“It’s unlike any other sport I have played but it’s a combination of so many sports that you’re used to playing,” said SU Quidditch Player Ryan Govoni

The rules of Muggle Quidditch, or human Quidditch, are very similar to those outlined by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series,

“You have to adopt it for land use. You have to run with the broom in between your legs. You have to stay on your broom at all times. If you take the broom out from in between your legs you technically fall off your broom so you have to start back at your goal post,” said Govoni.

There are three chasers on each team who take the Quaffle and try to score it through the hoops. The two beaters play defense while seekers have to chase around the snitch.

The game broken down a little more:

Chasers must pass the Quaffle (white ball) and scoring points by throwing it through one of the opponent’s goals at each end. Three chasers play on a team. When a Chaser is hit by a Bludger while holding the Quaffle, he or she must drop the ball and run back to his or her own goalpost before rejoining the game.

Keepers are the goalies and block the attempts to score. One keeper plays on a team. Depending on the version of Quidditch played, Keepers can be invulnerable from being hit by the balls but in others, the keeper must freeze for a few seconds.

Beaters play defense by hitting opposing players with Bludgers, red balls. There are two Beaters on a team.

Seekers try to catch the Golden Snitch, who is a person dressed in yellow that runs around the field.

“I like to call it a combination of soccer and basketball with even a little dodge ball thrown in there. I guess a glorified game of tag in some aspect,” said Drew Shields, creator of the Syracuse University Quidditch Team.

Magic may have been crucial in the Harry Potter books but no fancy equipment is involved in Muggle Quidditch.

“I think we had to hit up the dollar store to get the brooms and home depot for the PVC stands and what not and then we just kinda grabbed a bunch of hula hoops and through them on top. It’s pretty bootleg,” said Shields.

Some players, including Chelsea Sigmond of the Syracuse University Team, love Harry Potter.

“I am a huge potter nerd,” aid Sigmond.

But others, including the creator of Quidditch at Syracuse University, started playing only after a friend started the game over summer break to impress his girlfriend.
“I didn’t really read the books I, didn’t really care about the movies but we came down there and played the game and it was pretty fun so we decided to start teams at our respective colleges the next year and its kinda turned into something that has grown and blossomed I guess,” said Shields.

Quidditch was invented at Middlebury College in Vermont and has grown internationally ever since. Here in Central New York there are teams recognized by the International Quidditch Association at Fayettville-Manlius High School, Cornell, Ithaca, SUNY-Geneseo, and here at Syracuse University.

“I got here the fall of my freshmen year which was last year and from what I understand it started about a year before that so I mean we’ve been getting a lot of new people every year so the team’s just kinda growing,” said Sigmond.

The SU teams plays at the Women’s Building Field every Sunday…

“We just usually play like pickup games it’s just a way to kill an afternoon especially on a lazy Sunday and it’s just kinda grown into a nice thing. It’s nice to see the same faces. We’ve gotten a lot of friends over the years from doing this. It’s just kinda a nice thing especially for kids their freshmen year don’t really know anybody it’s just kinda nice to get people together,” said Shields.

Ithaca and Cornell also practice on Sundays while SUNY Geneseo practices Saturday afternoons. Players say it’s more about having a good time than the rivalries between teams but that doesn’t mean things can’t get a little rough…

“Its full contact, there’s no tackling to the ground normally, you can do that if you want but there’s nothing that says you can’t grab somebody and strip them from the balls as hard as you want,” said Govoni.

The World Cup Quidditch Tournament was held in New York City this year, a big step up from the previous host city of Middlebury, Vermont. Although Syracuse was the only team from Central New York that attended and lost in the first round, they say Quidditch is more about having fun than actually winning.

“Ya know we are just a bunch of kids who come out here on a Sunday and just shoot the shit so we’re just going to go down there to see our friends that we’ve made over the years,” said Shields.

Some schools hope to make Quidditch a NCAA sport. But the Syracuse team has its doubts after the hoops they have had to go through trying to form a club team.

“I mean there’s a lot of red tape involved with trying to start something like this. We’ve always thought about becoming a club sport but there’s so much red tape and you have to sign this form/that form and you have to reserve fields. I think it’s actually too late in the year to reserve a field as a club so we realized it’s better to just come down here unofficially but i mean there’s a lot of red tape like that,” said Shields.

The teams say they have had their share of being made fun of.

“There are people who think we are nerds just running around trying to fly in our childhoods and there are other kids who just think this is the coolest thing ever so if we can help kids live out their childhood fantasies it’s just kinda nice thing to do,” said Shields.

But the bottom line of the SU Quidditch team, much like that of the Harry Potter books, is having fun.

“At the end of the day you’re playing a game where you’re running around on brooms based on a fictional sport so you can never take yourself too seriously no matter how aggressive you get, you have to kinda take a step back and realize I’m just doing this for fun,” said Shields.

Latino students in the Syracuse City School District practice vocabulary with flash cards. The language barriers between them and the teachers make it difficult for them to succeed.

Written and Produced By Stephanie Claytor

This fall, Latino community leaders from Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo met at the Upstate Latino Summit. The summit– held in downtown Syracuse–  gave Latinos from all over Upstate New York the opportunity to discuss issues in their community, such as education.

Nationwide, Latinos have the highest drop-out rate. And according the latest statistics revealed on the New York State Report card, Syracuse City School District is following that trend– a concern for some local leaders.

” We all know that, based on demographics, if we do not change that drop-out rate… this country is not going to survive,” said Syracuse Common Council President Bea Gonzalez.

During the education workshop, Margarita Reyes, a representative of the Rochester City School District showcased a survey she conducted at Monroe High School in Rochester. She asked the Latino students why their peers failed to finish school. Reyes said work, absence of parental guidance, pregnancies and lack of support from faculty were the main reasons why students said their peers quit school.

And some of the students in Syracuse shared similar sentiments.

“I didn’t like the class scheduling, I didn’t like some of the teachers, they were very rude, “said Keisha Encarnacion, a 21-year old Latina who quit attending Nottingham High school in the last semester of her senior  year. “When you did need help there, it was very hard because the classes were so large.”

“There’s a lot of percent of them that drop out because they get picked on,” said April Keller, a student at Fowler High school.

Social worker Donna Lucente has assisted students at Syracuse’s Fowler High School for more than a decade. She said a lack of vision is the reason students quit school.

“A lot of students don’t have a vision for their future that they could go to college or that college could be affordable for them,” Lucente said.

The Syracuse City School District has around 20,000 students enrolled in school this year. About 1200 of them are Latinos. Fowler High School has the largest percentage of Latinos out of all of the high schools.  There, Latinos make up about a quarter of the student body.  According to the New York State Report card, which gives statistics and evaluates the performances of schools in the state, only 32 percent of the Latino students at Fowler High School in the class of 2007 graduated by August of that year. That’s about 22 Latino students out of the 68 students in the class.

Principal James Palumbo said the school’s dropout rate is “unacceptable.” He states the school’s six-year Latino graduation rate is somewhere around 50 percent. And he said he is willing to bet that if he had more Spanish speaking teachers, the graduation rate for Latino students would rise.

But, year after year, Palumbo said there aren’t any Spanish speaking certified candidates applying.  Syracuse City School Superintendent Lowengard echoed Palumbo’s concern.

“We believe in bilingual education,” Lowengard said. “But, it’s an issue for us, finding teachers that are certified and that speak Spanish. ”

**If you want to learn more about how your child’s school scored on the New York State Report card, click here.

Students play beer pong on Syracuse University campus. The traditional college drinking games has been linked to the spread of the H1N1 virus.

Beer Pong- Another Swine Flu Victim

By Rachel Silver

Syracuse, N.Y. – A longstanding college tradition may be a cause in the spread of swine flu.

Beer pong, a college drinking game, is popular with students on campuses across the country. In the game, players throw ping-pong balls into cups of beer to determine who drinks and continue playing until all of the cups are empty.

But while the game may seem relatively harmless, several schools have connected outbreaks of H1N1 on their campuses to the game.

At Rennsalaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, twenty-one students with confirmed cases of swine flu were said to contract the virus through beer pong, causing the university to send out a message warning students of the potential dangers of the game.

At Syracuse University, the administration took a proactive approach through an advisory sent to off-campus students regarding the health risks of beer pong.

“There is an obvious connection between people exchanging germs through contact with cups and sharing beverages,” said Carol Masiclat, associate director of communications for the Division of Student Affairs. “So obviously if you’re sharing cups and, you know, putting your mouth on common things, it’s possible you could increase you risk of getting sick.”

However, despite the university’s warnings, the majority of SU students, like Ian Chin, remain unconcerned.

“It’s part of the college culture, you know,” said Chin. “It’s fraternities and sororities like playing it, it’s a staple at college parties and, you know, college kids like to, you know, get intoxicated.”