Schools field teams for Quidditch World Cup

Thanks to Harry Potter, Quidditch has become a hot school sport, and this weekend, New York City hosts the fourth annual Quidditch World Cup, drawing more than 750 athletes from 60 teams -- college (including Harvard, Middlebury, Yale, Duke and Oxford), high school and recreational leagues.

For those who have somehow escaped the Quidditch craze, it is a game in the Harry Potter series of books that involves two teams, each of seven players -- three Chasers, two Beaters, one Keeper and one Seeker -- who ride on broomsticks trying to score points by tossing a ball called a “quaffle” through goal hoops, while one player tries to catch a small ball called the Golden Snitch.

This inspired a land-based game, which started at Middlebury College in 2005, that combines elements of rugby, basketball, dodge ball and tag. Players run around straddling broomsticks while tossing around a quaffle.

Watch a video of Quidditch at Middlebury:

The game quickly spread; there are now teams in 45 U.S. states and many other countries. More than 200 colleges in the United States have a team, and there is even talk of turning it into an NCAA sport.

The fourth annual Quidditch World Cup will be broadcast on ESPN.

Just days after the World Cup, on Nov. 19, the penultimate film in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” will be released in theaters.

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