A Few Questions About Harry Potter's America's School System

Less than a week before the Fourth of July J.K. Rowling debuted a wealth of information about magic in the United States (and Canada).  She released a new story on the Harry Potter website Pottermore about the founding of Ilvermorny, the American equivalent of Britain's magical school Hogwarts.  This is something American Harry Potter fans have been waiting for a long time, some of them their entire lives.  Frankly, Americans just aren't used to things not being about us.  It's especially frustrating to be cut off from the adventures at a fancy exclusive boarding school across the ocean.  Confirmation that there is an American wizarding school and the ability to be sorted into an official Ilvermorny house (Wampus, Pukwudgie, Horned Serpent and Thunderbird) comes as great relief.  However, this new information raises a few questions that are worth asking.

Is there more than one magic school in the U.S.?

A lot of Americans struggle to comprehend just how large their country is, so J.K. Rowling can certainly be forgiven for making the same mistake, but it seems very unlikely that there could be only one wizarding school in North America.  Canada is geographically the second largest country in the world after Russia.  The U.S. is the third largest and has the second largest population in the geographical top five after China.  The entire United Kingdom could fit inside Texas twice and Alaska seven times.  America has almost five times the population of the U.K.  Even considering that magic people are a minority worldwide and the U.S. could have considerably less of them than the U.K. it would still make sense for there to be at least four or five separate magic schools.

How do students get there?

If, somehow, Ilvermorny is the only magic school in the United States getting there is probably a pain in the neck for a lot of students and not just because it's at the top of Mount Greylock in Massachusetts.  The Harry Potter universe offers a number of ways for people to get from one place to another in an instant but no one uses them to leave Britain, which doesn't say much about their range limitations.  If any exist at all then the transit from Los Angeles to Massachusetts is most definitely too far.  A single train like the Hogwarts express wouldn't be able to get to all fifty states.  Ilvermorny would need an entire network of railways.  Even if there are multiple magical schools getting to any one of them would present a challenge.

Do the schools compete against each other?

Harry Potter's participation in the fictional sport Quidditch is a major plot point in the book series.  Hogwarts students compete against each other based on which house they're in.  The whole school comes out to watch the games.  The whole school!  From an American perspective that's just adorable.  Student athletics are a bigger deal in the U.S. than they are pretty much anywhere else in the world.  In certain parts of America entire towns shut down every Friday for the local high school football game.  (Do you think J.K. Rowling has seen Friday Night Lights?)  In 2014 the National Collegiate Athletic Association brought in nearly a billion dollars.  Not bad for a non-profit.  It stands to reason that the culture surrounding non-magic sports would extend to Quodpot.  Oh, by the way, Americans aren't so into Quidditch. They prefer a variant called Quodpot which features an exploding Quod ball.  Assuming there are several U.S. magic schools Americans are most assuredly going to want to see them compete against each other.  One can only hope Quodpot games also have all the fanfare of a football game with a marching band and cheerleaders and so on.  Does Ilvermorny have pep rallies?  A homecoming court?  Jocks and band geeks?  Burnouts and mean girls?  What are magical pep rallies like?