Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• First off, KU let me tell you that KU has a Quidditch team. Yes, it’s a real sport, and not just in those Harry Potter books.

Secondly, they took part in the largest Quidditch tournament held in the Midwest, held in Fishers, Ind.

Thirdly, KU actually won the tournament, according to WISH-TV, becoming the best of 18 teams. The University of Pittsburgh took second.

If you’re interested in how non-wizards play Quidditch (a game designed for people flying around on broomsticks), here’s a bit of a primer.

And the club was mentioned in another article I wrote last year.

Twitter user Jordan Carroll wondered if the regional title would have other benefits too.

“How much does Quidditch matter in this realignment mumbo-jumbo?” he wrote. “You know because KU = Midwest Champs….it matters right?”

Not sure about that one, Jordan, but at least it looks like fun times.

• The Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center is the beneficiary of a $7 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The KIDDRC has been funded since 1966 by the National Institutes of Health, and seeks to advance the diagnosis, prevention, treatment and amelioration of intellectual and developmental disabilities, according to a KU release.

The center has faculty on the Lawrence and KU Medical Center campuses.

• With news that Texas Christian University in Fort Worth has accepted an invitation to the Big 12 Conference, KU folks have been particularly happy because of KU’s strong alumni ties to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The KU Alumni Association estimates that 6,300 alumni live in the Dallas and Fort Worth area, and 15,000 in Texas.

That’s a lot of folks who would stand to get a more frequent look at the Jayhawks.

The news was greeted with a “Woot!” from Kansas State President Kirk Schulz, who tweeted that he was looking forward to the TCU-Kansas State matchups.

• I don’t think I would make a very good Quidditch player, so I’ll just stick to writing Heard on the Hill. Help me out with a good tip at ahyland@ljworld.com.