Broom for more

When the new cast for the forthcoming Harry Potter series on HBO was announced, it — to borrow an overused online parlance — broke the internet. Regardless of where you land on the arguments regarding the casting for Snape ‘feeling forced’ or Hermione ‘being perfect,’ or even the protests for the franchise to be cancelled, the enduring furore over Harry Potter is undeniable. From the late 1990s through the first decade of the new millennium, Pottermania was a phenomenon, leaping cultural boundaries and setting trends across the globe. And it was in the midst of this global juggernaut that two young Potter fans — Xander Manshel and Alex Benepe — and students at Middlebury College in Vermont rallied their friends and walked onto the grounds one Sunday morning to play Quidditch, the broomstick-powered sport from J K Rowling's wizarding world.

“The main brain was Xander Manshel. He was the one who suggested it originally. I was sceptical; I didn’t see how you could play it in real life. His ideas formed the core of the game,” remembers Benepe.

The core challenge was the lack of flying broomsticks in the real world. It was solved by finding a stick and holding it between the legs while running. Semi-deflated volleyballs became quaffles, which the chasers threw through hoops to score points. Rubber dodgeballs became bludgers, thrown by beaters at the opposition. The golden snitch — a walnut-sized, quick, and elusive ball in the books — was replaced by a flag runner to be chased by the seekers.

Initially, it was just a day out with friends, a way to bond and break a sweat. But the all-encompassing lure of Harry Potter in those days attracted people into the sport. Initially, curiosity about this new game brought them in. It was soon replaced by the rush of a full-contact sport that was easily accessible and fun. It grew enough that tournaments became a necessity, and the first one was organised within the first year at the university by the sport’s pioneers. “After the fall, we hosted an event within the university, roughly 9–10 teams. My team, the Falmouth Falcons (named after a side that plays in the British and Irish Quidditch League, as per Harry Potter lore), won, but it wasn’t severe competition,” Benepe says with a laugh.

Benepe led the charge for years, until walking away from the active running of the sport after nearly a decade. Interestingly, Manshel, the man who provided the initial spark, had left it behind within a couple of years. As with any young sport, the learning curve is steep. The move from pastime to a codified sport takes time and effort. Several rules changed; others were adapted. The flag runner was restricted to the playing area, and catching the snitch no longer ended the game. In the early iterations, the flag runner had free rein to go anywhere, as it was with the snitch in the book, but it ended when a snitch decided to climb a precarious university tower, much to the chagrin of campus security. The borderlines were further confined to the playing area because of insurance requirements as tournaments began to get bigger.

Within a few years, the ‘goofy and free-spirited activity’ evolved — niche though it is — into a sport, now called Quadball, that has over 500 teams playing across 37 nations on five continents with varying degrees of membership with the International Quadball Association. There are leagues and/or tournaments running in all the member nations, continental competitions, and even a World Cup, loosely every two years since 2012. There is even an Indian team hoping to participate in the World Cup. The Indian Quadball Association, headquartered in Haryana, has been recognised as an area of interest by the International Quadball Association.

“We have a training academy in the school with seven coaches. We hold tournaments, and teams come from Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, etc.,” says Nand Singh Kouri, General Secretary of IQA. In 2023, the international body facilitated a coaches' training camp by bringing in Athliesh Thanigai, a Quadball player from the University of Michigan and a member of the Indian diaspora team (several diaspora teams represent their country in the US). The Indian association is keen to play at the World Cup, but their attempts to play in the 2025 tournament in Brussels have not been successful.

A challenge in filling the roster of players for Quadball is that it is not an easy sell. The learning curve is high; there are multiple balls and facets of the game — the chaser game, beater game, and the seeker game — happening simultaneously and independently. It is a full-contact mixed-gender sport, with a rule that a team cannot have more than three players of any gender. While the premise of a group of people running around with a stick between their legs playing a fantasy sport might not make it obvious, Quadball is a dangerous sport with high-speed collisions and aggressive tackles.

“I’ve had a separated shoulder and a few concussions. I’ve been hit in the head by balls thrown by my own teammates,” Augustine Monroe remembers. Monroe is widely considered one of the greatest players in the sport’s history. “I was knocked out cold in 2019 during a tournament. A former college wide receiver (an American football position) took me out with a shoulder to the chin. My speech and emotional regulation were messed up for a month afterwards. It was scary because I was wondering if this is my new normal.”

Interestingly, women have found creative ways to navigate the athleticism of men, ranging from more creative and quicker passing combinations to unique tackling styles. For instance, Kaci Erwin was famed as the best defender in the game regardless of gender, while Maya Hinebaugh captained the Texas State Quidditch team.

The sport is also extremely determined to ensure an inclusive space for gender and sexual orientation. It is a far cry from the legacy sports, which are caught in the quagmires of the increasingly complex gender politics of the 21st century as well as the sport’s long-standing antipathy towards homosexuality.

“Inclusivity is a priority. Women here want to be treated as equals. There are also a lot of women who want to compete with men,” admits Brenda Flores, Chair of the Board of Trustees, IQA. “We want to shape it more. We had Quadball in wheelchairs, and we want to adapt more to be inclusive for deaf people… This is a modern sport, and we want to show that it is.”

It is an interesting road the sport has travelled in two decades. While the early generation had several people coming into the sport because of their Harry Potter fandom, it has changed in the subsequent generation. “Most of the players now are not Potter fans per se. They are those with an athletic background in high school, but were maybe on the bench. Quadball gives them a chance to play a very competitive and physical sport and be among the top players in the world in a sport more easily,” says Thanigai.

Some are even asking for the sticks to be removed from the sport as the connection to Harry Potter weakens. Rowling herself has become akin to Lord Voldemort—She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Cancelled and labelled a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) for her role as a gender-critical campaigner at a time when the new generation is all about inclusivity and acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identities.

In a sport heavily influenced by university culture, which is predominantly left-leaning, Rowling’s ideology — shaped by events such as the 1977 Reclaim the Night movement in Leeds amidst the larger Women’s Liberation Movement between the 1960s and 1980s — clashed violently as the third and fourth waves of the feminist movement became irrevocably intertwined with queer theory and gender identity politics, as opposed to the earlier waves which focused on women’s rights, opportunities, and the harms they faced, where the trans movement was on the fringes at best.

Several players and people in the Potter community have been critical of Rowling. Among the reasons for the sport changing its name in 2022 was Rowling’s ‘anti-trans positions.’ Interestingly, Rowling wrote Quidditch as an inclusive sport, with women often playing key positions, the most famous being Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter’s partner, who goes on to play seeker for the all-female team, Holyhead Harpies. Even the idea of a sport that involves flying a broomstick is distinctly feminine and drawn from the early portrayal of witches.

“Her actions disappointed a lot of people. Many felt the book was a refuge for them and that the books were a place where they could retreat from the real world. It resonated with a lot of people in the LGBTQIA+ community because these are people who felt different growing up, maybe excluded,” admits Benepe. “The books felt like they were about community, standing up for each other. It felt closely tied to social justice. So a lot of people felt betrayed when the person who gave them all this was taking it away.”

As with all sports, Quadball is going through its growing pains, traversing through the political, social, and administrative landscape. The IQA is trying its hardest to grow the sport. Being a volunteer-run organisation, the changes are hard and slow, and there is a great push and pull about expansion and doing it without losing the meaning Quadball holds for its community. It is a hard balancing act.

Will it ever be an Olympic sport? Doubtful. The IQA will not compromise on their values and inclusivity, and to be part of the Olympics is to codify and conform to the requirements. But then again, perhaps it should not want to be in the Olympics. A sport is about its community, where whimsy shakes hands with competition. The latter is clearly visible on the field. And what is more whimsical than a group of people running around on a pretend broomstick, bringing a sport to life from the pages of a fantasy book and going global?

Indian Quadball Association keen to grow

Indian Quadball Association, headquartered at Mount School Surtia in Haryana, has been working hard to grow the sport in India. Their dreams of debuting at the 2025 World Cup were cruelly struck down by visa issues, but the association remains committed to growing the sport. 

Having already established support with the international body, conducted coaching clinics and national competitions, the next step is to spread the game, which is largely confined to regions around Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand. "The aim is to introduce quadball to schools, colleges, and universities to further expand the sport’s reach,” says Nand Singh Kouri, the general secretary of IQA. "If there are any academies, clubs or schools that are interested, we are keen to help."