Ben Elliott clutched his broom tightly in his left hand as he effortlessly caught a ball in his right. Leaning to dodge another ball hurtling for his head, he picked up speed as he raced down the field.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw a Slytherin player sneaking up on his right. In one swoop, Elliott turned; the opposing player lost her balance and tumbled to the ground.

As Elliott continued to race down the field, other players chased after him in an attempt to stop his rush toward the goal.

Elliott was faster, and he reached the gold hoops first with enough time to hurl the ball in his hand through the hoop to score.

With his score, reality came rushing back. In the heat of the day, the players called for a timeout. Elliott disembarked from his broom for a drink of water. Across the field, a kickball game was underway and a group of students were setting up volleyball nets.

The Slytherin and Gryffindor teams were not playing in a Hogwarts stadium, but rather, in a corner of Denny Field.

This Quidditch practice was not a unique event. Throughout the United States, college students are starting Quidditch teams and modifying the Harry Potter sport for a non-magical arena.

Freshman Alicia Radford brought Quidditch to the UW after she found accounts of universities playing the sport on the Harry Potter fan Web site, mugglenet.com.

When CBS’ The Early Show did a feature on the Quidditch match between Amherst College in Massachusetts and Middlebury College in Vermont, Radford woke up to watch it. Afterward, she immediately started recruiting friends and classmates to play the novel-inspired game.

“I thought it was so incredibly awesome,” Radford said.

Quidditch is the main sport in the wizarding world of the Harry Potter series. The fictional players fly around on broomsticks, trying to score with the quaffle, a dimpled, spherical ball, by lobbing it through large gold hoops. Beaters throw bludgers, which are spheres made of iron, at players in an attempt to knock them off their brooms, while the famed seeker flies about looking for the illusive golden snitch, a walnut-sized ball that darts across the playing area.

Despite its complexity, Quidditch translates into a real-life version that anyone can play.

UW players carry a volleyball quaffle from one end of the field to the other as they try to score in the hoops defended by keepers. Beaters carry dodgeball bludgers that they throw at players; instead of getting knocked out of the air, those hit must go back to their respective goal. The snitch is not a ball in this version, but rather a person who roams throughout campus. Each opposing team has a seeker who chases after the snitch, trying to catch him or her to end the game.

And of course, the entire game is played on broomsticks.

“You get used to running with a broom between your legs,” Radford said.

Elliott is a first-year graduate student in speech and hearing sciences. He heard about the Quidditch team through friends at Swing Kids at UW, a student swing dancing organization.

“It sounded really kind of fun,” Elliott said. “It’s nice to get out and do something outside.”

Like Elliott, sophomore David Turnipseed has been playing since the team’s inception and described the game as rather athletic.

“It’s a combination of soccer, dodgeball and a million other things,” he said.

Despite the seemingly random combination of sports, Quidditch is formally organized. The Intercollegiate Quidditch Association was formed in 2005 at Middlebury College in Vermont and even has an official rulebook.

The rulebook includes standards on hoop height, field length and rules of contact. Although Quidditch is described as a “contact sport,” blatant punching is forbidden.

Each Quidditch team consists of 12 players: three chasers, one keeper, three beaters and one seeker. In the early days of UW Quidditch, Radford found it difficult to put together enough players for a game. However, as the team practiced more, additional people began showing up. Playing on Denny Field has a lot to do with it, Radford said.

“There’s always people around watching,” she said. “We can always try to get at least someone walking by to join.”

Radford’s goal this year is to get the word out about Quidditch. She wants the teams to grow and eventually have enough players for several teams, possibly departmental teams. But her biggest dream is to host a Washington state tournament between the other schools with Quidditch teams.

“Whitman, Western and Evergreen College have teams,” she said. “There are also schools in Oregon, California and Idaho with teams, too.”

But for now, she just wants UW students to get in the game

“There’s really a post for everyone,” Radford said. “You don’t need to be insanely athletic to play, just excited.”