Quidditch is a fictional sport from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Quidditch has been played by witches and wizards for centuries, and now even muggles can play “muggle quidditch”.

            In the wizarding sport of quidditch, witches and wizards fly on broom stick on and over an oval-shaped field or pitch. The pitch is 500 feet long and 180 feet wide, with a small circle, roughly two feet in diameter marking the center of the field and a scoring area around the goal posts, in which the keeper must stay. There are three goal posts at each end; the goals are rings that are all different heights and are worth ten points a piece.

            There are 14 players on a quidditch pitch at a time, seven per team. Each team consists one keeper, two beaters, three chasers, and a seeker, who all have different yet important jobs. The keeper must stay within the scoring box, his job is to prevent any quaffles from entering the goal hoops. The beaters there are to guard their team members from the bludgers, which they do with a bat. The chasers throw the quaffle to eachother and attempt to get it through one of the goal hoops. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the seeker is the lightest, fastest, and most skilled flier on the team. The seekers job is to catch the golden snitch, which is worth 150 points and how you win the game.

Quidditch is played with three different types of “balls”; one quaffle, two bludgers, and one golden snitch. The quaffle is the ball used for scoring; it has to be caught and thrown with one hand by the chaser. The bludgers are made of iron and are bewitched to chase players indiscriminately. Finally, the golden snitch is a walnut-sized golden ball bewitched to evade capture as long as possible.

Muggle Quidditch, like regular quidditch, is played between 2 teams, each with 7 players, one keeper, two beaters, three chasers, and a seeker. However the pitch in muggle quidditch is much different than regular quidditch. The pitch varies; but is typically held on a field comparable to a football field, with hula-hoop like goals suspended above the ground.

The players have basically the same jobs as in regular quidditch; however, slight changes are made because muggles have no magical powers, nor can they fly on broom sticks.

For more information on muggle quidditch you can visit the International Quidditch Association’s website at http://www.internationalquidditch.org/.