Kennedy Murphy, a senior at Loyola, spends her free time on a broomstick. For the past four years she has been playing on the Loyola quidditch team and has found a home within the magic.
Originally from Grand Rapids, Mich., Kennedy is no stranger to sports. In high school she was active in volleyball, basketball, softball and soccer. Today, she’s involved on the quidditch, intramural basketball and intramural volleyball teams and studies advertising & public relations with minors in sports management and Catholic studies. We spoke about friendship, fun and flying (figuratively).
What has been your favorite part of being on the team? What position do you play?
I play chaser, so my job is to put the quaffle (volleyball) through one of the three hoops on the opponent’s side. That is how you score points. The three chasers, and one keeper, are basically playing tackle basketball while the two beaters are playing dodgeball and the seeker is wrestling. All this is happening at once on the field.
My favorite part of being on the team is the access to the quidditch community. I joined Loyola’s team as a freshman to try a new sport and meet other students. I never thought they’d become my closest friends or that I’d meet people from other teams throughout the Midwest who would become so important to me.
What do you have to say to someone who says that quidditch isn’t a real sport?
To anyone who doesn’t think quidditch is a real sport, I invite you to see a match in real life! It’s hard to deny the physicality of the game once you see people tackling each other and whipping dodgeballs around. We like to call quidditch a made-up sport, but every sport was made-up at some point. Ours just happens to come from a book about wizards.
What is the dynamic of Loyola’s quidditch team?
The team dynamic of Loyola’s quidditch team centers on friendship. Outside of our practices three times a week, we find plenty of ways to spend time together. We study in Mundelein, have movie nights, compete on trivia teams, go to basketball games, and more. Seven of us actually drove to San Antonio together for the Final Four my sophomore year, which is one of my favorite memories from my time at Loyola.