Quidditch-Inventor: “I’ve Never Read the Rule Book”

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Quidditch-Inventor Alex Benepe is giving the opening speech at World Cup 2018 in Florence.

© Ajantha Abey

Alex Benepe is not only co-founder of Quidditch. He’s also had a significant influence on the sport over the years, and the sport has influenced him as well. His place of residence, his work, his friends and his former girlfriend - all have a connection to Quidditch. In an interview with MUS, he talks about the meaning of the headband colors, getting drunk spontaneously after a tournament and his successes as a player. He also confesses that he has never read the complete rulebook.

Magazin des unpopulären Sports (MUS): You have taken Quidditch from the fictional world of Harry Potter into real life and turned it into a real sport. You’re known to many as the Quidditch inventor, although you started the whole thing with a friend. How did you come up with the idea?

Benepe: It was my friend Xander’s idea, and it started over a conversation at lunch around fictional sports. The conversation evolved into thinking about how they could be played in real-life and then pivoted to quidditch. Xander started really thinking about real-life quidditch rules and after he walked me through the rules he was thinking of, I got really excited too. We had a commons system at our college, sort of like the houses. Each student is randomly assigned to a commons that has a name, a founder, a color, and an animal associated with it. Our commons was called Wonnacott, named after Erica Wonnacott, one of the only female commons founders who worked at Middlebury in the 70’s. Behind our dorm, there was a huge field, where we held the first quidditch match. The Wonnacott Commons dean gave us a little funding to buy some basic equipment to pay for the first match. Everyone wore towels as capes and one student thought we had to bring our own brooms and they couldn’t find one so they brought a cheap lamp from their dorm.  We also didn’t have enough hula hoops so each team had a garbage can for one of their goals, and one time one can got knocked over and empty beer cans from parties the night before spilled everywhere!  

MUS: You mentioned earlier that your friend Xander had the initial idea. Most quidditch players don't hear from him anymore. Do you know how and why he left the sport? Are you still in touch with him? 

Benepe: Yes, I am still in contact with him. I last saw him a few years ago when he visited Los Angeles, where I live. He is a professor at McGill University in Montreal and before that he lived in Hong Kong for many years. He is a really brilliant person and I think after one season of quidditch he was already tired of it and wanted to move on to the next thing. So he told me to take up the reins and keep quidditch going. I’ve since tried very hard to get him to come to a quidditch tournament so he can see in person how much the sport has evolved. But it didn’t work out yet. One day we will get him to come to World Cup!  

Alex Benepe at the Closing Ceremonies at 10th annual USQ Cup in Kissimmee, FL, 2017

© Isabella Gong

MUS: What’s your favorite memory within the quidditch cosmos?

Benepe: One of my favorite ones is when we hosted a match that was going to be live on a major news network in the US, the CBS. It was a very cold, rainy spring morning. We were going to play on the main field at my college, but the college did not want to let us play at first because of the rain. They were afraid we would destroy the field. Eventually, the president of the college said we could. So we hosted a live match for two million people. It was freezing cold and everyone was covered in mud by the end. 

Another big memory is after the fifth world cup, when it was still mostly US teams. It was the second one in New York City. We had ten to twelve pitches running simultaneously and there were 10,000 people there. It was our biggest event ever. After it was over, the clean-up was insane. We did not have a professional clean-up team. It was just volunteers driving around in golf carts with garbage bags, cleaning everything up.  We were so exhausted. It was night, it was cold. A breeze was coming off the river. Then we found a bunch of unopened 40 ounce beer bottles under someone's chair. So we took a break from cleaning up and just got really drunk. 

My most recent favorite memory is going to the world cup in Frankfurt. It was our first really big world cup with a lot of nations. I think there were 19 nations there. Seeing all the countries and meeting all the players was great. For the opening speech, I greeted each country with the word “welcome” in their language. That was really cool and it was fun to meet so many different teams from around the world, I couldn't believe it.

MUS: What are some of the rules back then that seem weird from today’s perspective? 

Benepe: The first weird rule would be the bludgers. When we first started, the rule was: When you got hit by a bludger, you needed to spin around three times. That was it. You didn’t have to run back to your hoops. After a year or so of playing, we realized that it was a bit silly and that it would be much more effective if you had to run back. There were also only two bludgers in the beginning as in the books, but we soon came to realize that it did not work quite as well, because you hold the bludgers versus hitting them with sticks like in the books. So we upgraded to three. That way a team always has at least one. Now this has become such a central pillar of the game. 

Another interesting subject is the evolution of the snitch. In the beginning, the snitch could leave the field and go pretty much anywhere on campus. Often, the snitch would run really far away, climb trees or buildings or go to dining halls to get food.

Another thing is that there was only one referee and no headbands. It was pretty much impossible to lead the game as a referee. In the second or third year, my friend Christopher came up with the idea of colored headbands that would indicate the positions of the players. 

Another rule would be the pitch boundary. It changed so much over time. When we first started, there was no boundary. I mean, we painted a line, because it looked cool, but it was more of a suggestions. There were even players who would take the ball and go around the audience to score. That’s when we realized that it was getting a little ridiculous.

MUS: You were talking about adding the headbands. There is an ongoing discussion in the community to change the colors, as a dark green for the keeper and black for the beater look similar, as well as a light green and a light yellow for the seeker. What is your stance on that? 

Benepe: There was a reason back then, why we came up with the colors. We chose white for the chasers because they use the quaffle which is a volleyball and it is usually white. We wanted to match that. We did black for the beaters since on a yin and yang these are the opposites and the beaters are most often targeting the quaffle. Then the keeper was green because they are the protector and green is the color of conservation. The seekers are yellow because it is the color of the snitch. That being said, I do not care if people change the colors. The colors should be whatever works best for the game. 

MUS: What do you miss most about quidditch in the early stages?

Benepe: I think the snitch runner was a lot more fun back in the day when they could leave the pitch and do all these antics. It was a little bit more like a circus. It was more entertaining for the audience but probably frustrating for the players.

MUS: What has changed for the better?

Benepe: The gender rule has changed for the better. When I was in college and we first started playing quidditch in 2005, there was much less awareness of social justice. At that age, I had little awareness of the gender spectrum. When we first created rules it was just regarding how many male and female players you need to have on pitch, leaving no room for non-binary folks. That rule has evolved a lot to incorporate the whole gender-spectrum. When we first started, quidditch was a co-ed sport. Now it is gender-integrated. That has been one of the best and most important evolutions in the sport. 

MUS: Why did you make it a co-ed full contact sport?

Benepe: We wanted to play with all of our friends and not have it segregated. Also, we were inspired by how the sport is gender integrated in the books.

MUS: Did you expect quidditch to become a sport played around the world? 

Benepe: I don’t think I realized the full growth potential of the sport until the third year of quidditch. We got a big article about quidditch the second year in the newspaper USA Today. Then in the third year, they still didn’t approve us as a club, but I went to the club fair anyway and found an empty table and made some signs and equipment and pretended to be a club. The incoming class of freshmen had heard about quidditch through the article and was really excited. We had 300 freshmen sign up to join the “club”, and we hosted the first “world cup” that year which was really an intramural tournament, with one other college team (Vassar College). The next year when we went back to the club board for approval, we were approved unanimously.

MUS: Do you think quidditch will survive as the “Harry Potter Generation” ages? 

Benepe: It’s a good question. I feel like Harry Potter is not reaching the new generation. Maybe Harry Potter will become like Star Wars and just fade into the background for a while. And then in some years, some major film studio will come back and reboot it and make it exciting again. In the meantime there are the film parks that everyone loves and some app games once in a while. There is so much potential in the world of Harry Potter. But yes, I feel like there is a generational gap happening. 

MUS: What impact do you think the Covid19-pandemic will have on the sport in the future?

Benepe: It definitely has a huge impact on sports right now. Any event that needs to take place in person is really uncertain for the next year or two, until a vaccine is ready. Anyone who does e-sports got pretty lucky. But we will get through this. It just will change some things for a while.

MUS: Have you read the rule book in its entirety?

Benepe: No. I tried to do that a few years ago. I was on a plane going to one of the tournaments, when I decided to use the time to do that. I fell asleep about a third of the way through. This is not a knock on the rulebook designers. They’re doing a great job. Every year the game is getting better and safer. They are doing a good job, but it’s hard to read. 

MUS: What was your biggest success as a player?

Benepe: I have two successes as a player. One was in the very first tournament we hosted on our campus in 2005. I was seeker for my team and we won the championship and I made the winning grab. It was an all-out dive. The snitch was running in full speed from me and I just dove and grabbed it mid-air. 

And then in 2011, we had an event called QuidCon, a small convention for quidditch players. We would host a fantasy tournament. My team won and I scored a lot of goals as a chaser. I haven’t played a lot since then. You know, back when I played, two-handed catching wasn’t a thing. I would look like an idiot if I played now. There was a veteran’s game at the last world cup and I was so bad. I don’t think I even scored a goal. 

Alex Benepe still attends the big tournaments: Here he is in the VIP booth overlooking the finals field at 11th annual USQ Cup in Round Rock, TX, 2018.
© Jeni Craswell

MUS: Are you still involved in quidditch?

Benepe: My only involvement now is that I am on the board of IQA. But I am not the most involved board member. I also started a small organization called Quidditch Alumni Organization with a few other retired quidditch players. The goal is to keep people connected to quidditch after they leave and raise money to give back to the sport. 

MUS: In retrospect, what impact has quidditch had on your life?

Benepe: I mean, it’s everything. I wouldn’t be in Los Angeles if it hadn’t been for quidditch. I moved here at the time with a girlfriend who was also a quidditch player. My current job, I got through quidditch connections. Quidditch has given me so much of my life and I am very grateful to it.

Questions were asked by Hannah Wolff.
Special thanks to Luis Teschner for proofreading.