Silly Muggles

Holy Hogwarts! Harry Potter game comes to life at Woodbury Field Day By Rebecca CorreaStaff writer
SALEM — There was a snitch running around Grant Field yesterday, but she didn't get into trouble.
That's because the eighth-grader was instructed by teachers to be as unobtrusive as possible and avoid being captured by her Woodbury Middle School peers.
Dubbing one student the "snitch" was all part of the school's annual Field Day, which now includes Quidditch matches.
Half the goal of Quidditch — a game straight out of the chapters of Harry Potter books — is to catch the snitch. In the popular science fiction books, the snitch is a small golden ball that flies above the field while a game is going on. Since Woodbury students aren't wizards and witches learning how to fly, the snitch was a student dressed with cloth wings.
The other half of the game resembles soccer, except students use their hands to throw a ball into a goal, instead of their feet.
While the sport and terminology may sound like a foreign language to outsiders, it's common speech to these middle-school students.
Elora Moeller, 14, said she's read the entire Harry Potter series — which consists of seven books — three times. But yesterday, she couldn't score a goal in Quidditch.
"It's harder than it looks," she said. "It's difficult."
While the game yesterday mirrored the way she pictured the game in the books, Elora said it could have been cooler if the students were actually allowed to hold broomsticks and act like they were flying, as the students at Hogwarts do in the books.
The idea to bring Quidditch to the school's Field Day, which is traditionally held at most schools during the last week of classes, came from music teachers Patrick Moeschen and Nicole Greene.
"We developed it because we saw it online," Moeschen said. "We saw some colleges and corporations are doing it, and thought it would be fun to add something new."
It turns out they were right.
Chris Bunker, 14, said it was the highlight of his day.
"It's different," he said. "It's something that you usually don't play so it's a lot of fun."
Chris was a "keeper," or goalie, and managed to stop all shots from getting in.
When a student scores a goal through the hula hoop-sized net, it's worth five points. If someone captures the snitch, it's worth 10.
"I think it's because I have good hand/eye coordination from playing tennis," Chris said.
But at the end of the game, when Elora's team won, she said it didn't even matter — it was just fun to play the game she's read about so much.
That sentiment was shared by many of her eighth-grade peers, who said although they will enter high school in the fall, the Harry Potter books and movies aren't any less appealing to them.
Elora said having read the books several times she likes them better than the movies that followed.
"They're so much better than the movies," she said. "There's so much they leave out of the movies that are in the books."
Kristina Carlson, 14, agreed and she's happy she read them all.
"It's something that can never happen, but it's fun to think it could and imagine it happening," she said.
taken from here
http://www.eagletribune.com/punewsnh/local_story_168231049.html