Quidditch takes off on campuses

A group of students gather in an open field, at either end of which stand three hula-hoops painted gold and attached to 2x4s.

They are holding brooms between their legs, and one team wears capes with black-and-white spots.

One person is dressed in yellow with a lumpy sock hanging out of his shorts - he's ready to run.

The sport? Quidditch.

That's right - at Middlebury College, students have formed a Quidditch team, modeling themselves after those described in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series.

Middlebury sophomore Alex Benepe, the current Quidditch organizer, started the mock team while anticipating the release of the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in fall 2005.

"Anyone who's tried it loves it," Benepe said. "People have forgotten how much fun it is to go outside and just throw a ball around."

But unlike Rowling's magical characters, Middlebury students are forced to compensate for their lack of supernatural powers when playing the sport.

Students run with brooms between their legs instead of flying on them, and Middlebury sophomore Rainey Johnson serves as a human replacement for the snitch, which, in the book, is a tiny gold ball with wings.

But more-violent aspects - from broken arms to attempts to knock others off of their brooms - of Quidditch depicted in Harry Potter are more easily replicated.

"There aren't any rules about fouling, so kids usually do whatever it takes to get the ball," Benepe said, and Middlebury freshman Greta VanDeventer described once getting a "floater" while playing the game when she was accidentally stabbed in the eye with someone's thumb.

But despite the game's wild success at Middlebury, Penn has been less receptive to the game.

Penn engineering sophomore Nancy Tseng and her friends at home came up with a game relatively similar to Benepe's, also before the release of the fourth movie.

Tseng said she tried to start a team at Penn last year, with little success.

"It was basically me during freshman year asking people randomly if they wanted to start Quidditch teams," she said.

And College junior Susan Weber said Penn would be a "laughingstock" if its students decided to start a Quidditch team of their own.

She added that, even though she said she is a huge fan of Harry Potter, she would never join such a team, which she called "very . childish, . negative and embarrassing."

Nevertheless, Middlebury is plowing ahead with somewhat ambitious plans for the future of their team and the game, including extending an invitation to Rowling to attend their spring world cup event, which usually draws about 50 spectators.

Bucknell University and Vassar College expect to start playing Quidditch in the spring using Middlebury's rules, listed on the Facebook.com group "Intercollegiate Quidditch Association."

Many other schools interested in starting Quidditch teams of their own have joined this group, and Benepe said he hopes to start an intercollegiate league.

Warner Bros., the official rights holders of Harry Potter games, declined to comment.