{"id":2249,"date":"2011-04-07T22:36:13","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T02:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=2249"},"modified":"2011-04-07T22:36:13","modified_gmt":"2011-04-08T02:36:13","slug":"news-to-us-jmu-has-a-quidditch-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=2249","title":{"rendered":"News to Us, JMU Has a Quidditch Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The magic of\u00a0Google alerts helps me keep track of JMU sports related stories. Unfortunately with the limited coverage of the Dukes, those alerts mostly just point me back to this very blog, so they’re not exactly eye-opening. Recently however, I received an alert that prompted me to go read this article about the newly formed JMU Quidditch team<\/a>. That’s right, a quidditch team. Quidditch, the “sport” that Harry Potter and his wizard friends play. And this isn’t unique to JMU, it’s supposedly quite a trend.<\/p>\n

I’m not one to judge when it comes to this sort of stuff. I’ve read all the Harry Potter books and I’m pretty geeky. I blogged about the friggin CBI Tournament for pete’s sake. That alone makes it virtually impossible for me to call anyone else’s chosen hobbies into question. Plus, from the way it was described in the books,\u00a0quidditch\u00a0does\u00a0sound like it would be a fun game to play. You know, provided it was real and not a completely made up game played by wizards flying around on brooms.\u00a0The\u00a0game JMU plays\u00a0seems to be more of a mutant team handball played while holding a broom however. Semantics aside,\u00a0the team\u00a0plays in the Virginia Quidditch League<\/a> and competes against teams from other schools like Virginia Tech, ODU, and VCU.<\/p>\n

Luckily, I found a couple videos of the JMU team in action to shed some light on things. This first video is of the JMU team practicing<\/a> and this second one is a profile of a recent match between VCU and JMU<\/a>. Again, I’m not one to judge, but it’s impossible for anyone\u00a0to watch those videos and not come to the same\u00a0glaringly obvious conclusion.\u00a0There isn’t any getting around it. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it’s got to be said. VCU’s quidditch facilities are far superior to JMU’s. \u00a0They’ve got real goal posts and everything in Richmond and all they have in Harrisonburg is a couple kids holding up laundry baskets. It’s pathetic. How is JMU even\u00a0supposed to compete? And I imagine it’s only going to get worse once VCU pumps some of its Final Four money into the quidditch program.<\/p>\n