We can do this! on Quidditch Pitch

The Coach

March 26, 2021 8:57 PM

Quidditch Try Outs by The Coach

The sign ups had not been quite as enthusiastic as some years, with relatively few of the new kids taking up spots even as they became vacated by graduating students. The coach was starting to see why they only had the school-wide team instead of houses. On the one hand, it was a little disheartening, after years of almost two full teams, but on the other, they had one new player in her fourth year, so that just went to show it was never a done deal – maybe the new folks just needed time to settle, and give or take a year or two, they’d be out here too. Plus they had more than enough to fill a team, even if there would have to be some second choices for people about what they played.

“Alright, welcome and welcome back to Sonora Quidditch!” the coach smiled, once the assembled players had all been checked off and accounted for, with any walk ons added to the coach’s notes.

“We’re going to be running Chaser and Keeper try outs first, followed by Beaters, and Seekers last. We’ll have a group warm up, which will also show me some of your stamina and agility, but please be sure to warm up again if you have a break before your try out. You’re also welcome to do anything you want in that time to get ready, so long as you aren’t disrupting other players.

“Let’s go for a lap running, a lap flying, and then I’d like to see what you can all do on this obstacle course,” the coach gestured to the sky, where several obstacles hung, requiring students to go under, over, around and through. They would get one run at it, having to strike a balance between time and accuracy, with penalties for anything they hit.

After that, the Chasers would do passing drills, both trying to get to each other and around opponents, whilst anyone interested in Keeper would block some shots at goal. Beaters had dummies to hit, and control drills with passing the bludgers back and forth. The Seekers would do their usual gathering of coloured Snitch-sized ball – as many of their own colour as they could whilst flying solo, and then with all their competitors in the air too. Throughout it all, the coach would also be looking for a good attitude, and people who could work as team players.

OOC: Welcome to try outs! I have tried to be vague about how many people signed up as I’m sure there are some other returning players whose authors didn’t get around to sign up posts, but who would have signed up – it’s fine to claim that your character did so, even if you didn’t get around to writing it. You are also free to claim that you’re just a walk on, having decided on the day to go for it.

Feel free to reply describing any of the activities listed. Team positions will be based on IC factors, but also on quality of post.

If you have any questions about how to try out, ask in Chatzy.

Subthreads:

We can do this! by Valentine Duell with Leonor De Matteo

Wooo! by Billy Cobb with Hilda Hexenmeister

Lets live for today. by Morgan Garrett with Evelyn Stones

Just doing my job. [Beater tryout] by Felipe De Matteo

Seeking to Improve by Anya Delachene

Probably overthinking everything way too much. by Graham Osbrook

To Adventure! by Alexei Vorontsov

13 The Coach Quidditch Try Outs 0 The Coach 1 5

Valentine Duell

March 27, 2021 8:33 AM

We can do this! by Valentine Duell

Valentine arrived upon the pitch for try-outs determined, and yet already resigned to her most likely fate. She was going to do her very best to try and claim that top Seeker position once more, but most likely she knew she would probably get a chaser position. On the bright side, it may not be a reserve chaser position, it might actually be first string chaser position. She was sad that Heinrich was gone, she still had fleeting memories of him saving her last year during that wind training exercise. They made her feel.... distracted. She shook them off and tried to focus. He had left a chaser sized hole in the team, and maybe, if she did well enough, she could try to fill it. Well, alright maybe Ness would fill it and she could fill Ness' position. The point was that was still probably her best shot for getting on the team proper. There were still two teammates older than her eternally vying for that Seeker position that she longed for as well. All she could do was give it her best and let the coach decide what was the best for the team. She did want what was best for the team, as much as she wanted to be a Seeker, she wanted everyone to have fun playing and if that meant being reserve chaser again, well she could do that.

Val stood with the rest of the people trying out for the team with her broom and listened to the coach's instructions. Once they were finished, she made her lap running and the got her her broom for a lap. Ordinarily she loved zipping through that obstacle course, dodging and weaving as fast as she could go. This time she eyed it a little nervously as she completed the lap on her broom. It was still pulling a bit to the side after the incident last year, also it shook a bit at times. This was her broom that she'd had for the past two years, Mama and Papa had gotten it for her when she started school. They had flown together in lessons and quidditch practices and games and for fun. She and her broom had grown together as one entity through all of that, but now... after the incident last year, it was like they were out of sync. They didn't understand each other any more, and now whenever she mounted her broom it almost made her want to cry.

She had recovered, Miss Katey and Mama had seen to that, but her broom hadn't. She didn't know if it could. She could ask someone, maybe Professor Skies or the Coach. Maybe it could be fixed, but she was afraid to ask. She had notice something else about her beloved broom. It was shrinking. They might suggest that instead of fixing it, she should look at getting a bigger broom as she grew. She knew that would be the fiscally responsible thing to do, why spend money fixing something that will need to get replaced soon anyway? But she just couldn't do that... toss her flying friend aside for a newer model? That would be cruel and terrible. She couldn't do that, not yet. Her broom still had some life in it and she wasn't about to abandon it yet after all they'd been through together.

As such, she took the obstacle course slower than she had in the past, and still didn't make a perfect run of it. An acute observer could probably tell that her broom was not what it once was, and she was doing all she could to keep the erratic object on course. The chaser drills went a little better as there was a little more room for error between ball passing. During Beater practice she tried to do what she could for her old friend before the Seeker challenge began.

The Seeker try-outs did not go particularly well. Valentine managed a decent showing, but she was again fighting for control the entire time. This time however with only one hand as the other was desperately trying to capture the little balls being thrown into the air.

After everything was over, she flopped to the ground, exhausted with her broom lying next to her. She smiled and turned her head to look at it, "We made it through another one. You did good."

2 Valentine Duell We can do this! 1490 0 5

Billy Cobb

March 27, 2021 5:49 PM

Wooo! by Billy Cobb

Quidditch again! Finally! Billy was ready to go. Fortunately the coach didn't waste to much time before getting things going. He grinned in anticipation as he pumped his legs and ran the lap, this was gunna be great! Finishing the lap he grabbed the school broom he was using today, straddled it and kicked off without missing a beat into the flying lap. "Whooo!" he called out as he zoomed around the pitch. Upon completing that lap, he soared up into the obstacle course.

Billy was not as graceful on the broom as some of the other players. However, what he lacked in grace he made up in enthusiasm. His time would not win any records, mainly because he did not simply go 'over' or 'under' obstacles. He looped around them, he feinted, dodged and played with the obstacles. Billy had fun.

Once the chasers started trying out, he decided to join in. It sure was better 'n just sitting around watching them. He didn't really want to be a Chaser he liked being a Beater. He suspected after that was done, he didn't have to worry about being assigned a Chaser position anyway. Not having practiced being one at all before right now, he hadn't done so great. But it had been fun.

Then finally Beater try-outs started, he grabbed a beater stick and went in search for a bludger to hit. He found one and let it find him as well. He flew straight towards it as it hurled headlong towards him. He knew you never won playing chicken against a bludger, so he swerved at the last moment, letting it sail past only inches from hitting him. As it did, he swung his club and set it careening off course towards one of the dummies. He had missed this. Billy grinned as he scanned the skies for more targets.

2 Billy Cobb Wooo! 1519 0 5

Hilda Hexenmeister

March 28, 2021 9:35 AM

Ja. Whooo! by Hilda Hexenmeister

OOC: Takes place a few minutes after Billy's post, when they get to the control drills between players. BIC:

It was Hilda's first year on the team without Heinrich. She was more nervous about this than she thought she should be, given that there was no chance she wouldn't make first string beater this year. Felipe was the same age as her, but she knew she had both more skill and more experience in the position. Besides which, the team needed two beaters, so they could both get it. Felipe would almost certainly beat out Billy for the spot, who was only a second year, and the only other beater signed up on the list, but Hilda was sure she was the best Beater Sonora had on offer. She shouldn't have had any nerves at all going into this try-out.

But she did. Part of it was that if she'd made any sort of friends on the team, she'd probably have said that had been Nathaniel, and he was as gone as Heinrich was. She was the only one of the German Tent girls here. Her brother was graduated. She hardly even knew who to stand next to during the Coach's introduction. It had always been Heinrich before, so he could translate for her. She almost drifted toward Evelyn and Ness, but then didn't. They were Heinrich's friends not hers. She liked both of them just fine, but she wasn't a part of that friend group.

She wound up standing next to Billy instead. Billy who she'd been working with a lot the past year, training him up from a rank beginner to a moderately competent player. Another two years and she was sure she'd have him in good fighting form to take over as the school's lead beater, when both her and Felipe had graduated. They'd need to find him a second by then, but there was still time. It was unlikely that she and Felipe would both need to sit out a match at the same time, and he'd be a fair reserve player to fill in for either of them as necessary.

"Remember stretch," she advised her young protégé in broken, accented English, and began doing so herself.

As the coach began talking a few minutes later, Hilda was relieved that she followed almost all of it. It helped that there wasn't anything too unexpected being said and they were following a similar pattern to what they did every try-out, and that any words related to Quidditch had been among the first ones she had learned in English.

Still, she wasn't the first one off the mark in the running lap, as she held back just long enough to make sure that was what everyone else was doing before she joined in. She made up for the delay with long ground eating strides. She'd hit a growth spurt over the summer, and while she doubted she would ever match Heinrich for height, she'd closed the gap some, and now stood taller than nearly every other female in the school, excepting only Professor Brooding-Hawthorne of DADA, and she'd need to stand back-to-back to that professor to be sure which of them had the height advantage there.

She wasn't amazingly speedy, having a lot of mass to carry around as well and she didn't want to exhaust herself in the warmup, so she did not outstrip the other players the way Heinrich could when he really wanted to run fast. But a lot of that mass was muscle, so her endurance was good and she finished ahead of most of the other players.

She collected her broom from where she'd left it. The broom was two years old and, especially after this latest growth spurt, a bit short in the haft for her growing size. She was going to have to get a new one soon. She made a mental note to hint at a new broom for Christmas in her next letter to Uncle Karl. It was still functional though, and she preferred the broom she knew to any of the ones in the school broom shed, so she dealt with its relative smallness by shifting the cushion charm a little further back on the stick. She mounted, unmounted, readjusted the seat, mounted, unmounted, readjusted again, and then satisfied that it was as good as it was going to get, she took to the air. The balance was off with the tail being shorter than she was used to, but she had the whole lap to get accustomed to it. Between the delay in getting off the ground, and testing her balance once she was in the air, she had lost all of her lead that she'd earned running, and finished the flying lap at the back of the crowd.

That was fine. She went into the Obstacle Course with a solid feel for her broom's new balance. It was actually a little more maneuverable than it had been like this, and she did her best run ever through the course, only brushing past a few obstacles when she figured bulling through was more effective than trying to go around. She was a beater, after all. Her run would be judged accordingly.

She sat out the chaser and keeper drills, having no interest in either position. She warmed up again as the keeper try-outs were wrapping up, and then took to the air for the beater ones.

She smacked bludgers at the dummies with ease and familiarity and accuracy, and then paired off with Billy for the control drills. "Same like we practice last year," she told him, and whacked a bludger his way, not hitting too hard and keeping things easy to start with, but Hilda's idea of 'too hard' and Billy's might vary by an order of magnitude or more.

OOC: I'm not 100% sure on Sonora's Tall Female population. If there are more notably tall women, pretend Hilda included them with Tabitha in people she hasn't compared herself to with a ruler yet. Hilda is probably somewhere around 5'8".

1 Hilda Hexenmeister Ja. Whooo! 1433 0 5

Billy Cobb

April 02, 2021 5:38 PM

Let's do this! by Billy Cobb

Billy grinned wide as Hilda swung around to partner up with him for the 'smacking the bludger back and forth' part of the try-outs. Hilda was good at this, no doubt about it. Plus, she was from Germany! That was super great and Felipe, the other beater, was from Mexico! It was great just to hang out with them, he felt like he was already out seeing the far corners of the world.

Pulling his broom around into position he nodded to his partner and trainer. Hilda could be rough at times, her training regiment had been pretty brutal last year. He was ready to see what this year would bring. His eyes tracked the bludger she'd spotted and swatted his direction with a loud crack of the bat. There was a quick adjustment of his grip on the beater stick in his hand as the ball hurled towards him. It was movin' pretty fast.

He swung his arm back and then brought it forward, none to smoothly to make contact with the bludger. It connected and the ball hurled off in the general area of Hilda, but not nearly as clean of a shot as hers had been. Summer had definitely put him out of practice. His hand holding the bat felt a bit tingly as well. He was going to have to work on that. "Sorry!" he shouted back at Hilda. She was gunna make him pay for that shot, he knew it. It would be great!

2 Billy Cobb Let's do this! 1519 0 5

Morgan Garrett

April 07, 2021 9:55 PM

Lets live for today. by Morgan Garrett

When Morgan had been preparing to leave home for the first time, a good ninety percent of her family had sung a son with a single refrain: You be a good girl. We won’t have to worry about you. We taught you how to act right. We ain’t raised you to go out among no strangers and act a fool.

Morgan had known what all that meant. She was expected to do just exactly as her mom and her grandparents and great-aunts and all expected her to do when she was in their company: Be quiet, be plain. Always be happy, but never too happy. Never draw attention to herself in any way, basically. Be utterly forgettable.

So, naturally, from the moment the wagon had lifted off the ground, she had started doing the exact opposite of all that. She wore her sparkliest costume jewelry and big sunglasses whenever she felt like it, she bought mascaras and too-bright lip tints from Mara, she had done some of the worst, most overblown acting in the history of ever during DnD, and she played a sport with half-sentient murder cannonballs in it. All this was fun enough in its own right, but it added all that much more spice to think of what would everyone at home say! There was work to do at Sonora, of course, but in a way, she saw her school years as a sort of very long summer, away from her mapdot of a town, away from the expectations put on nice girl who didn’t want to embarrass her family…at school, she could, while it lasted, really live for a while.

If Sonora was summer, though, the professors had managed at last to get it into her head that autumn really was going to come around. She was technically still free and clear this year, but next year was CATS, the real beginning of the end. And while her grades were…fine, she didn’t just rack up top scores without any (obvious) effort the way some in her House seemed to – or, for that matter, at all. She hadn’t wanted to put all her attention onto that, not when there was so much else to do! The things she had spent the Opening Feast extolling the virtues of, after acknowledging the virtue of prudence, despite having never really practiced it…And so the question arose: should she make the most of one last year, or start getting ready for the long slog of real life?

It was weird. All her life she had been surrounded by relatives telling her to get her head out of the clouds and get used to real life (subtext: so you don’t end up like Anna…) and she had…paid them no attention whatsoever, instead assuming she would, through sheer force of will, create the life her dead aunt had planned for her. And now…having Dad around wasn’t the same as Anna being alive again, of course, but still: he was, still, technically a grown-up relative who didn’t call her a damn fool all the time, and even helped her pursue things that interested her, and unlike Anna, he wasn’t…well, okay, he was still a bit of a train wreck of a human, but a functional one, to the extent that even made sense. A one-car derailment instead of a five-train pile-up that also involved a few pedestrians, a big rig hauling dynamite, and eleven long-haired Friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus. So why, with a more functional level of support than she’d ever had before, was she starting to think that maybe she should listen to the rest of the family instead now? It wasn’t as if they were really that much better off than Dad, if they were at all; she had the impression that some of the years between the Easter when Dad had barreled out of town and the Easter when he had wandered back into it with a wife might have been…interesting, in not-so-good ways, but still, he was definitely at least no more miserable than the rest of the family, and proved that it was quite possible to leave Industry with no money, no plan, and next to no anything else and still eventually end up...okay, anyway….

Aside from the lack of logic and other such details, though, Morgan just plain found all this reflective stuff uncomfortable to think about for too long. She had, therefore, decided it wasn’t nearly close enough to fifth year after all and she had gone ahead and decided to go back to everything she’d always done and deal with the repercussions next year, if nothing else so Leonor De Matteo didn’t think that her mere presence had driven Morgan out of anything. Morgan was excruciatingly aware, even as she had that thought, that Leonor was probably incredibly oblivious to Morgan’s existence whenever Fate didn’t happen to put Morgan right in front of her for her to mock, but she decided not to think about that now, either. If it worked for Scarlett O’Hara, she reasoned, it ought to work fine for Morgan Garrett.

She was feeling fairly energetic as warm-ups began, but had the good sense to try to pace herself instead of throwing herself headlong into anything and probably falling over halfway through it. Running was more or less her least favorite part of Quidditch practice, and a thing she had not been all that upset about not being able to practice while she was at home because of her family – even Dad and Sage – agreeing that going outside was not a good idea for a girl to do alone and none of them having time to accompany her, but she had kept up some of the other warm-up and ground exercises, so she wasn’t completely out of shape, but the laps still were kind of painful, and she expected they would remain so for a few weeks.

By the end of that drill, her brown ponytail was looking bedraggled and her freckled face was rather red, but she was on her feet. She did some stretches before getting on her broom, wincing a little and debating which of the two try-outs she was interesting in that she ought to try first.

She ultimately, after they went through the remaining preliminary exercises, decided to begin with Chaser and then go to Keeper. As usual, she was…fine. Not good, not bad, just…fine, at least in her own estimation. Well, she thought, it was only the first day. Tomorrow was another day, and could be a better one.

16 Morgan Garrett Lets live for today. 1470 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

April 12, 2021 10:17 AM

Darn right we can. by Leonor De Matteo

OOC: CW mention of murder, body negativity BIC:

Leonor had discovered a superpower: spite. Bitter spite. It turned out to be a really good motivator on its own, but had additionally served her well as a catalyst for ambition and success. So far, spite had gotten her a crown, a boyfriend, and a pretty good life. Sure, everything was a mess, she was miserable, and she mostly hated herself and everyone around her, but that was besides the point. What did it matter if her family may or may not be full of lying murderers? She was feeling pretty murderous these days too. What did it matter if she didn't have any friends and she and her boyfriend were no longer together because of stupid people making everything worse than it needed to be? She was feeling terrible either way and now it was just terrible and bored. Boredom was easy to compensate for with spite.

She had signed up (and then re-signed up) for Quidditch tryouts as a possible chaser or seeker. She'd been mostly interested in the seeking position for spite and when she'd found that her name had been erased (probably; she didn't technically have proof of whatever had happened), she'd discovered a sudden passion for the position. She was not an idiot though; there were enough people trying out for the seeking position and few enough seeking positions available that she didn't actually expect to get it. But she wanted to make a point of it. As it turned out, spite didn't always mean not even trying things so no one could say she'd failed; sometimes it meant looking like the bigger person by trying and failing with grace. Or "failing" with grace since she was pretty sure she never failed at anything in any real way. Supposed failures were just opportunities to demonstrate humility or grace or whatever other stupid thing she was supposed to be demonstrating. It was very effective.

She'd been working out and getting in shape for this all summer, even offering to help Felipe practice on the few occasions he'd been home and wanted to be around her at all, so she completed the obstacle course laps with much more ease than she had expected. Quidditch was a good kind of working out for girls because they could be slim and fit and pretty without being gross and muscly or anything. Of course, some girls hadn't gotten that memo and they tended to play positions that made them look more like a club than the thing they were swinging did.

In any case, she did pretty good, better than even some of her more experienced competitors she'd say, and was feeling good when it came time to start the actual seeker tryout. She'd been clear with the coach that she was also interested in the chasing position still but she wanted to tryout explicitly for seeker and giving it a shot. Perhaps she'd manage a sub position. When she finished, she was exhausted. She'd managed to catch most of the balls shot her way, missing a few by a matter of inches and one by a matter of stupidity when she'd ducked one that had flown at her face instead of putting a hand up to catch it (no matter, it was the girly thing to do and that was good too). When they'd done the same task with their competitors in the air too, it had been harder. For one, Jeremy was ~~attractive~~ aggressive and she felt the need to keep an eye on him more than she would have preferred, just to ensure he didn't go flying into her or something, and for two, it was just chaotic. There were hands and brooms and balls and sweat and it was madness. She'd still managed to do pretty well but notably less well than she'd managed by herself. She had managed to throw a few sweet smiles at her classmates though, which she hoped were calculated as points in the 'team player' category, and she also hoped were wildly distracting for Jeremy. If she flew a little close to him a few times . . . well, it was sports.

She landed with a whump and took a seat in the grass, sitting cross-legged since she wasn't wearing a skirt to worry about. She was facing Jeremy where he landed for the sake of making sure no one could come up behind her but she didn't look at him, instead turning when Valentine spoke.

"Thanks," she said, out of breath and mildly surprised (not because the girl apparently thought she'd done well, that much was obvious, but because the girl said so out loud to her competition; was that what she was supposed to do? Add more points to the 'team player' category at least) but still as flat as ever. "You did well too."

OOC: I know Valentine was talking to her broom but Leonor didn't realize that because ugh that's so weird. ;)

22 Leonor De Matteo Darn right we can. 1471 0 5

Valentine Duell

April 12, 2021 6:00 PM

No force in the 'verse can stop us! by Valentine Duell

Valentine almost jumped, then quickly realized that her broom hadn't responded to her. Leonor had. She turned her head to face her fellow potential team-mate with the normal friendly smile that usually resided on her face. She had not gotten a lot of opportunity to talk to Leonor much, she was a year older and their interests never seemed to match up. Until now! Now she was playing Quidditch, or at least trying out for it, and she had done a really good job at it as well. So, despite the initial praise going to her broom, it easily could have gone to Leonor as well.

Val struggled with her exhausted limbs to get to a seated position for a moment. Once there she let out another milder gasp. "Thanks!" She replied to Leonor's compliment. "That was a rough try-out, wasn't it?" She asked amicably enough. "You were doing an amazing job of catching those balls. I'm pretty sure you caught more of them than I did." Val was torn again, she really, really, really wanted the seeker position. But, at the same time, she wanted the team to be the best it could. Which meant it would be silly for her to be the seeker if someone else was better at it. Also on the plus side, if Leonor got a position she liked, then Val would have another teammate to hang out with! Plus, if they got enough people, they could play some more games against each other!

"I was a little surprised when I saw your name on the sign-up sheet," Val stated with a smile, "I'm glad you came to try-outs, the more people on the team the better!" Leonor had certainly looked like she'd been having fun, smiling at everyone while they were all flying around each other. "I just love the feeling of freedom and exhilaration of flying." She sighed and flopped back onto the grass. "It's like nothing else really matters, it's just you and your broom going where ever you want." She glanced at her broom. Well, mostly, she thought. "Did you have fun?" She asked her companion, "It looked like you were enjoying yourself."

2 Valentine Duell No force in the 'verse can stop us! 1490 0 5

Evelyn Stones

April 15, 2021 12:13 PM

Go for gold. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn put her all into running, and then into flying. She pushed herself harder than she probably ought to have considering how long it had been since she'd practiced in any meaningful way, although she'd kept up her running routine over the summer. She had hopes to run a marathon in the next few years and was training for that now that she wouldn't have Quidditch to look forward to each new Fall. Unless she played for college of course, but that was a whole lifetime away somehow.

When it came time to do the actual tryouts, sweat was building on her furrowed brow and her jaw was locked with determination. She was going to be trying out for Chaser again and she mostly assumed that she'd get it, but that didn't mean she didn't want to push herself. In fact, this year, she wanted to push herself extra hard. She wanted to be the best she could be. If that wasn't better than other people, that was fine with her; it wasn't competition with her classmates that drove her so much as competition with herself. She wanted to be the best and she wanted to not think too much about a certain handsome Chaser who was missing from the tryouts this year. She nodded at Ness, encouraging the Aladren with a more characteristic grin before her expression returned to its more determined set as she took her own place.

She passed back and forth with another student and then passed around the trying out Keepers as best she could. Heinrich would have been nicer than she was and tried to let some of his shots fall short on purpose, but she wasn't thinking about being nice so much as being good. Still, she was impressed by the performance of her young DnD friend, who did manage to stop some of her shots. The girl hadn't gotten all of them but she'd tried hard and considering she'd just come out of the Chaser tryouts as well, it was a good show of effort and ability in Evelyn's estimation. Of course, she wasn't about to be the coach anytime ever so she didn't have to worry too much about it anyway.

In any case, they landed at the end of tryouts and Evelyn crossed to give her friend some encouragement, especially since the girl didn't look exactly thrilled with how it had gone.

"Hey," she smiled. "Nice work! I always feel rusty coming back in the Fall when I haven't flown more than a few times over the summer," she admitted. "It's good seeing you again."

22 Evelyn Stones Go for gold. 1422 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

April 15, 2021 12:21 PM

Just doing my job. [Beater tryout] by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe was ready to throw himself into the new year because that was about all he could manage these days. Things were not really improving at home, as evidenced by Leonor clearly acting out in order to tryout for a position she was definitely not going to get. Also, papa had been dropping hints about Leonor marrying into the Mordue family all summer and Felipe was pretty sure he'd rather eat a can of pineapple - not the pineapple part, the actual can - than see that happen. Still, it was no longer his business. It couldn't be. So he was going to just throw himself into whatever he could. That mostly meant trying not to think too much about everything going on with Jessica and Sadie, not think about Leonor, not think about his family, not think about Jeremy, and just think about Zara and Quidditch. And academics of course. But Zara was the best of those three because she was pretty, exciting, and intelligent, which made her basically the whole package compared to the other items on the list.

He set into the warmups with gusto, although he was outstripped by around a quarter of the group. Hilda, he noticed, had grown tremendously and now at about his own height, making her a sight to behold as she sprinted the length of their warmup routine. He was glad she was going to be playing again; they rarely actually spoke but she'd never stopped being nice to him even when other people did after the incident with Jeremy and the bludger before. Well. For a given value of 'nice' at least.

She paired up with Billy for the control drills though, so when Felipe had taken his shots at dummies - hitting all but one! - he separated himself to find someone else to work with. "Shall we?" he asked his classmate and competition.

22 Felipe De Matteo Just doing my job. [Beater tryout] 1434 0 5

Anya Delachene

April 18, 2021 9:22 AM

Seeking to Improve by Anya Delachene

Anya was early to try outs. Not by a lot, just a few minutes, but the point was that she was not late. She normally rolled into Quidditch practice right around on time, give or take a minute or three, so her timeliness wasn't particularly notable as it was within her normal habits, but she had taken particular pains today to very definitely not be late. This effort had more to do with trying to impress upon the coach that she was as responsible as the prefect badge on her robes said she was, so that maybe, just maybe, she could unseat Jeremy Mordue as the team's first string Seeker, rather than because she was trying to set a prefectly example for her peers, but if they took it that way, she wasn't going to dissuade them. She did feel like she had something to prove, wearing the badge.

Also, arriving early let her wander amongst her teammates, greeting them, being friendly. She asked briefly after the summers of the people she knew moderately well or better, introduced herself to and welcomed the new people joining the team, and said 'good to see you again!' to those she had been on the team with before but didn't know very well. She even smiled and said Hi to Jeremy. That's how good a team player she was.

The coach explained this try out was going to run basically the same way the previous ones had, so she did the group warm up with everyone else, then set off on her jog around the pitch. She wasn't the fastest player on the field - at least, definitely not on foot - but she managed to make it around the pitch without coming in last or heaving in deep lungs full of air like she didn't know how to pace herself. She was in fifth year now, marking her as one of the older half of the school's population, but she was short for her age (Philippe, who was only in third year, had surpassed her in height this summer by enough of a margin that they didn't need a ruler and impartial judge to make that call anymore), and while she could handle a powerful sprint on a vault run, long distance runs were very clearly not one of her powerhouse skills.

Flying was, and the lap around the pitch on her broom gained her several spots ahead of her peers. She milked all the speed she could out of her broom (which was a very good one, and new as of last Christmas, so it had plenty of speed to be milked) and darted between the other players flying their laps without touching any of them.

The obstacle course was as fun as it always was. She tried to push her speed in it more than she normally did, and got two penalties for contact, which she was kind of mad at herself about because this was the kind of flying she did all summer, but they'd both been very minor brushes, having been pulls at her clothing rather than anything she could feel against her body, and overall she was quite pleased with her results.

Then she had a long wait until seeker try-outs came last. She did not try out for any of the other positions, but she watched from the ground, doing splits and backbends and walk-overs to keep limber while she watched. She'd been a gymnast long before she'd been a Quidditch player, and those were the warm-ups and stretches she defaulted to when she wasn't told otherwise.

Finally, it was time for the Seeker trials. Val seemed to be having trouble with her broom, which was unfortunate for her, but meant she was less of a danger to unseating Anya from second-string seeker than she might have been otherwise. Leonor had done much better than Anya had expected from someone who hadn't trained on the team before, and that competition gave her the push she needed to stay focused on catching just her own balls this year. It wasn't just Jeremy she had to beat to take his spot. Her own place was at risk, too.

She did catch some balls of the wrong color. Reflexive grabbing wasn't an instinct she wanted to turn off when they happened to fly close enough to her. But her final collection had notably fewer balls of colors other than her own this time than in any prior try-out. The net number of balls she had caught was lower than in previous year, but her own color count had gone up with the better focus on what she was supposed to be catching, which meant her score did, too.

For the free for all ball catch, she darted among the other Seekers, going mostly for her own balls again, though when she did grab the wrong ones, they were - strangely - always Jeremy's. If the coach asked, she'd blame it on reflex. She'd been training for years to steal the balls Jeremy was going for, after all. There'd only been two, anyway. The rest were all her own bright fuchsia color.

She'd done quite well, she thought, staying on task and grabbing the things she was supposed and almost only the things she was supposed to.

1 Anya Delachene Seeking to Improve 1453 0 5

Graham Osbrook

April 28, 2021 7:40 PM

Probably overthinking everything way too much. by Graham Osbrook

In his first year, Graham had thoughtlessly listed 'Seeker' as a position he might be interested in when signing up for Quidditch. He had never, ever made that particular mistake again. Chaser remained alarmingly social for his liking (being social was all well and good, but not at high speeds high above the ground with Bludgers all over everywhere and everyone being so entangled that it was quite impossible for people not to notice any mistakes he made), but even that seemed preferable to getting involved in all the rivalries that seemed tied to the Seekers and their situation....

Not, of course, that it was a bit unnerved by the thought of it. Especially now that Jeremy's brother wasn't around. Jeremy could probably still create situations that involved Graham being in a lot of pain if he wanted to, but probably...less so than Nathaniel could have, though to be fair, the only time he'd ever really noticed Nathaniel acting like he might hit someone for personal reasons had been after that fiasco with Felipe and Jeremy. Usually, the guy had just sort...been there, when they weren't actively doing anything, looking sort of broody, as though he would have rather been writing depressing poetry or romantically contriving to die atop the grave of his lost beloved. Possibly the difference between that and being rather...shouty, and the surprise of seeing it happen, had made it seem like a worse chewing out than it had really been, but Graham remained very glad he was too small and scrawny to make much of a Beater and thus had been able to sort of avoid both Mordue brothers for the most part. Being the backup Keeper was much nicer. He didn't know if he would retain the position this year, though, because of three things:

1) Last year, they had lost both a Beater and a Chaser to graduation, making those positions fillage priorities.

2) Morgan had also expressed interest in being Keeper before, and

3) Morgan was a lot older than him, and how that would affect things, he actually had no idea - would they want someone more experienced, full stop, for the vacant Chaser position, or would she get promoted by default?

The fact he had a list, but didn't know exactly what it all meant or how to make any use of the information in it - indeed, that the information was useless in every sense of the word - annoyed him, so he decided not to think about it on tryouts day. It was more productive to just try his best.

On the whole, he thought he and Morgan did about equally in the challenges which they both ran through - he was perhaps slightly more nimble, she was perhaps a fair faster because she didn't really take as much time to nimble, et cetera et cetera and so forth. He also gave Beater a try, just in the name of looking cooperative and like he had team spirit, because he figured it was expected of him now that he was officially a teenager on top of being a guy. He was not surprised at all to find he had little power behind his hits, but mildly pleased to find he aimed reasonably well. It would do.

16 Graham Osbrook Probably overthinking everything way too much. 1498 0 5

Alexei Vorontsov

April 28, 2021 8:40 PM

To Adventure! by Alexei Vorontsov

He had, of course, missed his mother and father terribly, but there had been several advantages to spending most of last year in Russia with Anya and Tatya. For one, he had been there to learn about magic along with Tatya, so if there had been someone here inclined to pick on him (fortunately, it seemed there wasn’t), he wouldn’t have been entirely helpless. For another, one of those two sisters was far less protective than Mama, and the other had been occupied with baby Anastasia too much to do anything about that, so he already knew how to fly a broom fairly, he thought, well.

He had not, however, ever really played Quidditch before. Or any broom games before. He had watched sometimes, enviously, while his siblings did so, but Mama had always forbidden him from joining them - they are too big, Alyosha, you could get hurt. As if they didn’t come in with plenty of bruises and such things, especially if Tatya and Grisha were enthusiastic! But even they had always agreed, especially Grisha - I don’t know if you have as thick of a skull as Tanya, little brother. And to make bad matters much, he was in as much of an odd, inter-generational position among all their cousins as he was within his own family: too young for the ones who were technically his peers to play with, too old to play with the littles now being born. So he had spent his life with tutors and Mama, daydreaming about what it would be like to have a life, and to get to prove that he was not, in fact, a weakling or effeminate or anything like that.

Of course, Tatiana had slightly spoiled the chances Quidditch had of proving one of those things, as she had played with significant enthusiasm, it seemed, in her day, but…he wasn’t sparkly at least. Maybe their reputations wouldn’t overlap, despite their similar looks…and accents…and surnames….

At least his lack of knowledge of the rules had been easy enough to rectify, though it had annoyed him that nobody had ever published the full list of possible fouls – it would take a very long time to read, yes, but shouldn’t they know what they weren’t allowed to do, regardless of how unlikely they were to do it? People often became great men by doing exactly what wasn’t expected, and while he doubted that argument really stretched far enough to cover coming onto the Quidditch Pitch with an axe, it was…a thought.

He was going to die, wasn’t he?

He perked up slightly from that thought when told to go running – he had very distinctly heard the word ‘run,’ and running, he knew how to do. In the winter, he annoyed everyone at home by racing his own best times – or, if she was at home, Tatiana, and there was little more encouraging than the thought of possibly losing to someone who was trapped in skirts and therefore really ought not to be able to win – up and down the hallways, and if he’d been too wound up during his lessons, his tutors had often told him to go out and run it off. Then they were just flying loops, and he could do that well, too; he suspected he could have done that even had he not benefited from a year of Tatya’s extra instruction, as his father had insisted he learn to fly a broom at least a little even back at home. So far, he thought with delight, this wasn’t half-bad!

He thought he did a fair job on the obstacle course, though he did get one hit to the left arm, and was fairly sure he only avoided one obstacle by virtue of being eleven-year-old sized – he definitely felt his hair stir under the passage of the obstacle. Nevertheless, he had still decided to end that one with a bit of a flourish, just to show he could. In the practices, he scrupulously avoided Keeper, because that had been his sister’s position, but tried out for everything else, with…varying levels of success. Beater was an unqualified disaster, but he thought he didn’t embarrass himself in either Chasing or Seeking, despite his worries about whether or not verbal communication would be necessary in Chasing and whether or not he would be able to pull it out. He doubted he was getting a spot – too many people – but at least, he thought as he trudged back to his dormitory eventually, he had proven he could make it through everything.

16 Alexei Vorontsov To Adventure! 1531 0 5