Marquette sophomore Monica Raciti of South Bend, Ind., rushes to pick up a bludger during a scrimmage at Norris Park as part of tryouts for the quidditch team. Credit: Kyle Grillot

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It looked like dodgeball. Or maybe water polo without the water.

But brooms?

Kicking up mud as they ran down the field holding brooms between their legs, the athletes sweated in the early evening heat, throwing balls at each other and through hoops.

Someone in a group of soccer players walking off a nearby field yelled sarcastically "Go Ravenclaw!"

Marquette University's quidditch players are used to wisecracks.

"We get a lot of that. We just ignore it," said Curtis Taylor, who founded Marquette's quidditch team. "Until you come play with us, don't talk - it's a lot more physical than most people realize."

As the legions of Harry Potter fans grow up and head to college, a growing number of campuses are adding quidditch teams to their club sport offerings. Marquette's quidditch team became an official club sport this year. Other Wisconsin colleges are forming teams.

There's a slick quarterly magazine called Quidditch Quarterly, or "QQ," which attracts 200,000 online readers. Teams travel to national and world cup tournaments. More than 500 universities and high schools in the U.S. field quidditch teams plus a couple hundred more in foreign countries.

This isn't exactly J.K. Rowling's vision of the game popularized in her books. While Harry Potter and his Gryffindor teammates zoomed on brooms high over the playing pitch, throwing quaffles through three hoops to score points and searching for the golden snitch, the muggle or human version of quidditch hews close to terra firma.

"Obviously there is no flying," said Taylor, 21, a senior international business major from Wadsworth, Ohio.

Real world quidditch is a mash-up of full-contact, coed soccer, dodgeball and rugby with brooms. Created in 2005 by students at Middlebury College in Vermont, the game features seven players on each team - three chasers who move the quaffle - a slightly deflated volleyball - down the field by either running with it or passing it to another chaser; two beaters who throw or kick bludgers (rubber dodgeballs) at opposing chasers to temporarily knock them out of play; one keeper to defend their team's three scoring hoops; and one seeker who chases the snitch runner to remove the snitch to end the game.

In the books and movies, the snitch was a tiny golden-colored ball with wings that flew around the playing field. In real-world quidditch, the snitch is a tennis ball inside a yellow sock tucked into the waistband of the snitch runner, someone who isn't on either team and attempts to avoid capture by whatever means necessary like hiding in the audience.

There's no time limit. The match ends when the snitch has been captured.

Cross country runners are good seekers, basketball or water polo players have the skills to be good chasers and rugby or football players make for good beaters, said Alex Benepe, commissioner of the International Quidditch Association, a nonprofit organization that oversees the game and helps schools form teams. For athletes used to playing with just one ball - at any one time there are four bludgers and two quaffles in play - learning a new game is an attraction.

"I think initially there's the novelty factor and the Harry Potter connection," Benepe said of the game's popularity. "What makes them stay, and their staying attracts other people, is the quality of the game's design. It combines a lot of sports, it's coed and has humorous and creative elements, which means there's something for everyone."

Marquette's players range from Potterphiles to former high school athletes looking for a really new sport to try in college. Chelsea Greco, 21, a junior from Omaha, Neb., and Lauren Bratonja, 19, a Franklin native studying to become an athletic trainer, both played sports in high school and decided to try quidditch last year.

"Some people make fun of you endlessly. People ask if we use a Nimbus 2000 or Firebolt," said Bratonja, referring to world-class brooms used in the Potter universe.

They don't. Their brooms don't sport fancy names and can't fly, but they feature leather coverings where the handle meets the straw to cut down on chafing between players' legs.

Greco, a soccer and basketball player, was chosen last season for the national quidditch squad - yes, there's even a national team - but couldn't participate after tearing her ACL. She enjoys the full contact nature of the sport, which includes tackling, stiff-arming and stripping quaffles by poking it from the hands of chasers.

"It's how intense you want to make it," Greco said.

Eleven players have returned from last year's 22-member squad at Marquette. About 20 people showed up for tryouts one night last week with more scheduled later in the week.

Marquette players pay $250 for dues, which include uniforms and some travel expenses. As a club sport at Marquette, the quidditch team can apply for funding for flights or fuel for road trips. Players must pay for hotels and food. The team sells a Marquette Quidditch T-shirt to fans and last season raised $11,000 to compete in the World Cup in New York.

Marquette's fall schedule includes matches against Minnesota, Illinois State, Kansas, Loyola, Purdue and Missouri, plus tournaments in Indiana, Kansas and Ohio. Home matches have not yet been scheduled, but Taylor said it's likely Marquette will host a quidditch match later this month.

Taylor, the Wisconsin representative for the International Quidditch Association, said teams are forming this season at several campuses in the state, including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, UW-Whitewater, UW-Green Bay, UW-Eau Claire and Carthage College.

Among the Marquette students who attended quidditch team tryouts this week was Kelly Molinaro, 19, a sophomore transfer student from Palatine, Ill. She loves Harry Potter - read all the books, saw all the movies - and wanted to stay active in college so it came down to going out for either softball or quidditch.

"I told my brothers and sisters I was joining something nerdy and they're like, 'chess?' I'm like - 'no, quidditch.' They're like, 'Oh God,' " Molinaro said.