Quidditch gets real

Quidditch is a sport in the Harry Potter books. But now, people are playing it.

In the story, players fly on broomsticks. In real life, players run with them between their legs. For Tiphaine Pasquereau, the broomsticks make the game hard.

Tiphaine Pasquereau: "It's not just to say we do like Harry Potter, we pretend to fly or whatever. It really has a role because it serves as a handicap. We have to run while keeping it between our legs, so it forces us to handle the balls often with one hand. They are volleyballs, so they are quite big in diameter, so it is not necessarily easy."

In the real sport, players made some changes. The Golden Snitch is a gold ball with wings. Quidditch players put a tennis ball in a sock. They put the sock on a runner's shorts. The runner wears yellow.

Quidditch is unique. It uses skills from different sports. And team members can be male and female. Captain of the Paris team, Paul Bonnet, likes this.

Paul Bonnet:"We often find players who have done different sports before: rugby, basketball, volleyball, football. And in fact, everyone manages to fit in because there's huge diversity in the game, in what we have to do, in our roles. And so, everyone finds their place a little bit. It mixes several sports and obviously we have a good diversity of people, different physiques."

Tess Harmand wants the sport to be like other sports. She doesn't want it to be only for Harry Potter fans.

Tess Harmand: "It's our goal as a federation to show that we really are a serious sport, that we organise competitions like any other sport, and that we put the same intensity, the same passion as any other individual or team sport. But there are still people who are more attracted to the really geeky side, which is around the universe and everything." View Less