Pecari try-outs, walk ons welcome! on Quidditch Pitch

Capt. Liliana Bannister

November 28, 2015 7:57 PM

Pecari try-outs, walk ons welcome! by Capt. Liliana Bannister

A week after Liliana and Joella posted the sign-ups for the Pecari Quidditch team, Liliana woke up at 5:30am and banged on the 4th year girls dormroom to wake her Assistant Captain up if she wasn’t already awake. It was time to go set up for the tryouts. The previous night she had asked the prairie elves to prepare a continental breakfast for the Pecari students who had come to the Pitch. Because both breakfast and the tryouts started at seven am (a strategic move on Liliana’s to weed out those who would rather miss a practise than be inconvenienced) she didn’t want her players to be fatigued as well as tired during try-outs.

When the students arrived there were bananas, freshly baked croissants, juice, water and coffee on a small table on the Pitch next to all the Quidditch supplies that Liliana had dragged out. Liliana’s plan was to give them all a half hour to get something to eat and introduce themselves and then to start practise at 7:45 on the dot, letting the students finish whatever beverage they had selected and grab the necessary Quidditch equipment needed for the try-outs. “You’ll have time to eat more after practise,” Liliana had said as the students arrived, not wanting them to be overly full when they began their game. “We’ll also have more food available then as well but please have some coffee or juice if you need any.”

Personally Liliana did not think any of the students there really should have been drinking coffee since a good portion of them, including the Assistant Captain, were still quite young, but she didn’t want to begrudge anyone their wake-up drink of choice. “Everyone here will try-out for all the positions in unison so that I can see what everyone is best at in comparison to each other, so we’ll start with Chaser drills and then move on to Beater exercises and finish with Keeper and Seeker try-outs, sounds good? So everyone, grab your broomsticks, we have some of the school brooms available for those who don’t have their own, and let’s go over here.”

She started them off with three nice laps around the Pitch to warm them up so that once they got into the sky they would already have blood flowing, taking careful note to see who kept pace with the group at a nice jog and who went ahead and who fell behind. Once everyone was back to the starting place, she told them to mount their broom sticks. She stayed on the ground so that she could throw the Quaffle into the air for the beginning of the drill. “This is a scrimmaging bit, I just want to see how well you do against other players in catching the Quaffle at the beginning of the game,” she said, magically amplifying her voice so that they could hear her from where they were thirty feet up in the air. “After we do this a few times I’ll bring out more Quaffles and see how you pass to each other.”

After the Quaffle drills, she had everyone come down and put Beater gear on. The object of this drill was to knock each other off the broom. She wanted to make sure her players could take a hit but didn’t want them to get hurt and so had asked them to fly lower to the ground for this exercises and then she released the practise bludger which was charmed to go back into its’ case after thirty minutes of release. Liliana equipped herself with a bat to keep the bludger away from herself while she kept track of the players. Next she had split them in half and had them take turns blocking the Quaffle and shooting the Quaffle into the hoops on either end of the Pitch, going with one group and assigned Joella to the other. It would work as a Keeper and simultaneously as a Chaser drill.

Second to last, Liliana released timed Snitches to see how each player fared solo catching the Snitch. “Okay, great job everyone,” she said when the last Snitch was brought in. “There’s just one last thing I’d like for you to do. I’m going to ask for you to fly three laps around the pitch as fast as you possibly can.” Her idea here was not to see how fast they could fly when fully rested, but how fast they could fly when they were tired since they would perform much better at the beginning of the game and she wanted endurance over speed.

When the last player returned to her, Liliana thanked them all for coming out. “Joella and I will look over the results and the team roster will be posted in the Common Room by bedtime tonight. Everyone here will either make the team or be placed on reserve. Please, help yourself to any of the food or take a shower in the changing rooms and come back for food. I look forward to working with you all over the year.” While they members had been flying their last rounds around the pitch she had revealed the rest of the food which had been under a tablecloth on a bigger table. Now there were various types of fruits, more croissants, muffins, and some hot dishes like eggs, sausages, and pancakes which had been kept warm with a heating charm. In addition to the pumpkin juice, water and coffee there was also lemonade and hot water and tea bags since Liliana herself always liked a nice steaming cup of chai after a game.

OOC: Regular posting rules apply, try-outs will be open until Dec. 11 (a little under two weeks away). Apologies for having them up so late. Thanks!

10 Capt. Liliana Bannister Pecari try-outs, walk ons welcome! 274 Capt. Liliana Bannister 1 5

Ingrid Wolseithcrafte

November 30, 2015 7:27 AM

A little of everything by Ingrid Wolseithcrafte

Ingrid rubbed the sleep from her eyes. In spite of how much she loved both things that were being provided this morning - breakfast and Quidditch - it wasn’t quite enough to penetrate through the fog caused by the early start. She just wasn’t really a morning person, even having gone to bed at a decent time and having got plenty of sleep. She’d been excited-hyper about try-outs but her eyes had closed shortly after her head pillow as there weren’t a lot of nerves in the mix. She didn’t think it was arrogance to assume that she was fairly sure of getting a spot - the Pecari list hadn’t exactly been bursting at the seams, and she had done well at her position last year. The former issue was which was about the only worry that might have kept her up, because she knew Aladren needed people too, and Teppalus was already an alliance, and she couldn’t decide which would be worse - Aladren getting a team and them not, or having to join forced to make Pecadren. She had tried cajoling any first years she’d seen in the common room into signing or showing up and could only hope that her efforts were successful. She would even, though she never thought she’d say it, welcome seeing that smug Seeker boy back again.

She grabbed a bit of food from the table, along with some juice (coffee was gross), interested to hear that Liliana was going to have them try out for everything. Ingrid really liked playing Chaser but she had always been a bit curious as to what Beater and Seeker would be like. The laps around the pitch helped her wake up a bit, though she could have done without the jog. She was fit enough to be able to keep up - more from being a constantly restless person than through active exercise - she just didn’t really like it.

The Chaser drills were ok. In the scrimmage section, there could only ever be one winner each time, and it clearly wasn’t always going to be her, especially with older and more experienced players involved. Still, she had played Chaser last year, and was really going for it - perhaps unlike some others, who either didn’t really care about this position or who weren’t used to throwing themselves in the mix. She came away the ball a fair number of times. The passes were easy, as it was what she’d spent the last year doing. She only fumbled when it was the other person’s fault for sending a bad throw her way, but she managed to dive in and save a particularly lack lustre pass from the Seeker boy (who didn’t seem to be trying) keeping the Quaffle from falling out of play.

The Beater try outs were a lot harder, as she wasn’t used to playing the position. It was hard enough to overcome her Chaser instincts and not duck and dive the balls, though the heavy bat in her hand helped remind her of that. She had enough in the way of hand-eye co-ordination and flying skills not to unseat herself in her efforts to swing at the balls, but the ones she made contact with didn’t travel very far, and a few of them got her.

In her go as Keeper, she caught an easy first pass from one of the less experienced players, before remembering that she didn’t want this job. It was a tough call… she always wanted to do a good job, especially as she respected Liliana and Joella so much, but she didn’t want to have to play Keeper. She knew it wasn’t ethical to try anything except her hardest but… Luckily the next few shots were from more experienced players, so Ingrid didn’t have to do any faking to miss them. At least, she didn’t think so. Not on a conscious, deliberate level….

She tried watching the others chase their practise Snitches, trying to follow the little balls from the ground but it was impossible. When her own turn came, it was even harder, as she suddenly had the choice of up or down to search for it, whereas on the ground she was limited to two dimensions. Whilst it gave her a better chance of finding it, it made it harder to choose where to go. Eventually, she caught up to the little yellow ball and handed it in with an average time.

She did her last laps with a good level of speed - her broom was on her side in this, being a nippy model - without crashing into anyone or anything (just about), before gladly helping herself to some more juice and some pastries. She couldn’t see herself being swapped from Chaser after that performance, although if they gave her Beater duties, she didn’t think she’d mind. She was sure she’d get better with a little practise.

OOC - as I also write Jamie, I have god-modded him where Ing needs someone to interact with, and tried to leave the rest vague - e.g. ‘a fair number’ could be one or could be more, depending on how hard others are trying.

13 Ingrid Wolseithcrafte A little of everything 322 Ingrid Wolseithcrafte 0 5