Posted: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 10:28 PM - 11,608 Readers

By: Hallie Davis

Even though his first season resulted in broken ribs, Alex Schultz returned to play this unorthodox sport again.

The junior mechanical engineering major from Houston loves Quidditch, the broom-and-ball sport straight out of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

“When people think of Quidditch, they think of flying.,” Schultz said. “They think running around with a broom is pretty goofy—and it is, but it can get aggressive.”

At the Texas A&M tournament last year, Schultz said, a player had to be taken off the field on a stretcher. It’s a full-contact sport.

“When we get up to full speed, we don’t mess around,” Conner Davis, the Tech Quidditch president said.

This element of physical contact attracted freshman Alison Gilliland. She said Quidditch was fun for anyone not afraid of getting dirty and maybe a little bruised.

Gilliland said she heard Ivy League schools had the sport and became interested. She said she was excited to find out Tech had a team.

“It’s a nerdy thing,” she said. “We’re strangely obsessed with minor things.”

This weekend’s scrimmage began at 3 p.m., and by the end of the first game, there were enough participants that many stood on the sidelines and waited for a turn.

Davis, a senior music major from Plainview, said the practices don’t always have enough people to play scrimmages with two full teams, but the number of participants is on the rise.

Tech Quidditch began in the 2007-‘08 school year and now practices most Sundays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

The team is an official group with the Student Union and an official sports club with the Robert H. Ewalt Student Recreation Center.

Their practices on the soccer fields near the music building get many strange looks, Gilliland said, and this negative connotation might be why the number of players fluctuates so much.

“People don’t take it seriously because it came out of a book,” Schultz said.

The books’ description of the game was adapted into an official handbook by the International Quidditch Association, the governing body of the game.

Davis said for the weekly practices and scrimmages, players must bring their own brooms or play with one hand behind their backs. At official tournaments, brooms are provided.