Keeping up with the Joneses. on Cascade Hall

The Coach

October 24, 2020 4:45 PM

Quidditch Sign Ups by The Coach

Sonora's Quidditch reputation was continuing to grow and the coach couldn't be happier. Last year had even seen enough players sign up to have a full team and full reserve team, leading to some great on-campus games on top of the ones the school team played against other schools.
There had been more than a few hiccups in students' personal lives, which had made maintaining that difficult, but it had largely gone well. The school had joined a circuit competing with other schools, which helped as they only needed one team, but sometimes it had been difficult even to find that many people. It was ideal to have two teams because then every position would have a second string player and there were always enough folks to get some good practices in. Of course, that meant that the best players of their school were competing against the best of the best players at other schools, but that was just as well. It was unlikely that anyone joined Sonora's Quidditch team for their competitive reputation anyway, although the coach hoped that might change in coming years. There was certainly greater hope for it now than before.

Quidditch Sign Ups!

Our school-wide team is looking for enthusiastic players. No prior experience is necessary.
The team travels throughout the year for friendly play offs and coaching sessions with other small school sides.

Try outs will be held on Saturday on the pitch.

Please sign up with your name, year, house and preferred position or positions (if known) below.

Since not everyone knew about Quidditch before arriving at Sonora (and honestly a fair number of them graduated with about as little knowledge, too), there was an explanation of each of the positions, how many players were in each position, and some information about opportunities for both first and second string teams, as well as an assurance that players could tryout for multiple positions or come and decide what they wanted to tryout for after they got there. There were still a fair number of players from the previous year who were at the school and the coach was excited to see what happened with new blood joining the mix. The best way to do that was to give everyone a chance to find their place and find what they enjoyed.

OOC: If your character would like to try out for Quidditch, post their name and the requested information as a reply to this thread! However, the post should still be 200 words, so make sure you include some narrative about their signing up, their thoughts, etc. Take the opportunity to explore the moment, and maybe interact with other players as they sign up as well! You can distinguish between narrative information and your sign up by putting < i > before the sign up part, and < /i > after (just take the spaces out!!). That will put the sign up in italics and help make everything clear. And if that's confusing, then you don't have to worry about it at all!

Subthreads:

I defy fate! by Valentine Duell

I Beat. by Hilda Hexenmeister

Seeking to play again by Anya Delachene

Keep me! by Augustine Reed-Fischer

What do we have here? by Billy Cobb

Chasing to the end by Heinrich Hexenmeister

Keeping up with the Joneses. by Graham Osbrook

Chasing a high. by Evelyn Stones

Please don't beat me up. by Felipe De Matteo

Seeking to take up the mantle. by Morgan Garrett

Fear not, I'm back by Jeremy Mordue

Well, here we go again. by Nathaniel Mordue

Let's just have some fun. by Dathan Fischer

22 The Coach Quidditch Sign Ups 0 The Coach 1 5

Valentine Duell

October 24, 2020 5:11 PM

I defy fate! by Valentine Duell

The Quidditch sign-ups were posted! Valentine stood before the sheet, excited and just a little bit worried. She was going to try out for seeker this year. She had done okay at chasing last year, but she was sure she'd be a much better seeker. But.... Aunt Giselle had predicted some sort of broom related disaster. After last year, she saw what could befall a seeker in a game. Should she risk it? Maybe she should just sit this year out? Focus on the gaming club, and the dueling club and the gardening club. It might make Mama happier, she had seemed concerned by that prediction. But she hadn't forbidden Val from signing up.

Bonabelle didn't seem to think much of the predictions. She was smart, maybe she was right, maybe Aunt Giselle had just been making up some stories or something for fun. Huh. That made her wonder if Aunt Giselle would come to... experience the quidditch games? She couldn't watch them directly, and Val wasn't sure what sort of range that spell of hers had. The games had announcers, so she'd be able to follow along with that, if she wanted to. Anyway, this may be a good way of testing how good Aunt Giselle was. If nothing happened, she'd be fine. If Aunt Giselle was right, then she'd proven that he Aunt is awesome, win-win!

She put her quill onto the sheet and wrote her name and information. This was going to be great!

Valentine Duell, 2nd year, Teppenpaw, Seeker

Valentine paused and looked at it, there still was a better chance of landing a chaser position. She sighed and added on the end, or Chaser. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that though.

2 Valentine Duell I defy fate! 1490 0 5

Hilda Hexenmeister

October 26, 2020 11:51 AM

I Beat. by Hilda Hexenmeister

Hilda was now a fifth year, officially one of the older half of the students in the school, and also, entirely by default, a prefect. She held no illusions that she would have been chosen had there been any other Pecaris in her year, but the staff hadn't decided she was entirely unworthy of it either, and the badge now hung on her robes, a match to the one that hung on her brother's.

Given her English improvement over the last couple of years, and the lack of other alternatives, though, she hadn't been too surprised by her appointment. Frankly, she'd been much more surprised that she was the only Hexenmeister called up to the front at the Opening Feast. Heinrich had not won Head Boy this year. He'd clearly been upset by that.

Today, however, was the day that the Quidditch Sign-Up Sheet went up, and the more pressing point was whether or not that was going to affect her Beating rapport with Nathaniel, who had won Head Boy instead. She was much better at holding a grudge than Heinrich was, but if her brother got over it quickly, there wasn't much point in holding onto one. For now, though, she was giving the Teppenpaw sour looks every time she spotted him.

It was not, however, going to change anything about what she wrote on the sign-up sheet. There was only one position she wanted and if Nathaniel wanted to play with people who weren't angry at him, he was just going to have to change positions himself, or make his peace with Heinrich before try-outs started.

Hilda Hexenmeister, ~~Jahr~~Year 5, Pecari, Beater

1 Hilda Hexenmeister I Beat. 1433 0 5

Anya Delachene

October 26, 2020 7:26 PM

Seeking to play again by Anya Delachene

Anya was a fourth year now and that seemed kind of weird, but also cool. Being smack dab in the middle of the school's range of ages, she felt she had a good handle on herself and her existence here. She had friends: Freddie and Ellie were closer than ever, Theo was back in her grade level, and she'd come around to liking Stanley after his rough start last year. Plus she had some Quidditch friends, and after the maze at last year's fair, Evelyn was now her official go-to prefect if she ever needed to vent about Mom to somebody.

Fortunately, summer had gone pretty well. She'd done well enough in her classes with few enough 'does not turn in her homework' comments in her progress notes that summer gymnastics had been permitted and she'd done really well in the meets she had attended. Her practice last year and the advice of the MARS portrait had paid off, as both her bar routine and vault performances had been better than ever. Her beam and floor routines hadn't been anywhere near as good, but they never had been, and Anya didn't expect to win on those or the overall. She did sometimes medal on the vault and bars though, and she had two shiny golds added to her collection this summer, too.

Sadly, back here in Sonora, there were no gymnastic competitions. If you wanted to play sports, you only had one option. So here Anya was, taking that one option. It had gone quite well last year, and she had even been victorious as the seeker in last year's big intra-school fall game that they'd played in front of everybody. She hoped maybe she'd even have a shot at first string this year. Jeremy was not undefeated.

Anya Delachene, 4th year, Pecari, Seeker

1 Anya Delachene Seeking to play again 1453 0 5

Augustine Reed-Fischer

October 27, 2020 9:37 PM

Keep me! by Augustine Reed-Fischer

Gus had basically no idea what this whole Quidditch thing was about but it sounded pretty exciting so he thought he'd give it a shot. Plus, he didn't have a lot to lose. He was pretty sure that if he fell off his broom or something, somebody would catch him with a magic trampoline or magic whipped cream pile or something, so it wasn't like how as going to really get hurt. If he did, he'd have a great story, and get to hang out in the Hospital Wing with the cutie nurse lady and magic medicine and no classes, and there was literally no problem.

Well, except that he didn't know much about Quidditch. The position descriptions helped, but he really didn't care much what he did? He just wanted to play. He thought his best bet, considering his physique and attention span, was something like keeping. Or beating. Or chasing. Or seeking. Or whatever. But keeping sounded fun because it was basically goalie and that was something he wasn't too bad at and he'd get to work even a little less hard than real goalies because he'd be on a broom instead of his own two feet. As such, he added his conclusion to his sign up and walked away with a sense of accomplishment.

Augustine Reed-Fischer, first year, Pecari, keeper or whatever.

22 Augustine Reed-Fischer Keep me! 1509 0 5

Billy Cobb

October 31, 2020 5:43 PM

What do we have here? by Billy Cobb

Billy stood in front of the sign up sheet for quite a few minutes. He certainly wasn't the fastest reader in the school, and there was a bunch of words on this paper. He'd heard about this Quidditch game since he'd gotten to school, and from what he'd heard it sounded both exciting and downright confusing. Flying had been just as fantastic as he though it would be, after he'd figgured it out, and Quidditch involved flying so that was pretty keen.

He read through the descriptions of the different positions in the game, and that didn't really clear things up for him much. He couldn't quite figure out what the goal of the game was... get a lot of points? By throwing and catching balls? Okay, he could accept that but something just seemed weird about it. The one bit on this sheet that his eyes kept coming back to was the part about 'The team travels throughout the year'. If he were on the team, he'd get to travel more. He'd get to see stuff outside home and the school now. That was worth it, well, that and more flyin' time.

Billy searched his dress pockets for his writin' feather and scrawled his information on the sheet.

Billy Cobb, first year, Pecari, Any?

2 Billy Cobb What do we have here? 1519 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

October 31, 2020 8:16 PM

Chasing to the end by Heinrich Hexenmeister

Heinrich had played Quidditch for four years now. He'd started because Hilda needed someone to translate the Coach's instructions for her, but she was surprisingly competent at that now. She was a fifth year, and he'd been fluent by then, but Hilda had gotten a much slower start on learning the language than he had. She still wasn't completely fluent, but she had improved enough over the last year that Heinrich would feel no guilt about dropping out of the Quidditch team now, had that remained the only reason he was on it.

By now, though, he'd been on it long enough that he felt he was actually pretty good at it, and a lot of his friends were also on the team. He thought he might even miss it if he stopped going to practices and playing in the games. Playing Quidditch was much more enjoyable to him than watching Quidditch, and with both his sister and girlfriend on the team, if he wasn't, he would be obligated to watch it.

Plus, he did not want to have to explain to Hilda that he didn't want to do her favorite thing, and it wasn't like they had much else in common at Sonora, so it was a good opportunity to do something with his sister at school.

So this year, once again, found his name on the sign-up sheet.

Heinrich Hexenmeister, 7th Year, Aladren, Chaser

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister Chasing to the end 1414 0 5

Graham Osbrook

November 01, 2020 6:04 PM

Keeping up with the Joneses. by Graham Osbrook

Last year, Graham had signed up for the Quidditch team, and all he had done beforehand was think about the positions and their relative merits compared to the (limited number of relevant, but still) things he had known about his own skills. It had not taken him very long to realize that this might not have been the best decision. There were, it turned out, a lot of…very tense people, to put it politely, on the Quidditch team, and several of them all wanted the same position. He had not wanted to touch that situation with a ten-foot pole and had consequently regretted even indicating the slightest interest in Seeking on day one all year. In practices, he had tried to stay away from it too, and had mostly stuck to Tatiana, despite initially having been a little terrified of her.

Once he had gotten used to the combination of the sheer size of her personality and the difficulty of understanding most of what she said (including his name, which she had seemed to find slightly impossible to ever get quite right), he had actually found the Pecari girl rather nice and helpful. She had given him a lot of tips about Keeping, including things she had learned from her brother, who had learned them in Russia – neither of them had had a clue what the English words for some things were, but fortunately, ability to do things ranked a little higher on the Quidditch Pitch than ability to name things. He had always understood his place in relation to her perfectly, however – Tatiana was the Keeper, he was the apprentice. Now, however, Tatiana was gone, and last year, he was pretty sure that only he and Bonabelle had signed up to second her, and Bonabelle had backed out….

It wasn’t likely, he told himself, that he would make the first string even under those circumstances. He still couldn’t help but feel a little optimism, though, as he signed up.

Graham Osbrook, 2nd Year, Crotalus, Keeper.

16 Graham Osbrook Keeping up with the Joneses. 1498 0 5

Evelyn Stones

November 03, 2020 11:41 AM

Chasing a high. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn didn't want to be Beater again. She didn't want to do anything she didn't want to do if she didn't have to do and so she was determined that she would either play the whole season in a position she liked, or she wouldn't play at all. Last year had been rough and as nice as it had been to get to know Nathaniel and Hilda and even Felipe a little better throughout the previous year, it had been rough and she hated playing Beater. Also, Felipe pegged Jeremy and she wasn't sure she wanted to stick around for that drama bomb.

And of course, Heinrich and Ness were chasers. And Val seemed to like that too, although Evelyn was surprised to find the girl's name down for seeker this time. Still, being Chaser was just... good. It was nice. She didn't intend to play collegiate Quidditch - she was hoping she could find a school with a wider variety of sports, maybe even something like soccer - but it was nice to be part of the team again this year. Probably. Nothing was likely to implode now, so that was good.

She made her way into Cascade Hall and smiled to herself at the names already on the list. It was nice to see new and familiar ones both together. She knew some of them had been excited and some had been nervous when they'd written their names down, but they'd all done it. And now, Evelyn was going to do the same. It felt like being part of some sort of weird legacy.

Evelyn Stones, sixth year, Pecari, Chaser only

22 Evelyn Stones Chasing a high. 1422 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

November 03, 2020 11:51 AM

Please don't beat me up. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe was not sure it was in his own best interest to try out for beater again, but the school did need beaters and he enjoyed it well enough. He would undoubtedly enjoy it less if he was working with Nathaniel in a game and was about to be followed around or had bludgers hit at him, but he thought that that was unlikely by the new Head Boy. It would be a bit interesting to see whether Nathaniel might murder him anyway. Had the school ever revoked a Head Boy badge before?

Still, his nerves were high as he approached the sign ups in Cascade Hall. Nathaniel hadn't signed up yet and Jeremy hadn't signed up yet. Felipe crossed his fingers that he could mostly just play with Hilda. Maybe if his luck was really good, Jeremy wouldn't even get on the team. Nathaniel was a lot easier to deal with and Felipe thought that was likely to be even more true now that Jeremy had not gotten prefect either and Nathaniel had additional responsibility. With a deep breath and a lot of psyching himself up, Felipe put his name down.

Felipe De Matteo, fifth year, Crotalus, beater preferred

22 Felipe De Matteo Please don't beat me up. 1434 0 5

Morgan Garrett

November 04, 2020 9:21 PM

Seeking to take up the mantle. by Morgan Garrett

Of course it had not really been that way – that wasn’t practically possible, and Morgan wasn’t even sure if it was literally possible, like, even if someone tried really hard, not with the baby-years factor involved – but to some extent, Morgan felt like her life up until this point had been a series of endless rehearsals, practice for a real life she hadn’t gotten to yet. One of the reasons for that had been Tatiana Vorontsova. When Morgan had arrived at school, she had instantly realized that she was a mere impersonator on the same field as the master.

Well, to a degree, anyway. Tatiana was a glamorous, jewel-bedecked person who spent a lot of her time in the company of handsome men and who also played Keeper – roles Morgan liked to imagine herself in. There were, though, important differences. Tatiana had had too much energy to really ‘swan’ around with people, and her accent had been heavy enough to rule out any but villainous roles on stage, and her jewelry was way more, like…Queen Victoria than Princess Grace, and the Quidditch team was a school-wide affair, but on the whole, she had still checked a lot of boxes and Morgan had known she hadn’t had a chance to compete against her.

Now, though, Tatiana was gone, so Morgan could stroll around her in her costume jewelry all she liked without people thinking she was imitating Tatiana (not that this fear had really stopped her all that often beforehand, but she hoped she’d feel less awkward in the bigger, sparklier pieces now) and might even have a decent shot at changing her Quidditch position. Maybe. She wasn’t too invested in it – which was good, considering that a glance at the list showed it would be competitive – but it was a possibility, she thought as she went to sign up, the two tiers of the somewhat gaudy paperclip chain necklace hanging down her front not so much clinking as slightly jangling.

Morgan Garrett, 3rd!, Aladren, Keeper or Chaser

16 Morgan Garrett Seeking to take up the mantle. 1470 0 5

Jeremy Mordue

November 05, 2020 7:19 AM

Fear not, I'm back by Jeremy Mordue

Jeremy cast a critical eye over the list that was forming in Cascade Hall. There was really very little doubt that he would ever sign up although he didn’t tend to get his name on there first. It was always… interesting seeing what kind of people he’d be forced to associate with. One name made him frown more than the others though. Felipe was signing up again? After last year’s not-so-friendly fire incident on Jeremy? He was clearly doing it just to be annoying. Well, if Felipe wanted to keep playing that game, Jeremy would more than happily keep snogging Felipe’s sister, and see how much he liked that. Felipe had looked like a wreck for most of last year, so Jeremy was pretty confident he was winning.

He glanced down the list, pretty confident that this year his protectors would be Nathaniel and Hilda again. The German girl could barely string a sentence together and had a face like a pig, but it wasn’t like most Beaters were famed for their intelligence or their looks. So long as she wasn’t as fricking stupid as Felipe - and you had to be pretty idiotic to smack a Bludger at your own team mate either by “accident” like Felipe claimed, or on purpose but in front of the entire school. Next year though, when Nathaniel graduated, they would have a problem if there wasn’t some fresh meat. Maybe even if there was… He supposed he could trust Hilda to look after him and leave the lesser players to an inexperienced new Beater but it wasn’t exactly a comfortable position to be in. Still, there wasn’t much he could do about it right now. Perhaps he could just lobotomise Felipe which would improve his personality and performance no end. And there was still this year, and no one would be taking his place away from him.

Jeremy Mordue, Crotalus, 5th year, Seeker.

13 Jeremy Mordue Fear not, I'm back 1443 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

November 05, 2020 12:33 PM

Well, here we go again. by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel was still not entirely sure what had happened on the first night of school – or, more accurately, one afternoon last year, but he had found out about it on the first night of school, and so associated that night with the event.

Sylvia had talked about him making posters, or making posters for him, but he had not taken himself seriously as a candidate for Head Boy for one moment. At least some, probably all, of the teachers knew about Dr. Greene. They probably remembered his fourth year even more vividly than he did, given that his recollections of the second half were…fuzzy, a lot of the time, and even when he did remember something, he felt as though he was remembering something that had happened to someone else; even a really bad day now wasn’t one where he could quite identify with his past self. Even aside from all that, though, he’d been relatively sure his classmates would simply favor Heinrich over him. Coming in, he had fully expected the announcement to name Heinrich and Sylvia; at the time, he had been too stunned to fully analyze his own success next to Sylvia’s failure, and since then, he had simply been confused. It did not work like that, or at least was not supposed to.

His first impulse was to hide: go to the ground, stay in his room as much as possible, and avoid everyone, but especially his cousin. He did not think Sylvia would be angry with him about it, and logically he knew that it wasn’t his fault, really, but he still felt vaguely ashamed of himself for having something which Sylvia deserved, which he did not, and which Sylvia did not have. Even if it had been his fault, though, he couldn’t have simply stayed in his room until things made sense. He had his usual Teppenpaw duties. He had to learn the ropes of the new Head Boy job. He had classes. And there were things like eating to consider. This meant going to the Cascade Hall, which also involved noticing, in time, things like the Quidditch sign-up list, whereupon his eyebrows shot up and he was momentarily concerned that he was in fact imagining everything that had happened so far this year.

Felipe De Matteo was trying to come back? After what had happened with Jeremy at the game last year? After he’d quit the team halfway through last year? Nathaniel wasn’t sure if he should admire the audacity or recommend that Dr. Greene find some pretext to torture Felipe instead of him next year. Or this year….

Shaking his head, he signed back up.

Nathaniel Mordue, 7th, Teppenpaw, Beater

16 Nathaniel Mordue Well, here we go again. 1412 0 5

Dathan Fischer

November 05, 2020 1:51 PM

Let's just have some fun. by Dathan Fischer

Dathan had, predictably, not been terribly good at Quidditch last year, but he had had fun. It had, as he had predicted, been kind of fun, belonging to something, and sports among wizards were apparently nicer than sports among regular people had ever been. There were a few people on the team who he had taken some pains to avoid – Jeremy Mordue was the most prominent of those; his older brother didn’t seem as incapable of getting along with people as Jeremy did, but Dathan also walked lightly around the Advanced students in general, even when they didn’t happen to have bats to hand as a matter of course – but on the whole, everyone had been really cool, even if the team as a unit didn’t, with all its little sub-groups, seem particularly close.

He still wasn’t sure that it had succeeded in selling him on the wizarding world as preferable to home on the whole, but it hadn’t made him any less fond of the space he now existed in, either. Plus, it was nice to have something that, once he got past the ‘on a broomstick in the air’ bit of the matter, was…straightforward, kinda. He still enjoyed magic, and found it fascinating and great generally to watch it, but so much of class involved bending his brain in weird ways that something as simple as “try to win a game” was a pleasant break that made everything seem a little more real. So when the list went up, it only made sense to volunteer again.

Dathan Fischer, 4th, Teppenpaw, Reserve/Any

16 Dathan Fischer Let's just have some fun. 1457 0 5