Shawnee Mission West is on the brink of adding another after-school activity to its arsenal: Harry Potter Club.  

The wizard-loving initiative is being spearheaded by senior Sinclaire Miramontez and junior Adam Leligdon.  Both Shawnee Mission East and Shawnee Mission South already have fully-functional Harry Potter clubs.  AP senior English teacher Marla Dercher is the hopeful sponsor.

“I think it will be one of the highlights of high school. The Quidditch matches will be extremely intense,” junior Caroline Fullerton said.

“Adam (Leligdon) and I want to create a group of people who all enjoy the series and be able to meet new people, who you otherwise wouldn’t have met, that have a common ground. Also, I’m just trying to play Quidditch against Shawnee Mission South,” senior co-leader Sinclaire Miramontez said.

Quidditch is the fictional game from the Harry Potter series in which players compete to capture the Snitch, the most valuable ball in the game.

In the real-world version of the game, players carry brooms between their legs and advance volleyballs, also known as “quaffles”, and attempt to shoot the balls past the opposing team’s keeper into the hoops. Two people are set to be “beaters” whose objective is to disrupt the flow of the game by throwing dodgeballs at runners in order to get them out, in the case where they must go and touch their own goal.

One final set of positions are the “snitch”, “snitch runner” and “seekers”.  The seekers attempt to catch the snitch which is attached to the wrist of the snitch runner. If the snitch is caught, the game ends immediately.

“We’re just trying to get a group of people together that appreciate and enjoy the Harry Potter series and the messages that it sends,” junior Adam Leligdon explained when asked for the motivations behind the club.

Club meetings are being planned to incorporate Harry Potter trivia sessions and novel and movie discussions.

Although this up-and-coming club is still in the works, co-leaders are very optimistic it will become official in the near future.