Here's five. on Aladren Commons

Captain Daniel Nash

June 10, 2011 8:48 PM

Quidditch Sign-ups by Captain Daniel Nash

Now in his second year as captain, with one Quidditch Cup under his belt, Daniel felt he had even more of a responsibility to lead the Aladren Team to victory. Also, it was his seventh year, so it would be nice to go out with another win. He had no reason to think they wouldn't. They hadn't lost anybody and the team had worked together fantastically last year. Almost frighteningly so at times, but he thought it was a performance they could repeat this year.

The first years that had dominated the team last year were now second years, and if Daniel didn't think they looked much larger than they had last year, they surely were. Plus, they now had a year of experience playing together so they could only have improved.

Of course, all the other teams except Teppenpaw - who rumor said had lost their captain - had similar advantages, but Aladren had started higher. That's what the trophy in Professor Fawcett's office proved beyond all doubt. So they could and would win again this year. Daniel would see to it.

He'd start by making sure all the right names got put on the sheet he was fastening to the bulletin board now.

Aladren Quidditch Sign-Ups

All parties interested in being a part of the Aladren Quidditch Team should sign up below by providing their Name, Year, and desired position(s). Try-outs will be held next Saturday (that's the second Saturday of the term) at 10 AM. Signing up prior to that time would be much appreciated for maximum efficiency.

Preference will be given to returning players but first years are encouraged to attend.

_________________________________________

Captain Daniel Nash, 7th Year, Chaser

Subthreads:

First! Or technically second... by Arnold Carey

Third here by Arthur Carey

An indecisive fourth by Edmond Carey

Here's five. by David Wilkes

And I'm six. by Russell Layne

Pick me Pick me!!! by Kitty McLevy

1 Captain Daniel Nash Quidditch Sign-ups 130 Captain Daniel Nash 1 5

Arnold Carey

June 10, 2011 11:10 PM

First! Or technically second... by Arnold Carey

There was no doubt about it, one of the best things about Sonora was getting to be on the Quidditch team. Arnold had spent all summer practicing Seeker, occasionally to the point where he came in to find his mother white as a sheet just from watching, and couldn’t wait to get back on the Pitch and see what he could do against whoever they put against him. He was sure he could beat them all.

And it was more than that. In Quidditch – at least until the point where he inevitably got hit by a Bludger – things were perfect. He was with his brother and his roommates, they were all working toward the same thing, and for once, he wasn’t the one who felt like he didn’t quite fit in with everyone else, like he wasn’t quite good enough to be with them. Instead, he was the one they hung all their hopes on while still not being isolated as the star of the show. It was fantastic. But that was the kind of thinking Grandfather would dismiss as silly, girly, emotional thinking, so Arnold tried not to think like that, and made sure not to ever talk like that, not even to Arthur.

Arnold wasn’t there the minute the sign-up sheet went up, much to his disappointment, but he came into the common room soon after and made a beeline for the bulletin board once he realized there was a new piece of paper on it. Sure enough, it was the sign-up list. He began to dig through his pockets and bag and became completely, utterly convinced that this was going to be a great season when he actually managed to produce a quill without having to go and find Arthur to get one and then come back to the list after several more people had signed up and made him look less attentive and enthusiastic. That sort of thing was supposed to be real important, especially since there was that note about the first years being welcome to come try out….The first years were mostly girls, but he had been at Sonora long enough to be used to girls being Quidditch players. There were some he would even say were really good at it. Like a lot of them.

Struggling to make his narrow, spiking handwriting legible at the angle and against the surface on which he had to write, Arnold carefully wrote out:

Arnold Carey, 2nd Year, Seeker

0 Arnold Carey First! Or technically second... 181 Arnold Carey 0 5

Arthur Carey

June 10, 2011 11:45 PM

Third here by Arthur Carey

He had gone along with Arnold’s desire to practice for Quidditch over the summer despite knowing what Arnold’s style did to their poor mother’s blood pressure, even occasionally giving into Arnold’s demands that he take up a Beater’s bat and hit Bludgers at him so he could get better at not getting hit (he was still, in Arthur’s opinion, pretty lousy at that part of it; he really was starting to think that his twin enjoyed getting beaten up), but over the summer, Arthur had thought about quitting the Quidditch team.

It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy it. That wasn’t the problem at all. The problem was that he did enjoy it, just not in a way that he usually enjoyed things. Playing at home was different, he was able to keep his head on straight when he was playing with his brothers and cousins, usually as a Beater, but here at school, the game brought out the worst in him. It made him crazy.

He had seen it do that to Arnold and Jay, but had always thought he was exempt. He always had been exempt. But somehow, when it was here, when it was with people he barely knew, he lost it. He couldn’t stop himself from doing whatever he had to do to win, even if it meant exhausting himself to the point where he could barely stand by the end and spent two days ill after the Championship, having woken up the next day shivering, his left arm full of stabbing pains from shoulder to elbow to just about every bone in his hand and with the worst headache he’d ever had in his life. His medicine had barely seemed to touch it. The worst had subsided after a few hours, and he had drug himself around as best as he could so the others wouldn’t see until it went away, but doubted he’d been terribly convincing, and he never wanted to feel like that again, even if he knew half of it had most likely been in his head.

What had finally decided him against quitting, though, was a combination of things. He didn’t want to seem weak. He didn’t want to lose the potential for making inter-year contacts, both now and in the future. He didn’t want to disappoint Arnold. And he didn’t want to give up that crazy, uninhibited feeling yet. Not completely, anyway.

So it had been decided. He had started it, now he was stuck with it. When Arnold ran into the dorm to tell him that the sign-up list was up, Arthur obediently put the book he’d been reading on his bed aside and went downstairs and wrote, in his much neater handwriting, his name under his brother’s.

Arthur Carey, 2nd Year, Chaser

0 Arthur Carey Third here 182 Arthur Carey 0 5

Edmond Carey

June 11, 2011 1:26 AM

An indecisive fourth by Edmond Carey

Quitting the Quidditch team, even after his near breakdown during the Championship the previous year, had never seriously occurred to Edmond. He had a responsibility, and his personal issues could not be allowed to interfere with responsibility.

To a point. That was the basis of a point he had been debating all summer. Should he continue to play Beater or not? Rationally, he knew that it was a game and had no bearing on his actual personality or motivations, that it was simply a matter of being one of the three tallest and most likely the outright physically strongest Quidditch players in the school, especially since he thought he must have gotten another inch or so since last year, but irrationally…Irrationally, he was afraid of it. There was always the thought that if he voluntarily engaged in an activity where he hurt people, he’d look up one day and realize that he liked it. Or worse, realize that he liked it, and then immediately realize that he didn’t care.

Robert said this was foolish of him, but, well, Robert had good reason to want to believe that the way someone was raised would override what was in the blood. Edmond did, too. He hoped that more than anything. But the evidence, in the bigger picture, relative to people in general instead of just him, was inconclusive at best, contradictory at worst.

Definitely giving it up would be healthiest thing for him personally, but for the team – another sticking point – it would be a disaster. It had taken ages in the final for one of the Crotalus Beaters to work up the nerve to go anywhere near the Bludgers, and that was most likely because he had sort of…been there. Looming. He loomed very well when he wanted to, and would use that to his advantage if he needed to, both on the Pitch and off, however guilty he might feel about it later. That was the other problem. He’d disliked violence even before, when it was more of a concept to him than anything; now, he hated it.

But shaking up the lineup would have other problems, too. The Chasers knew how to work together, and while he knew Arthur would still do anything Edmond told him to despite the troubles – Gwenhwyfar had explained why, but it was complicated – it made more sense from a long-term point of view to leave Arthur and Russell together. It would be easier for the team to absorb the loss of one Chaser next year and one Beater the year after than it would be to lose two Chasers in as many years, especially given how closely Chasers had to work together compared to Beaters.

When he thought of all that, it seemed like almost a duty to stay on in the position. That, and his own embarrassed sense that he was being needlessly melodramatic about all this, was what had finally settled the matter. He had stalled again when he first saw the list, but had then talked himself through it again.

Now he just had to convince himself to write the last word after Edmond Carey, 6th Year, B…and stop standing in front of the list like an idiot, drawing attention to himself. That was the bit that finally made him scrawl the rest of eater and hurry away, resolving to just tell Daniel if he started thinking he was about to go dark because he was getting too into breaking the bones of eleven-year-olds. It wasn’t like it wasn’t now a matter of public record that one of his genetic parents was a sociopath, so really, there was no point in being embarrassed about it anymore. It had been mentioned in the papers a lot last year, so much that he wouldn’t be really surprised if someone on the team other than the twins already knew something about it.

0 Edmond Carey An indecisive fourth 143 Edmond Carey 0 5

David Wilkes

June 11, 2011 12:59 PM

Here's five. by David Wilkes

David had been surprised and not too happy, at the Opening Feast, to hear that Sam was going to sit this season out. She was a good Keeper, he thought, and if it ended up being him instead of one of the first years or some other person who’d never played before or at least not recently but had decided to join up this year, he was sure he wouldn’t be quite as good. Possibly even by a whole lot.

He could understand the inclination, though. Quidditch last year had been crazy. He hadn’t gotten into a game, probably because the other Beaters were too terrified of what Edmond would do to them in retaliation to really try to take out any of the Aladrens, and he hadn’t been too sorry about that. Sitting on the bench, the worst he had to worry about was a crick in his neck while he ran sarcastic commentary on what was going on above him to an audience composed entirely of himself. Up there, he had to worry about brain damage even if the lack of oxygen up there wasn’t what made them all go crazy.

He’d be much happier if he could stick with alternate. It was a good, solid, safe career choice for a guy who wanted to do well at this school. He could list ‘Aladren Quidditch team’ and, if necessary, the positions he was most trained for on his college applications and have fun at practices and not die when the Bludgers started flying for real. Samantha leaving meant he probably couldn’t, but a guy could dream, couldn’t he?

Plus, Sam was a girl, and Edmond seemed like a chivalrous sort. At least, he dressed like the winner of the Mister Nineteenth Century Re-enactor competition, which did lead to certain implications about his thought processes and likely behaviors. David had no such protection, and did not fancy being dragged into a back dormitory by Daniel while he had Edmond standing behind him, looming ominously, to answer questions about where his name was. So after his first few classes, David swung through the common room to grab a book he’d left behind before it could set him off on the wrong foot with Fawcett and signed up on his way out.

David Wilkes, 2nd, alternate/Keeper

16 David Wilkes Here's five. 169 David Wilkes 0 5

Russell Layne

June 11, 2011 1:16 PM

And I'm six. by Russell Layne

Russell’s summer had been what he expected, really, except for maybe involving a more time on his broom than usual. Aladren had, against all logical expectations because of being four-sevenths first years, dominated in the Quidditch season last year, and while he lacked some of the natural advantages that came with having a huge estate, like those the twins and Preston almost certainly lived on, to practice on, he was determined to keep up and not be anything to do with the reason they didn’t dominate again this year if last year turned out to have been a fluke. He had practiced as often as he could find someone to practice with, even, a few times, recruiting his bemused father to toss a Quaffle around with him.

Thinking back, Russell felt almost bad, remembering how Dad had at first seemed surprised, then suspicious, then timidly hopeful, then triumphant about this shift in Russell’s behavior. He loved his parents, he really did, but none of them were very expressive, and Russell and Mom were okay with that. Dad didn’t really know how to express himself, either, but seemed to want to more often than his wife and only child did. Mom had flat-out said that Russell actually, openly asking to spend time with him had made Dad’s summer, if not his whole year. After that, he’d kept doing it, because it would look weird to suddenly stop, but Russell had felt even less comfortable doing so and even more happy when he could round up Topher and Mellie and the other usual suspects for a pick-up game instead, or at least at the same time. They had definitely gotten some odd looks for the mix of adults and eleven-year-olds playing together in the park on a few occasions.

He’d been hoping to have Mellie on the Aladren bench this year, but she had gotten Sorted into Pecari. He had been really surprised when he looked over and saw her turning brown instead of blue. Luckily, he thought he could separate himself well enough, now, from the game – or that the game separated him from himself, whichever – for playing even directly against someone he knew not to be too much of a problem if she made it into a game.

Looking over the list, he wasn’t surprised to see that Arnold had gotten in right away, and it wasn’t too much of a surprise, either, that Arthur was second – Arnold had probably drug his somewhat less crazy twin over the second he got a chance. The weird thing was that Edmond and, of all people, David had gotten in ahead of Preston, and that David had included an actual position – Sam’s position – on the sheet. Chuckling a little to himself about how presumptuous it was of him to think he knew all these people so well after a year that he could think about why they did things, he found a quill and signed up.

Russell Layne, 2nd, Chaser

16 Russell Layne And I'm six. 183 Russell Layne 0 5

Kitty McLevy

June 11, 2011 1:35 PM

Pick me Pick me!!! by Kitty McLevy

The tiny girl stood in front of the sign up sheet and looked at all the other names on the page. They’d been told that first years could try out and Kitty was excited. Bouncing slightly in place she reached up and wrote her name in slightly large looping letters with a purple pen. The I in Kitty was dotted with a heart. Her name did not match any of the other names up there but she didn’t let that dissuade her in the least.

From the names she could see that so far there were only boys listed, but they hadn’t been told that girls couldn’t try out. The fact that there wasn’t a separate sheet for a girls team made Kitty grin. That was something that always annoyed the young girl, that the girls were always separate from the boys. It looked like at least in the magic world girls got to play in the real games too.

Though Kitty was small, and a girl, she’d been playing soccer for the past two summers, and before that she’d played other sports with her older brother Shawn when he was feeling board and couldn’t round up any of his other friends. She’d found that she was fast, and had very good hand eye coordination. Kitty figured that Quidditch was more or less just soccer in the sky and she couldn’t wait to try it.

Kitty McLevy – First Year - Any

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