It’s the weekend of 4th week and you’ve made it to the half-way stage of Michaelmas term. Maybe you’re feeling very smug because you’ve finished all your work, although more likely you’re gasping for fresh air having spent the past 24 hours huddled in a dusty corner of some library. You decide to take a gentle stroll through the peace and tranquillity of University Parks, and are consequently surprised to stumble across over a hundred rather muddy grown men and women running around with sticks between their legs, hurling balls and dragging each other to the ground. No, you haven’t stumbled across the latest meeting of the Anglo-Saxon Battle Re-Enactment Society; you have just become a spectator of Oxford’s latest must-see event: the inaugural British Quidditch Cup. I went to talk to Captain of the Radcliffe Chimeras, Ashley Cooper, to find out more.
With the pretext of giving an introduction for those of our readers less well briefed on ‘muggle quidditch’ (but also for my own benefit) I start with the obvious question. How on earth do you play it? “It’s a full contact sport, basically a cross between rugby and dodgeball. You can dump-tackle, spear-tackle, drag people to the ground” Ashley tells me. “Obviously there are some big guys and smaller girls so we don’t use excessive force” he hastily adds. Luckily he must be telling the truth because the injury count isn’t too high; “We’ve only had one serious one which was a broken collarbone. He broke his collarbone playing rugby, was told not to play non-contact sport, thought quidditch would just be nerdy guys running around and broke it again.” My joke about no need for re-growing bones falls flat. At this point Ashley chooses to tell me that most of the quidditch team aren’t very big Harry Potter fans.
I smoothly change the subject to the upcoming British Quidditch Cup: what is so special about it? “The top 16 teams in Britain and Ireland have qualified to compete in a 2 day competition which will decide Britain’s best team. There are also going to be scouts from Quidditch UK who will be coming to pick a team for the World Cup in the USA next year.” Sounds pretty serious for a sport most of us haven’t heard of, but we at Cherwell are prepared to get behind any team wearing dark blue, so what are Oxford’s chances in the tournament? “I think we’re going to win”, Ashley says confidently. “The Radcliffe Chimeras are currently ranked as one of the best in Britain; we’ve been to two competitions so far and won both, and we have a 2nd team, the Oxford Quidlings, who are also entering.”
Having received responses ranging from “we have a quidditch team?”, to “what a bunch of losers!” when telling friends about this interview, I’m interested to know what first attracted Ashley to quidditch. “I originally came as a joke, I’ll admit. I thought it would be the most awkward people in Oxford and that I’d just come once because it would be a good pub story. But I did one training session and I had so much fun. I reckon it’s probably one of the best social groups; these are some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. And it doesn’t steal your social life either.” But surely it must be difficult getting this message across in a world dominated by the prospect of getting a Blue, so is quidditch taken seriously enough across the university? “If you’d asked me a year ago I would have said people don’t take it seriously enough but I think now when people see how physically intense it is they think it’s less of a joke. But we’re not supposed to be completely serious; we are fun, we’re just not a complete joke either.” I point out that the club was included in ‘Miscellaneous’ rather than ‘Sport’ at the Freshers’ Fair this year. Ashley shrugs. “The issue is more about getting Sport England’s recognition than the University’s. We’re on the way to that with the setting up of the British Cup and a new league as well, so hopefully the University can then recognise us as a sport.” And before you dismiss it as a sport limited to universities which will never have any effect on the world beyond Oxford, Ashley tells me that quidditch is already on its way to tackling the growing childhood obesity epidemic: “Last year it was trialled in a girl’s school in Wales with about a 25% attendance rate in P.E. and it consistently increased attendance to over 95%. We ourselves work with charities to go and play ‘Kidditch’ in schools which has also been a big success.”
So there you have it-not only are they less of a joke than you might have thought for a bunch of people who run around with sticks between their legs, but they’re doing their bit for society as well. As a seasoned player of mainstream sports such as netball and lacrosse, I’ll admit that I was rather apprehensive and more than a little sceptical when I arrived in Uni Parks today, but Oxford Quidditch has a lot going for it: a nice bunch of people and a team who are potentially on the cusp of becoming British champions – there’s also some pretty cool kit for all you stash monkeys out there. So go for your walk in two weeks time, and if you are tempted, head along to the Parks at 12:00 on Saturdays to give it a go… I might see you there.
