The Syracuse Snare Quidditch Club is alive and well, practicing for their upcoming matches and tournaments. Players have sticks between their legs to simulate flying broomsticks while multiple balls are active on the pitch at any time. The sport strives to replicate the gameplay of Quidditch as portrayed in the Harry Potter franchise.
Senior Mitchell Vargas is a chaser and seeker for the team at Syracuse University. He has been playing Quidditch since his freshman year.
“Quidditch is a mixed-gender, multi-ball sport that involves, you know, scoring through three different hoops and an element of dodgeball with beating and bludgers. And then there's also the element of broomstick between your legs, which is super fun,” said Vargas.
Another rule of the game allows players of all genders to participate equally on the pitch.
“The gender-maximum rule was designed to keep the sport more inclusive and keep everyone kind of involved in the game. And so you cannot have more than four of one gender on the pitch at any one time,” noted Vargas.
The gender maximum rule is an aspect of the game that has turned the traditional athletic gender binary on its head. In relation to Title IX, a bill that ensures equal participation in scholastic sports at the high school and college levels, the United States Quidditch organization has developed its own version of this rule called the Title IX and ¾ rule, referencing the fictional train platform 9 and ¾ from the Harry Potter series. According to the US Quidditch website, "the gender that a player identifies as is considered to be that player’s gender."
“As our community's understanding of gender grew, then, so did this Title IX and 3/4 policy in our gender maximum rule,” Vargas said.
Mary Kimball, the executive director of US Quidditch, has seen the positive effect this rule can have on non-binary and transgender Quidditch players.
“It's become more inclusive to ensure that we're recognizing people who identify outside the binary because more and more people, especially those in Gen Z, are realizing that they are non-binary. And so our sport is committed to providing an opportunity for them to play,” Kimball disclosed.
Cheyene Muenzel plays as a chaser for SU’s team. They’ve felt the impact of the gender-maximum rule.
“The most, I guess, gender-inclusive sport I've done was maybe cross country … even then, like you had, you know, your boys heat and your girls heat. There was no [heat] for the people like me who kind of aren't comfortable with either, comfortable with both, or just fall somewhere in between," Muenzel said. "With the gender maximum rule … we just need to not extend a maximum of one gender and one gender identity in particular. So that really is different than the sports I played before.”
Most sports on the high school level and above operate on a binary system — exclusively men’s teams and women’s teams. This strict divide has come under the microscope in recent years, specifically with the issue of transgender athletes being banned from playing in leagues separated by sex. Falk College professor and attorney of sports law John Wolohan has first-hand experience on how gender binary in sports can impact athletes.
“I was tasked by the South African government to help out with the Caster Semenya case, in front of the IAAF," Wolohan said.
In 2019, the International Association of Athletics Federations decided Caster Semenya must lower her natural testosterone levels to compete with other female athletes in the name of fair competition.
“Basically making her compete with males unless she wants to go through an operation or medication to kind of reduce her testosterone — that seemed wrong," Wolohan said.
Newhouse professor Anne Osborne has also studied gender in athletics. She’s seen the argument about which athletes can play in certain leagues come down to a singular point: testosterone levels.
“Where non-binary athletes are concerned, again, it's this fear that somehow testosterone is this magic bullet that some people just happen to have, and that that's going to then somehow erode our understanding, our expectations around femininity, generally," Osborne said.
Osborne points out that testosterone levels are not the only biological advantage an athlete might have.
"There are any number of ways that athletes have natural competitive advantages. So whether it is that their bodies are able to process oxygen at a more efficient rate, or they have a wider wingspan and so then they could swim better than others. And we don't police those things. We've chosen to police this one aspect of people's biological difference," Osborne said.
The real-life magic of Quidditch, then, might be that it gives space to athletes outside of the gender binary to play without judgment. By and large, members of the SU Quidditch team are satisfied with the impact of the Title 9 ¾ rule.
Elizabeth Lawson-Keister has been playing collegiate Quidditch for nine years. She’s found that the inclusivity of the sport allows her, and other players, to develop new skills that defy traditional understandings of women in sports.
“There's like this kind of taught mentality that, like maybe women can't compete physically with the men, or they can't drive so they can't run through the hoops and score with male defenders. And they often can, because it turns out, it's not very hard to run past someone, which is something you don't think about,” Lawson-Keister said.
Ultimately, Lawson-Keister said the confidence to be yourself authentically on the pitch is the greatest benefit of the Title 9 ¾ rule.
“One of the best things, I think, for me is being able to teach these players that they can do that. And like they learn that and I think that makes them more confident. It certainly made me more confident. You just learn that like, I don't know, it pays to be confident,” Lawson-Keister said.
Quidditch has advanced what equality means for college athletes. Perhaps it’s lighting the way for Title IX to bring about a more equitable future for athletes of all genders in other sports, too.
Entitled to Equality is a collaboration between The Newhouse School, The STAND and WAER, examining the 50th anniversary of Title IX and the perspectives on the law’s protections.