Coach Amelia Pierce
February 11, 2011 9:09 AM
Game I: Aladren vs Teppenpaw! by Coach Amelia Pierce
Coach Amelia Pierce had enjoyed - nearly - every game she'd ever referred at Sonora. There'd been one or two that the weather had made unpleasant or that had become somewhat stressful when a player fell off her broom or crashed into the ground chasing a snitch, but by and large this was a good and fun job. She planned to be here a while.Now, maybe if some professional Quidditch team asked her to play with them in the World Championships, yeah, she'd probably drop it as quick as Amy Fox had, but that was seriously unlikely. About as unlikely as the chance that anybody in the stands or on the Pitch might stay dry today.
It wasn't raining yet, but the clouds were dark and menacing, and she expected they could open up with deluges of water at any time. So far, she hadn't heard any rumblings of thunder though, so the game was still on.
So she didn't allow the captains quite as much time as she normally did to give their pregame speeches and called them over as soon as it it looked like they were winding down. She did, however, take a few seconds while Tobar Brishen was talking to study his team's only Pierce. Derry Four caught her looking and she quickly turned to look over at the Aladren team, pretending like she hadn't just been watching her cousin. She needed to at least pretend impartiality here, with the eyes of the school on her.
"Welcome to the first Quidditch Game of the Season," she called out to the crowd as well as the captains with the help of a sonorus charm. "With any luck, we'll beat the rain, so let's get started quickly. Captain Nash of Aladren, shake the hand of Captain Brishen of Teppenpaw." The two boys did, and she sent them back to their teams and released the snitch and bludgers.
"On three," she said, skipping over pretty much every formality beyond the handshake. "One, two, three," she blew her whistle to signal the game's start and threw the Quaffle high up into the air.
OOC: Please refer to the instructions on the OOC page if you haven't participated in a Quidditch game before. Everyone else, remember to write detailed posts and have fun!
Subthreads: We have this one by <font color="blue">Captain Nash, Chaser</font> with <font color=yellow>Captain Brishen,Chaser</font>, <font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>, <font color="yellow">Andrew Duell, Chaser</font>, <font color=blue>Preston Stratford,Beater</font>, <font color="yellow">Derry Four, Beater</font>, <font color=yellow>Kirstenna Melcher,Keeper</font>, <font color="blue">Russell Layne, Chaser</font>, <font color="blue">Edmond Carey, Beater</font>
Failure is not an option by <font color="blue">Arnold Carey, Seeker</font> with <font color="blue">Edmond Carey, Beater</font>
Recentering. Play continues up here. (nm) by <font color=red>Coach Pierce</font> with <font color=blue>Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>, <font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
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Coach Amelia Pierce
Game I: Aladren vs Teppenpaw!
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Coach Amelia Pierce
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
February 22, 2011 10:44 AM
Seeking for success. by <font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
To Kate’s disappointment – kind of; she didn’t really want the first year to get hurt, just to get out of her way long enough for the match to finish – Arnold Carey clearly hadn’t just learned how to handle a broom at Coach Pierce’s flying lesson and pulled out of their mutual dive before he could crash land. More to her luck was him being built more like a Seeker than she was and getting knocked off his broom almost immediately after foiling her feint. She winced automatically, but then turned her attention to looking for the Snitch while he was out of it for a moment. She might not get another chance.The little gold ball, though, did not present itself in the confused period between Arnold falling, Kirstenna falling, and the rain coming down on them. “Oh, come on,” she said aloud, to no one in particular, as Coach Pierce called the Chasers back in and the entire Pitch turned blurry. Teppenpaw had all sorted out water-repelling charms before the game, so at least she’d avoided being soaked to the bone, but she was pretty sure that it was helping visibility only minimally. The people who established the weather charms must have had a sense of humor. And not been Seekers.
She couldn’t tell if Arnold was favoring his hit side enough for it to make a difference or not, but it was easy enough to tell that he was still looking for the Snitch, not giving up. Kate grimaced. She could not lose to a first year. Losing to Marissa Stephenson was one thing, but losing to a first year – that was something else, something Kate didn’t remotely want to contemplate. She had to get this one, but the Snitch was nowhere in sight.
The Beaters weren’t back on their game yet. She could take advantage of that. Edmond was the biggest problem they had out here in at least two ways; the other Aladren Beater was kind of scrawny, but their assistant captain was not only the most experienced Beater on the Pitch but also, by anyone’s definition of the term, a Big Guy. If she stayed close enough to his Seeker, though, he couldn’t try to take her down without risking Arnold, who was also his cousin when the Careys were known to be one of those families who were weird about that kind of thing. There was also the time-honored strategy of not being off on the other side of the Pitch when the other guy dove for the Snitch and being able to block him if it came down to it. So, while still hoping the Snitch would either just stop for her the way it had for Jessica at tryouts or that the rain would stop and improve visibility very soon, she began circling in the same general area as Arnold.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
Seeking for success.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
February 22, 2011 3:05 PM
Seeking something shiny by <font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
Above the scramble for the Quaffle now, and feeling, to his irritation, a little more uneasy about the distance down than he normally would have, Arnold registered movement out of the corner of his eye, and looked to see if it was a Beater or something else he needed to worry about and made a face again when it turned out to be Miss Bauer. Either she was shadowing him or had it in mind to just try knocking him off his broom outright this time, but Arnold couldn’t see that it really mattered, because either way, she was going to fail.He had planned to let his left arm do its painful thing in peace, but he couldn’t help it: grinning to hide that he was clenching his teeth, he used it to wave to her.
Arthur, of course, would have called his bluff, and it was possible Anthony would have, too. That was something he was starting to like about Sonora. It was good, this having rivals who didn’t know him as well as he knew himself. His brothers could both put up a fight – in the non-physical sense; Anthony was barely seven – but they all knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and reactions so well that the end was usually known before they began and even if it wasn’t, the conflict or competition either ended quickly or didn’t reach a clear conclusion at all. The downside of the current system was that he didn’t know his opponents, either, but at least mutual lack of knowledge meant things could stay interesting.
Far below them, above the Teppenpaw stands, Arnold thought he saw a flick of light that might be the Snitch. The last turn put him slightly closer to it than Kate. She had a slight edge when it came to knowing this Pitch, since she was a second year, but her broom was nothing to write home about, whereas his was nothing to sneeze at; he didn’t think he could count on one of those fancy custom-made models until he’d proved himself and maybe grown a little, there were three sons to buy things for instead of the usual one and the Anthonies approved of throwing money around needlessly as much as they did of cheapness, but he was still sure his broom was better than her broom. So, without taking his eyes off the movement of the light, Arnold dove.
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
Seeking something shiny
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
February 23, 2011 12:55 PM
Blocking your access to the shiny. by <font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
The best defense, Kate decided, was to seem completely unaffected by her opponent’s offense, so even though she did find it kind of unsettling, she smiled and waved back at Arnold as though they were friendly acquaintances passing each other in the halls of Sonora instead of opponents locked in a struggle for dominance and glory. No blinking.Well, metaphorically speaking. Keeping her eyes open for long periods of time was uncomfortable, after all, and the idea was to be able to see as straight as she could in the rain. The rain also meant she and Arnold wouldn’t be able to make each other’s faces out in that level of detail unless they were actually crashing into each other, so it was kind of irrelevant so long as neither one of them was actually cringing in terror and flying away screaming. But anyway.
She knew they couldn’t keep covering each other forever – if nothing else, sooner or later, they would both collapse from exhaustion and the game would…be rescheduled? Kate couldn’t remember, off the top of her head, what the protocol for that kind of thing was; normally, they’d bring in Jessica and David, but if the entire teams had fallen over, then it wouldn’t really make that much sense to just have Seekers playing against each other while nothing else went on – and she wasn’t planning to. She just had to cover Arnold long enough to frustrate him, get him mad and off-balance, so he started to miss things. His style of play so far made him look like a showman, like her sister; if she kept foiling him, ruining the performance, he would eventually blow up.
That was what she was hoping, anyway. At least let him get so annoyed by her that he went off in completely the wrong direction just to get away from her and maybe got hit by another of Derry and Ben’s Bludgers, or at least wasn’t in her way when she went for the Snitch. His broom was better than hers; if it came down to a flat race, from even close to equal starting points, the only way she could win would be for him to pull so far ahead that the Beaters got him, and that would depend on his Beaters not having control of the Bludgers and being able to get her instead.
She spotted the glimmer of gold above her stands at the same time Arnold did, and saw that he was closer. So she did something stupid. Putting as much speed into it as she could while retaining the right amount of control, she flew forward, too, and cut in front of him. If he collided with her, and she was the one who came out of it hurt worse, they could always bring in Jessica.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
Blocking your access to the shiny.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
February 23, 2011 2:48 PM
Curses! Foiled again! by <font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
This was it. The game was over. A few more moments, and the Snitch would be his, and even the Teppenpaw supporters, if not the Teppenpaw team, could go home reasonably happy. There had been plenty of action, plenty of drama with the falls and Bludger hits and Quaffle all over the place, but it had ended almost as soon as the rain started so no one had to stay out until they got sick. As far as Arnold was concerned, a position where his people were very happy and even his direct opponents had to give him some credit was an okay position to be in.But then –
If she’d been a boy, Arnold would have kept going and knocked her off her broom, taking his chances with his own neck, but one of the few virtues Father and Grandfather agreed on was chivalry, and instinct, helped by an increased desire for self-preservation in the immediate aftermath of that fall, kicked in hard. He jerked his broom up and to the side, thinking for a moment that he might actually lose his seat again, and felt that he was going to start spinning out of control about half a second before he actually did. White-faced, he put all his strength behind regaining control and finally managed to stop.
But he was in the open, now, away from the protection of being too close to Teppenpaw’s Seeker for Teppenpaw Beaters to come after him, and he was slightly dizzy from those spins, and he couldn’t see Edmond anywhere, and the Snitch had just been in play. If Bauer had thought he was feinting, she would have called it, not blocked him. He had to find her, now. He was not going to lose this one because he had trouble with the thought of accidentally killing a girl, especially since he knew Crotalus’ Seeker was also a girl and he honestly couldn’t remember about Pecari’s.
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
Curses! Foiled again!
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Chaser</font>
February 23, 2011 3:14 PM
You'll never succeed. by <font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Chaser</font>
For one second, Kate thought Arnold was going to call her bluff – Teppenpaw could absorb a foul if it came to that, Kirstenna was clearly better than their Chasers, but she was okay with neither going to the hospital wing nor being replaced by a first year as she’d thought she was in that crazy moment – so she wrenched her broom to the side at the exact same time he did. Since she only had to move one way, though, while he was going two, she was able to keep control of hers while he went spinning away.She hadn’t anticipated that, but she wasn’t going to pass up something that worked to her benefit. Momma and Jeremy had managed to instill that much of their worldview into her, at least for the purposes of a game. She looked for the Snitch where it had been, but it had gone in that moment it took to re-orient herself after pulling out of the block.
Where was it? Unless he was so out of it he ended up going for some head-on-goalpost action, Arnold was almost certainly going to be coming back, and she needed to end this. She was, though sweating, cold, and the audience was getting soaked, and from what little she was picking up of what was going on with the rest of the game, it was just getting crazier by the second out there. She hadn’t taken herself remotely seriously when she’d thought of tagging Arnold until both teams just collapsed and had to call a rematch, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t the only person out of here getting tired just from the tension, never mind the actual physical effort involving in flying like this, against the wind and other players and straining her eyes to look for game balls and the rest of it.
Gold caught her eye, now over the field proper…either below, or right in line, with the direction the Chasers were now heading. Not only did she have to worry about Beaters and Arnold, but she had to worry about beating the Chasers there as well, so it didn’t get lost and she didn’t get flattened in the moment of triumph by a bunch of crazy Aladren Chasers, not to mention her own team’s Chasers as they tried to get the Quaffle back. Great. Putting both hands on her broom, she shot forward as fast as her broom would let her, her eyes squinted almost shut but focused completely on the movements of the walnut-sized bit of trouble that controlled all.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Chaser</font>
You'll never succeed.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Chaser</font>
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
February 23, 2011 3:58 PM
Telling me that? Not a good idea by <font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
This game was not going Arnold’s way. He was hurt, had been knocked off the course to victory twice by the same girl, he was starting to feel the stress enough that he couldn’t keep his eyes still enough to find her again, and Teppenpaw had just scored. Where were their Beaters? He was definitely going to have to strongly recommend that they let him take care of himself next time and devote all their energy to flattening the enemy, because with Edmond’s size and Preston’s crazy on their side, they should have been scoring goal after goal while Arnold looked for the Snitch at his leisure because the entire Teppenpaw team was hospitalized.That wasn’t what was happening, though, and thoughts of it were driven straight out of his head by the sight of Bauer going for the Snitch again.
He was faster, but she was closer. No time to think. No time to do anything except get mad, which wasn’t hard at this point. Beginning to feel tired on top of hurt but refusing to acknowledge it because there wasn’t time and he was seriously irritated at this point, he forced his broom to top speeds once more.
In the back of his mind, though, he had to admit that he didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up. It was hard to keep his broom under control and himself on it at this speed when he and the environment were both in the best of conditions, and he’d been flying very fast for a while now, a time only interrupted by about a minute or two after he got hit by a Bludger, and it was pouring down rain. It was always possible to go further than he really thought he could, and he wasn’t as far as he thought he could go yet, but how much further did he have?
He didn’t know, and that was one reason why he had to conclude that it was time to declare chivalry dead. He could send her a get-well card later if he had to, but for now, Bauer was no longer a girl. She was, until the Snitch was in someone’s hand, a guy with long hair. And that meant he could do whatever was necessary to win.
He was level with her ankles, then with her properly. The Chasers were approaching them. The Snitch darted up. Testing his luck, hoping the game was so crazy that Coach Pierce either wouldn’t notice or the weather so bad she would assume it was an accident, he veered sideways just a little, holding hard to his broom and putting his weight behind his right shoulder. Maybe he could, if nothing else, level the playing field a little.
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
Telling me that? Not a good idea
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
February 23, 2011 4:25 PM
It's going to be true, though. by <font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
Kate’s full attention was fixed on the Snitch. It had changed directions, more off to the side, so she did as well. She could barely see, she couldn’t really hear anything between the rain and the wind rushing past her ears, so Bludgers were definitely a potential problem, but she was putting all her faith into Ben and Derry just because the combination made her think of Ben ‘n Jerry’s and because, as a second year, she didn’t have a lot of room to cast aspersions on the skills of first years and because she didn’t really have any other choice. They were to keep her safe, and she was to get the Snitch.She saw a blur of dark hair and dark robes, darker than even water-damaged Teppenpaw yellow, at her side a second before it slammed into her. She didn’t come off her broom, but hadn’t been expecting it and ended up taking the broom with her off-course.
“You little Carey twit,” she shrieked, considering neither the relative wisdom of bringing the Careys into this in a way that implied being a Carey was a bad thing nor how very much she sounded like Rachel in full Pureblood-Girly-Robot mode when sounding like that even a little was against her moral code. She was too angry to think about things like that just now.
It occurred to her that it might be slightly hypocritical to be angry with him for colliding with her when she’d done her best to get him to collide with the ground and had at least offered him the option of colliding with her earlier, but feinting and blocking were perfectly legal moves. Slamming into other players was not. Maybe it had been an accident, at the speeds they were going and all, but as hard as he'd hit her, Kate very much doubted it, and right now, she didn’t even really care. She’d been so close….
She could not try to knock him off his broom. She could not try to knock him off his broom. Not unless he did something lovely like get in her way and give her a legitimate excuse to knock him off his broom to save the Snitch. Unless that happened, she had to focus on the Snitch and finding it and seeing if Arnold had been obliging enough to hoist himself on his own petard and fall again. Yes, that was what she had to do.
But oh, if he gave her a reason....
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
It's going to be true, though.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
February 24, 2011 9:41 AM
Yeah, right by <font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
On the upside, Bauer was away from the Snitch, and the whistle wasn’t blowing. On the downside, Arnold couldn’t find the Snitch, either, and now both his shoulders hurt, though the one he’d run into the Bludger with was still definitely the worse. He couldn’t tell if the rain was making that better or worse, but either way, he would still be glad to introduce himself to Arthur’s friend the medic after the game.Assuming he made a conscious choice to go to speak with her. The game was too quiet right now. He kept looking around, straining his ears as well as his eyes, but he couldn’t locate the Bludgers. Considering that the first part of the game had involved multiple interceptions and injuries on both teams and total, unadorned chaos, Arnold couldn’t make sense of this, and had to assume that it meant the teams were trying to trick each other.
Trickery, of course, was still a factor. He had started to realize that Bauer was no more willing to give up than he was; looking over, he saw a yellowish blur about her size, and if she was in the air, she’d be back on him any moment now. Dodging, weaving, and trying to get each other to crash into the ground were the only tactics they could legally use to end the deadlock that kept happening as they covered each other and blocked and created a stalemate.
Of course, right now, there was a simple way, and that was to just move from this place, where the Snitch was not, and see if he could end it before further trickery came into it. Deliberate, focused trickery, anyway; he knew she might interpret him flying straight forward as a feint and play it, but really, he was just going somewhere else because where he was wasn’t yielding results.
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
Yeah, right
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
February 24, 2011 4:56 PM
Good to see you admit it. by <font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
Kate wasn’t surprised to see Arnold was still in the air. The collision hadn’t been that hard, and her luck wasn’t good enough for him to fall off again. She was still a little disappointed, though, not least because he was closer to where the Snitch had last been than she was and a look around proved that she hadn’t somehow been knocked over to where it now was.When Arnold began changing directions and flying off, Kate hesitated for a moment, not sure if he’d seen the Snitch or was trying to lead her into a trap or was just flying off in that direction because it was as good a direction as any other. She couldn’t see the Snitch off that way, but then, she could barely see her opponent at the moment. She hated rain, especially the heavy stuff. It just made things difficult.
As if they weren’t always. Oddly, that was a comforting thought. Rain didn’t seem quite so bad when she considered the fight she was no doubt going to have with her mother about playing in any weather over the holidays. Maybe she could do what Rachel had that one year and stay at Sonora over midterm instead of going home to deal with it. It would mean missing some of her time with her dad, and not seeing Alicia at all until summer or Rachel on one of the few occasions where she was sort of still tolerable, but at least she wouldn’t have to put up with the Jeremy and Emily Show.
Muttering angrily to herself about possibly being played for a fool by the guy she’d just played for a fool twice, Kate decided to follow Arnold. This time, though, if there was any pushing, she was going to be the one doing it.
All completely unintentionally, of course.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
Good to see you admit it.
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<font color=yellow>Kate Bauer, Seeker</font>
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
February 24, 2011 9:45 PM
Oh, Caitlin, mistress of the misinterpreted observation by <font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
He didn’t really like doing it, but Arnold had learned Chaser from his father before he learned Seeker at Sonora, and that meant being able to fly with both hands off the broom. Right now, that was coming in handy, because he could rub the water out of his eyes when he needed to without having to stop his broom completely, though he did slow down a little. He had no interest in falling again, especially since there was still that uncanny lack of a Bludger anywhere near him to explain it with.He did notice, though, that his robes were starting to stick to his arms. That could be a major disadvantage in a race for the Snitch. He’d seen real games were half a second made the difference between a move going one way and it going the other, and while he knew they weren’t at that level of play…Well, they weren’t exactly tossing a Quaffle around on the back lawn, either.
He also noticed he couldn’t really feel his face a moment later while grimacing at Bauer’s return, but focused more on the Teppenpaw Seeker. He’d really been hoping that she would go away and Seek somewhere else, but he guessed it was true what they said about people who were tricky expecting to be tricked. The only thing that didn’t make sense was that he was the Carey in this arrangement. While he would not take it well if anyone here, an outsider, mentioned it to his face, he was aware that other branches of his family were less than reputable or subtle.
Subtle wasn’t really his style, either. He flew straight at her…Then glanced sideways, and realized they were both about to be run over by the Chasers. “Duck,” he recommended loudly, then suited action to words by pointing his broom groundward and pushing it as fast as he thought he could without losing his touch and crashing.
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
Oh, Caitlin, mistress of the misinterpreted observation
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<font color=blue>Arnold Carey, Seeker</font>
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