Inside Texas Quidditch [Slideshow]

By Rose Cahalan in 40 Acres, July | August 2013, Sports on June 25, 2013 at 3:57 pm | No Comments

It’s rare for a new sport to enter the mainstream—and even rarer for that sport to be drawn from a series of young-adult fantasy novels.

But Quidditch has arrived, and it confounds all expectations. At once whimsical and violent, nerdy and athletic, Harry Potter’s sport appears to be here to stay at colleges around the nation. And The University of Texas’ team has been crowned world champion (“Quidditch Takes Flight,” Jul.|Aug. 2013).

Below, Annie Govekar’s photos from the sixth-annual Quidditch World Cup in Kissimmee, Fla., shed light on a quirky sport whose campus reputation is on the rise.