Shippensburg University’s quidditch team hosted the Flying High Quidditch Tournament on Saturday, April 20.

The tournament began at 10 a.m. and took place at the far end of the multipurpose fields behind the hockey rink and next to the storage lot.

Quidditch is a fictional competitive sport in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The game is played between two teams of seven players riding broomsticks, and takes place on a field with three raised ring-shaped goals at both ends.

There are a total of four balls involved in quidditch. The quaffle is the ball players try to throw through the goals. There are two bludgers, and they are balls that are bewitched to fly around and knock players off their broom.

The golden snitch is a tiny ball with wings that quickly flies within the boundaries of the field and avoids capture. When the snitch is caught, the game is over.

Harry Potter enthusiasts have adapted quidditch into a game that can be played without the magical enchantments of flying balls and broomsticks.

Instead of flying on their brooms, players run on their brooms. The bludgers have to be thrown by the players, and the snitch is a person dressed in yellow with a ball attached to him or her that players need to grab. Everything else about the game is essentially the same as presented in the books.

Teams in the Flying High Tournament included the Shippensburg Warlocks, Salisbury University Phoenixes, Millersville Mandrake Quidditch and the Dickinson Dirigible Plums.

The tournament was set-up with a series of six games, in which each team was able to play every other team, followed by two play-off games and a final game. Playoffs were determined by the number of wins each team received. The tournament lasted until around 4 p.m. The Salisbury Phoenixes were named the victors with the SU Warlocks coming in second place.

The SU Warlocks have been a team since spring 2012. It hosts a home tournament once a semester and usually travels to other tournaments twice a semester. The team is open to any SU student. For more information, or to find out when the next quidditch match is, check out the Warlock’s Facebook page.

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