ohio University Quidditch Club held its first home tournament, the Dobby Memorial Tournament, on Saturday.
The competition was named after the character Dobby from the Harry Potter books and movies, and a brief moment of silence was held before the match began.
Teams from the University of Toledo and The Charles School at Ohio Dominican University, a private school located in Columbus, came to participate.
The OU Quidditch Club had enough players to split into two different teams for the tournament. The OU Quidditch Club B team placed fourth, and the OU Quidditch Club A team finished second behind Toledo’s team, the Firebolts. The TCS Chimeras came in third.
Hosting a tournament in Athens has been a goal of the OU Quidditch Club since it formed in fall 2012.
“We wanted to go to one big tournament and we wanted to host however small a tournament here so people would know (about our team),” said OU Quidditch Club President Ryan Altenbach, a junior studying broadcast journalism.
The team felt that hosting a tournament would be an effective way to get the team’s name out on campus and amongst other Quidditch teams, said Altenbach.
Toledo made the almost-four-hour drive to compete in the match.
“We just love the game,” said Alex Scheer, captain of the Toledo team and a junior studying trumpet performance.
“We haven’t played against another team since early March and we were excited to come participate in the tournament.”
Members of all three teams described Quidditch teams, which consists of more than 800 units in the U.S., as being very supportive.
Spencer Shivers, a senior at TCS and one of the captains of its team, said that Quidditch isn’t like other sports, in which players are focused on winning and aren’t usually nice to the other players.
“It’s really like a family environment,” Shivers said.
Scheer said he hopes the sport gains more support.
“We don’t have a lot of school support yet, you know. It’s like, ‘Oh look at these nerds running around with broomsticks,’ but the Quidditch community has been very supportive of us.”
md781510@ohiou.edu
