In the shaded seclusion of Nichols Arboretum, a few shouts break nature's silence.

“Brooms down, eyes closed!” calls out LSA junior Emily Byl. “The Snitch is released!” And so begins a game of Michigan Quidditch.

Of course, Quidditch is the beloved wizard sport in J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” books, but it's sneaking into the Muggle world. The ‘U’ team is among the most recently registered in the — wait for it — International Quidditch Association.

“This actually started two summers ago when my friends and I were really good friends with someone from Eastern (Michigan University)’s team,” Byl said. “We were looking and looking and trying to find our Quidditch team, and we realized that it didn’t exist.”

In the year that followed, Byl and her friends familiarized themselves with the IQA rulebook, which specifies everything from forbidden maneuvers to standardized brooms. In September, they set up a Michigan Quidditch table at Festifall on the Diag.

“Festifall drew way more support than we had ever fathomed," Byl said. "We realized there was a niche for it because a couple people e-mailed me right when the group started — when I registered the group, I got 10 e-mails from people who were interested — but we had about 300 people at Festifall register. It was absurd. Our booth was continuously crowded with people and we really weren’t quite ready for that capacity of interest.”

“To me, it just sounded interesting because you wonder how they translate the game,” said LSA freshman Robert Morgan, who signed up at Festifall. “Obviously we don’t have magic and can’t fly, so I was like, ‘Wow, how are they gonna pull this one off?’ ”

As it turns out, there aren’t too many differences between the wizard and Muggle versions of Rowling’s sport. College Quidditch still has seven players: three chasers, two beaters, a seeker and a keeper. On either end of the pitch are the goals, each made of three hula hoops duct-taped to tiki torches and wedged in the ground. The Quaffle is used to score, and the Bludgers (three instead of two) are used to hit and confuse other players. For these, the Michigan players currently use dodgeballs featuring Disney characters. The greatest challenge posed by bringing Quidditch to life is the Snitch.

“The concept behind the Snitch is that it’s essentially ... a runner,” Byl explained. “Someone dressed in all yellows or bright colors.”

The “Snitch Runner” sticks a tube sock containing a tennis ball into his or her pants.

“So to catch the Snitch you have to grab the ball out of the Snitch’s pants,” Byl said. “The Snitch can hide, the Snitch can climb trees ... it’s pretty fun.”

At the moment, LSA freshman Mark Wagner plays the part of the Snitch. Wagner ran cross country in high school and participated in the Detroit Free Press Marathon this past Sunday, so playing Snitch came easily to him.

“This is a good way to stay in shape,” Wagner said. “I go on runs too, but this way I just get to run around the Arb and have people chase me.”

Catching the Snitch ends the game and earns the respective Seeker’s team 50 points. In the books, catching the Snitch is worth 150 points, but the IQA feels that this puts too much pressure on Seekers and risks trivializing the rest of the game.

Though the IQA began as the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association, it changed its name to reflect the participation of high schools and institutions in other countries. To date, the IQA has registered more than 400 colleges and 300 high schools everywhere from the United States to New Zealand.

When Byl and her teammates began scrimmages in the Arb, the team drew quite a bit of attention with its equipment. A woman asked if the players were playing broomball at an early practice. When she heard it was Quidditch, she just had to watch.

“She said, ‘My son would love this,’ and so she and a couple of other families came to watch the game with their kids,” Byl said.