Quidditch sweeps through campuses

You don’t have to be Harry Potter to play the magical wizarding game of Quidditch. Although you may not able to zoom through the air on a broomstick, the earthbound version — Muggle Quidditch — still has its perks.

Daniel Miller, captain of Ringling College of Art and Design’s Quidditch team, started playing the game as a freshman.

“I grew up reading Harry Potter like just about everyone my age, but the great thing about Quidditch is that you don’t have to know the books to play,” Miller says. “We started out as kind of a ragtag club because we wanted to bring the sport to campus, and now we compete on a national level with other teams from around the world and have become the official sport on campus.”

On Saturday, Sept. 10, the Florida Quidditch Conference held daylong matches during which several Florida college Quidditch teams competed at the 17th Street Park. The Ringling team caught three golden snitches during their five matches.

Miller has played basketball and football for the majority of his life, but he says Quidditch is out-of-this-world.

“It’s more fun than any other sport I’ve tried,” Miller says.