Chestnut Hill College to Play in Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup

Oct. 17, 2008 - PRLog -- Chestnut Hill College will be one of fourteen schools traveling to Middlebury College in Vermont to participate in the Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup on October 26, 2008. Quidditch, better known as the wizarding sport played on broomsticks in the beloved Harry Potter series, has leapt off the pages of the fantasy book- and onto college campuses. Muggle Quidditch, which was created at Middlebury College in 2005, consists of components of several sports: football, dodgeball, and a game of hide and go seek, although all elements from J.K. Rowling 's tale are fully represented, including riding broomsticks. The “Golden Snitch,” the flying ball that was Harry’s job as a seeker to capture, is now a track runner with the ability to run all over the field; quaffles can still score points, and players can still get hit by bludgers. The sport is played by over 150 schools across the country.

    Chestnut Hill College students decided to start playing Quidditch after Max Kaplan, a student and vice president of Chestnut Hill’s activities team, viewed a video of students playing Quidditch and wanted to bring the game to Chestnut Hill. With Chestnut Hill’s uncanny resemblance to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts (not to mention having the Griffin as their mascot) sign-ups for a game quickly became a waiting list. Chestnut Hill students played their first intramural game of Quidditch on October 10, 2008, and plan to establish an intramural league at the College after their return from Middlebury.

   Other colleges participating in the Intercollegiate World Cup include Princeton University, Vassar, Rochester, Louisiana State, University of Washington, McGill, Amherst,
University of Massachusetts, Boston University, Carlow, Emerson, and Green Mountain.

# # #

Chestnut Hill College, a four-year coed Catholic college in the Ignatian tradition, offers a traditional liberal arts undergraduate program as well as accelerated undergraduate degrees, master’s and doctoral programs.