Vassar Quidditch: Where A Social Club Meets A Team
As an overcast mid-week afternoon approaches, students at Vassar College are getting out of class, studying, maybe grabbing a bite to eat. Or maybe they’re riding their bikes to Joss Beach on Vassar’s campus in their Gryffindor colored scarves for Quidditch practice.
Rainah Umlauf is a senior at Vassar and one of four captains of the Butterbeer Broooers and did just that last Wednesday. Umlauf has been on the team since she was a freshman when she was brought to “bring a friend to Quidditch day.”
“People are looking for something with a great group of people that isn’t as competitive as intramural soccer” she said, but of course “we attract a lot of people who are Harry Potter fans.”
Perhaps the biggest one of them all is Andy Rutherford, who is regarded as the team’s best player, best keeper and their tallest player at 6’4. “I refer to myself as an alpha Harry Potter nerd,” Rutherford said. He has only read the entire series 4–5 times, but one of the things he is most proud of is that from first grade through twelfth he listened to the audio books every day until his last day of high school.
The first two books were 10–12 hours long and the other five were twice as long as the first two, if not longer. “On the last day of high school I timed it out so I would be finishing the seventh book as I was pulling into my house” Rutherford said “I had to drive around the block a couple extra times because I wasn’t quite there yet.”
Rutherford even got his families “wand in a knot” with how he would recite each word of the audio books when they would take trips. “My family would always say, ‘ok, Andy! We get it, you know what is going on, you can shut up now!’” said Rutherford.
The Broooers were created in 2006 are the 2nd oldest Quidditch program in the country, and they have a bit of a legacy because of that. The first ever Quidditch World Cup was played between Vassar and Middlebury in 2007. In 2011, the first ever transcontinental match happened when Vassar competed against the University of Vaasa, Finland.
“I know people who come to Vassar because we have a Quidditch team,” Umlauf said.
Rebecca Odell knew she wanted to be on a Quidditch team since she was in middle school. “I knew Vassar had a Quidditch team, it wasn’t the only reason I applied I swear,” Odell said jokingly. She is a sophomore and was voted a captain already.
In 3rd grade, senior and former captain Miles Pucarelli visited Vassar College for a math competition. “My mom always loves to tell me that I came back and said ‘oh my god it looks like Hogwarts and they play Quidditch there,’” said Pucarelli.
At John Jay when Pucarelli attended high school, he would put together a Quidditch tournament of his own. “We had a mock Olympics at my high school and I organized a Quidditch tournament as part of that,” he said “After I came here I realized I organized it terribly because we weren’t playing by the right rules or anything.”
Pucarelli is known as the rules guy because when he was a captain he read the rule book five or six times. He knows the rules so well that he is often a referee at tournaments, as players on teams who aren’t playing at that time usually are.
Quidditch can be difficult for incoming players who have never played sports because it is unorthodox in nature.
Alex Muccio is a senior and a captain and before coming to Vassar, she had no previous athletic experience. How they taught her how to play was by simply, throwing her to the ghouls. “Quidditch is a very confusing sport to just get thrown in to,” said Muccio. “They were teaching me while in the middle of a game and it was one of the most confusing things I’ve ever done.”
It took Muccio and many others some time to get used to how the game works because it is unlike any other sport. The vernacular, from the positions to the equipment to the strategies is only used in Quidditch.
The game begins on the playing field called the pitch; five players from both teams are lined up across from each other in front of their respective hoops. The referee asks both teams if they are ready, they summon for “brooms up” and the game begins.
The positions are keeper, chaser, beater, seeker and unlike the Harry Potter movies, the snitch is a position played by a person. There are only two ways to score: throw one of the two quaffles in your team’s possession through one of the three hoops, which are ten points each or catch the snitch, which is worth 30 points and the game is automatically over. The first team to 150 points is the winner.
The person labeled as the snitch has to dress in all yellow with a yellow tail for the seekers to grab. The tail is a tube sock with a ball inside of it. In order to capture the snitch, the seeker must separate the tail from the snitch. Pucarelli takes pride in his snitch playing skills. “The snitch can basically do anything, they can push you around, run around the field, do whatever they want and it’s a really fun position to play,” he said.
Members of Vassar Quidditch aren’t overly competitive, but being the snitch gets those competitive juices flowing. “I think that is the most competitive part of the game because there is some grappling involved and it can get violent,” Pucarelli said. “That’s definitely my favorite part of the game.”
The mindset of being the snitch is different from being a chaser or a beater because the snitch is not a member of either team and they are not trying to help anyone win. The snitch is just trying to prolong the game the best they can. “It’s just fun as the snitch because when you are the snitch you don’t have any vested interest in the game, you are basically a piece of equipment,” Pucarelli said.
Originally, the rules would allow for the snitch to go anywhere they wanted to, which would lead to Pucarelli hiding in academic buildings bathrooms. Recent updates to the rule book have been made to stop that, which Pucarelli believes is a good thing. “I would say the more the rules have changed the more it has become its own sport and not just like something trying to emulate the game that was played in the books.”
They abide by the U.S. Quidditch (USQ) rule book eight, but Vassar Quidditch is not sanctioned by the USQ or anyone. They are classified as a Vassar extra-curricular club that has a budget from the Vassar Student Association. They use the budget to pay for equipment, host tournaments and travel.
“Our budget covers things like brooms, dodge balls and volleyballs because they don’t sell quaffles or bludgers in stores,” Umlauf said. Their budget used to cover practice brooms as well but Umlauf explains why they no longer have those. “We used to have practice brooms, but then people stole them to sweep their dorm rooms out,” she said. “Now we just have our actual brooms and that’s okay because they make us looks more elegant.”
Being unsanctioned creates more opportunities for the team but it also creates more work for the captains. They have to set up tournaments with opponents like Skidmore, Middlebury and UMass. They host events such as Fall Fest and Yule Ball and for those events they have to make sure teams are coming, organize food which includes baking themselves all while trying to get ready to play themselves.
“We have to book the band, make the food, get everyone and everything there, that’s all part of being a captain,” said sophomore captain Hannah Mittman.
Many captains also determine the style and mentality the team plays with. Some teams are very physical and play like Slytherin and others play differently. “That is a conscious decision made by us that we don’t want to be hurting ourselves in practice or hurting other players on other teams,” Odell said. “that’s not why we have Quidditch.”
Rutherford described Vassar Quidditch as, “where a social club meets a team.” A team they are, however being competitive is not their main objective.
“Other sports are about that sport and all about performance and winning,” said Rutherford. “We could lose every game (which we don’t) and we would still be laughing and smiling and having a great time together.”
“We’re not really that competitive; we just do this because it’s fun,” Mittman said.
Odell said, “We’re not crazy competitive, we’re just trying to be there for our teammates and make good plays.”
The most competitive person on the Broooers is the one player without any previous athletic experience at all. “I am competitive because I always feel like I’m letting my team down,” Muccio said “The idea of me letting myself or my teammates down is something I came up with and nothing anyone forced on me.”
Muccio is the ideal team player, “I don’t think I’m particularly a great player but I feel like I’m getting better and we are just out here to have fun.”
The low pressure environment is something the captains are happy about and is used as a recruiting tool.
“Joining Quidditch is super chill, we want freshman to know when they join that it’s about the community and the fun of Quidditch and not necessarily like, this is how you need to run really fast and this is what you need to do when you get beat,” said Umlauf.
Vassar Quidditch doesn’t have a roster listed, but they have 30 active members and their e-mail list has over 480 people on it. The captains make sure to communicate with everyone which is why they send out five e-mails a week. Umlauf said, “We have seniors who aren’t active members but still asked to be on our email list so they can still be connected in some way.”
Perhaps the ultimate recruiting tool is the origins of Quidditch, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series itself. Every Thursday the team gets together as part of their “bedtime readings” where, you guessed it, they read Harry Potter.
“Bedtime readings were one of the biggest things that drew me in, it’s like acting out the book as a play,” Pucarelli said.
They even host a 24-hour read-a-thon where they all take turns reading out loud like normal, but someone has to be reading throughout the entire 24 hours.
“I love reading out loud and acting out characters so I got into it very quickly,” Muccio said.
“In class you’re not meeting new people, you’re just listening to someone lecture, this is a way for a lot of us to meet new friends,” said Mittman.
For teammates and friends alike, Vassar Quidditch is something that these Hogwarts attendees will always hold on to.
“It’s all about the community of people. We attract so many people who are so unique and so diverse and who are so amazingly jubilant and buoyant all the time,” Umlauf said “This is a great group of people who rally around Harry Potter and also love playing a team sport.”
“Above all, Quidditch is an opportunity for you to meet likeminded people who love a very specific thing that you do,” Pucarelli said. “Some of my closest college friends have been from Quidditch and it’s not that we connect over Quidditch, it’s just that Quidditch brought us all together.”
“Joining Quidditch was the best decision I made in college,” said Muccio “This is the most wonderful group of people, they have been so welcoming to me, we are like a little family, I know this is a bunch of clichés but it is all very real.”
The Broooers will be traveling to Skidmore this Sunday, October 9 for their annual tournament.
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