The world is a big place with countless people and cultures living in debatable harmony for untold millennia. Over the years, the cultures of the world found they needed a pastime to burn the dead air between hunting, gathering, and complaining. They needed an excuse to come together and participate in a friendly competition between tribes, either to see who was the dominant group or who could throw the thing into the thing and win the most things; the creation of the first sport was here. Sports have gotten extremely complex over the course of history but only two are mankind’s greatest achievements in getting people outside, Quidditch and Grifball. These two sports may be different in nature, but they are very similar in style and many other attributes.

Quidditch is a Hogwartian sport usually played outside for the reason that everyone is riding a flying broomstick at breakneck velocity. The objective is to throw balls through opponent’s tin hoop. Each goal made is a point, and the game is over when a small golden flying ball that actively tries to avoid any and all contact is caught.  As mentioned before, players are in fact soaring in the air at speeds fast enough to total a car, so adequate broom handling is required.  Despite such reckless abandon, deaths are few and far between. The origins of the sport come from basic mucking around on magic brooms with nothing very interesting about it; however, it is easily confused to be the first broomstick sport when in reality it’s just the most popular. Despite its popularity, it is no longer recognized as an official sport; the game slowly made its way onto ban lists of nearly every country, and if not for the faithful fanbase it accumulated, it would have died off completely.

On the other hand, we have the greatest game this side of UNSC space, Grifball. The sport is played with two teams of four players each trying to score a fifty megaton bomb in the opponent’s goal, with the score to win being a low three points. Players attempt to prevent this by tagging opponents out with giant hammers provided before each match. The game is described as a poor man’s football, a collection of bits taken from other popular sports, and a pitiful attempt to piggyback on the resurrected popularity in Pong. Historical origins suggest that a highly dysfunctional group of soldiers, who were used solely to train super soldiers, created the sport in their free time, but nobody was brave enough to play it. The name comes from the group sergeant’s resentment to his very disobedient and annoying private in his squad and his desire to use his head as a kickball.

The two games have apparent similarities in their play style, rules, and goal. Quidditch and Grifball are both played with a ball, players are actively fighting for said ball, the ball must enter a designated goal of some shape and form, and both sports are extremely dangerous without many years of training. Their differences being that Quidditch is played on personal broomsticks while Grifball is on foot, Grifball’s ball is not actively trying to escape, Quidditch is played with almost no protective gear while Grifball’s players are lightly armored from head to toe, and most notably that Quidditch is no longer played today while Grifball is known and played almost worldwide.

No amount of differences will ward off new players nor should it ever be the case; games of any kind should be looked upon with much curiosity and burning desire to participate. With that said, go out and find local registration kiosks when the season arrives for an experience that can’t and won’t be beat.