"Most of the people here are avid fans of Harry Potter," Samantha Rose said.

They have come to play a game that is part soccer, part basketball, part lacrosse and part dodgeball known to readers and moviegoers around the world as Quidditch.

While J.K. Rowling's created sport uses brooms, wizards, capes and magic, the muggle version, like the one in Castle Rock, keeps the lingo while playing on terra firma.

"There's three chasers, two beaters, a keeper and then a seeker," Rose, who is the Colorado Quidditch captain and co-leader, said. "This isn't an official sport so we're still testing out equipment as we go."

Like the novel's version, the goal is to throw the quaffle, a small soccer ball, through one of three ringed hoops guarded by the keeper, while not being hit with a wet ball that the beaters throw around with lacrosse sticks to freeze players for 10 seconds.

"It's definitely very physical, there's no doubt about that," Gordon Feiner, who is openly one of the few players not into Harry Potter, said. "It's nice to get together to play a sport where there isn't all of this history and all of these rules and all of the minutiae that [get in the way] between getting here and playing."

All the while, there's a "snitch," usually a little kid who runs around the field with two flags, one a decoy, the other the real deal, which can get teams points needed to win games.

"It's the best fun you can have without a broom," Dienne Powell said, who showed up in costume. "It makes way more sense than anything the Broncos do."

For now, the group will play spring to summer until they can find an indoor venue to play.

"We all proclaim that we are pretty geeky," Rose said. "We get a really positive response [from people]. They're more curious about it than they are apprehensive."

To learn more about the group and sign up to play, you can visit their Web site at http://coloradoquidditch.com/Home.html.