FAYETTEVILLE, WV (WOAY) – For the first time, the Fayetteville Convention and Visitors Bureau brought a Wizarding Weekend to Fayetteville.
There were scavenger hunts and activities throughout town that started on Friday in the theme of Harry Potter all leading up to a game of Quidditch, a game popularized by the movies and books.
This happened on Sunday at the old Fayetteville Elementary School.
“You’ve got he rings and goals that you could score on there, and then you have the snitch that goes running in that you can get the big points on, particularly if you are behind or if you need to make a big score, so there’s kind of two ways to go about getting points on the board,” Jeff Prior, one of the team captains, said.
“Yeah, and the snitch was represented by a golden man in a golden jumpsuit, so that was great,” Kensie Whitfield, the other team’s captain, added.
In the movies and books, the game is played on flying broomsticks, but of course, in true adventurous Fayetteville fashion it was not enough to just run around with a broom.
Water Stone Outdoors, who played a big role in Wizarding Weekend, had the idea for using Onewheels, a type of motorized skateboard.
“Olivia [Moriss] and Mariah [Harrison] had talked about doing a Quidditch game and basically I just threw in, ‘Why don’t we do it on Onewheels?'” Kenny Parker, the owner of Water Stone, said. “Because there’s a lot of people who have Onewheels in town and are good riders and unfortunately a lot of those people ended up being out of town, and we had to recruit from the crowd which worked out fine and so yeah, the one-wheeled Quidditch part of it was what we brought to it.”
Fayetteville’s Convention and Visitors Bureau partnered with businesses across town and Generation New River Gorge as it allowed people in the town and visitors to have fun, dress up and come together.
“It’s been really fun to see people of all ages and see a lot of people come in from out of town. It’s been really fun and it has allowed us to feel alive during winter,” Generation New River Gorge’s Olivia Morris said. “It can get really cold and dark, so it’s just been really nice and magical to say the least.”
Afterward, there was a costume contest to conclude the weekend.
