On Monday morning, athletes sprinted across the Howard County lawn with brooms between their legs to prove that even the bitterest questions about gender roles in sports can be settled through Quidditch.

Well, not exactly Quidditch.

Today, the niche game that emerged from the quirky universe of Harry Potter and became popular on college campuses is renamed quadball – a full-contact sport for men and women with four balls and three goal posts. There are no magic wands or Hogwarts houses.

The game’s literary roots and mix of skills appeal to nerds and athletes of all body types and genders alike. Its popularity comes at a time when transgender athletes are struggling to find their place in the sporting world and women’s teams are paid less than their male counterparts.

Such issues also haunted the Paris Olympics this summer. Algerian athlete Imane Khelif was wrongly identified as a man on social media, including by Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who complained that the Olympics had allowed her to participate. Khelif is not transgender and was assigned female at birth.

US Quadball and Major League Quadball have tested gender initiatives in Howard County, which has already hosted three national tournaments.

The sport generally leaves it up to players to define their gender, but some leagues mandate that no more than three or four players of the same gender can be on the court at one time. The quotas have changed the way teams play – and attracted a more diverse group of athletes to the sport.

Rose Mourninghan, a hunter from Rochester, New York, became interested in quadball two years ago in part because its rules and regulations seemed to encourage sportsmanship.

Players who face Mourninghan don’t need to know anything about her when they congratulate her on a good game, said the 24-year-old transgender woman. For her, she is number 13 on the red team.

“I deserve my place on this field,” she said Monday from the sidelines of Pitch 1 at Troy Park in Elkridge. Mourninghan came to Maryland to play in the Major League Quadball gender-inclusive competition called Take Back the Pitch.

Quadball has changed significantly since its invention in the Harry Potter books. Teams have formed on every continent except Antarctica, and a world championship tournament is held every two years. The US Quadball rulebook was over 80 pages long in 2023.

Amanda Dallas remembers some college teams from the days when the sport was still called Quidditch and ran around with capes on bristly wooden brooms.

“I thought it was so stupid,” said Dallas, now co-founder and commissioner of Major League Quadball.

Still, the former softball player enjoyed the full-contact aspect of the game and over time found teams that played to win. The old-fashioned brooms were replaced with a piece of PVC pipe. (Players insist it’s not as difficult to run with as people often think.)

Warner Brothers owned the trademarks for the Snitch, Quaffle and Bludger, so the balls were renamed. Seekers now chase a flag attached to the waistband of an impartial runner, who tries his best to avoid being caught. Beaters hurl dodgeballs to thwart their opponents. Chasers dunk a slightly deflated volleyball, called a quadball, through the three round goal posts of varying heights.

What the game lacks in magic it makes up for in variety. It uses elements from basketball, dodgeball and tag. Players can run behind the goal posts, similar to hockey, and tackle, like in rugby.

“The chaos is part of its charm,” says the summer league’s website.

Dallas likes tackling the most.

“It was cool that as a woman I could be on the field with these men and do better than them,” she said.

Still, the sport is not immune to gender challenges, she said. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced games to be canceled, Dallas and other organizers decided to address the issues that had been troubling them.

They noticed that most teams were predominantly male, while women and nonbinary players tended to be the gender minority. Some teams did not pass the ball to their female and nonbinary players. Worse still, women passed the ball so the men could make the big shot, Dallas said.

The game’s leadership briefly considered creating a new league just for women or nonbinary people, but a survey of players found that those groups preferred a mixed team, Dallas said. The more popular idea was to organize an event to provide dedicated practice and playing time for players of underrepresented genders.

In 2021, organizers ended the National League’s summer tournament in Howard County with a showcase called Take Back the Pitch. Women, transgender and nonbinary players took the field for what would become one of the last games under the name Quidditch. Cisgender men sat out the games and cheered from the stands.

Towards the end of the year, US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch took steps to rename the sport and distance it from Rowling, citing concerns about her statements about transgender people.

In the years since the pandemic, quadball administration in the U.S. has continued to tinker with gender rules. This season, leagues largely required a maximum of three players of a single gender on the field during Seeker Floor and four players during Seeker On Pitch.

One of the more subtle effects of this rule is that teams would have to discuss their lineups during games and practices, Dallas said.

She knows not everyone in quadball will like or agree with the rules, but the conversations are what counts, she said. Two players on her club team recently told her they don’t understand nonbinary gender identities.

But they were curious enough to talk to Dallas about it.

“What if they had never seen or played this sport?” she wondered. “Would they bother to ask about it?”