Teppenpaw Try-outs! Come on, Come all! on Quidditch Pitch

Capt. Liac Reinhardt

October 21, 2016 5:11 PM

Teppenpaw Try-outs! Come on, Come all! by Capt. Liac Reinhardt

Liac brushed the sweat off his head once more as he pulled out the last of the practice dummies. It crossed his mind once or twice to use magic, however he couldn’t pass up a chance to work out his upper body strength. Even though school had only just started, he could feel the muscles he had cultivated through the past few months of metal charming being to fade. Once the dummies were placed in a good waiting position. He checked on the water tank, renewing it’s cooling spell. After the miscommunication with Ginger over the sign-ups he had to make sure that practice went well. Taking a sip of the cold water, he decided to give himself a break while he waited for the team to show up. It was a nice fall day, even if it was the dessert Liac could feel a cold breeze nip at his ankles. A prefect day for tryouts.

As each player arrived he made sure to greet them with a friendly hello. Metal charming was fun, but he did miss his team. Once all the stragglers arrived he began the tryouts. Although in truth the ‘tryouts’ were just a formality. There was no way he was going to cut anyone. After all quidditch is for everyone. The tryouts was more of a chance to showcase skill and change positions.

“Even though I greeted all of you before. I just would like to say welcome back team. I hope you all had a good summer,” he began in a loud voice. “Since we all haven’t been together like this for a while, lets start with a quick jog around the pitch and back, then we can work on some stretching before the trials begin,” Liac stated already beginning to jog in place. “Lets go everyone!” Warm up was one of Liac’s favorite parts of tryouts since it gave the team a little chance to talk to each other a little. He didn’t mind if they talked during drills, but too much chatting could take away from the learning. He made sure to run at a good pace in the middle of the group. Liac was more of the friendly leader type than a competitive one anyways.

With everyone finished jogging around the pitch Liac motioned for everyone to circle up to begin the stretching. “I’ll start the stretching with quads”, he said holding his ankle and counting out load to 20 seconds- 10 seconds for each leg. “We will go in a circle, each person introducing themselves and leading a different stretch,” Liac liked to include the team in stretching. He thought it helped build community.

When the stretching was over they mounted their brooms and began the trials. First was passing the quaffle in pairs. At this point Liac knew his responsibilities as captain, but he would have much rather been participating. However there was no way he could take notes on each player if he himself was playing.

Next they moved on to the Chaser/Keeper practice. Players moved along the pitch until Liac passed them the ball, they then needed to shoot and attempt to score, while another player practicing Keeper attempted to defend. Once the Chaser shot, the Chaser would replace the Keeper and the Keeper would move to the end of the line. Although annoying for the established players, Liac like to have everyone try their hand at all the positions. Trying alternate positions could be fun, and useful if they needed someone to alternate to a new position in case of injury or sickness.

Once Liac was satisfied with the Chaser/Keeper practice they moved onto Beating practice- Liac’s personal favorite. Players moved across the pitch, two at a time, attempting to hit the red dummies with the bludgers while avoiding the yellow ones. Liac looked at this particular drill closely, taking notes on accuracy, speed, and teamwork.

Last was the Seeker drill. Releasing all the dummies as distractions, players went two at a time attempting to catch the snitch fastest. Liac decided early on to use an enchanted ‘easy’ snitch since this drill was more about outwitting and outflying their opponent. After all, he didn’t think it was fair to score a player on their luck.

“Okay team”, Liac stated, the practice almost done, “everyone has done exceptionally well today. Im very grateful for all your hard work! Ginger and I will look over the results and let you know tomorrow at the latest via bulletin board your positions.” He hoped to have Ginger do a little more of the deciding this time. She was already a great assistant captain, but the team would be her’s soon, so her input would be invaluable.

OOC: Regular posting rules apply. Please keep in mind realism, and your characters ability. Liac would have taken down walk-ons name and preferred position.

Subthreads:

'Walking on' by Jozua Sparks

Okay! :) by Jake Manger

Hurry, hurry, here's your chance. by Joe Umland

Distracted Driving by Tobi Reinhardt

0 Capt. Liac Reinhardt Teppenpaw Try-outs! Come on, Come all! 288 Capt. Liac Reinhardt 1 5

Jozua Sparks

October 27, 2016 10:57 AM

'Walking on' by Jozua Sparks

Jozua hadn't put his name on the list. He had gotten as far as resting a quill tip against the next empty line but then he never quite managed to scribble on his name. He had joined last year to be like Lily, confident that he would never actually play a game because he was the youngest one on the team and not very good at sports, but then Liac had gotten sick for one game and he'd ended up filling the captain's spot on the team and he felt like he had done awful at it, (his teammates assurances otherwise were suspect because they were all, well, Teppenpaws) and that experience was largely why his hand couldn't write his name on the sign-up sheet again. That and Lily had been stuck on the bench during her games and she actually liked Quidditch so he'd almost felt guilty that he got to play a game whole she didn't.

Of course, two Pecaris had graduated so that probably wouldn't be an issue this time around, and counting Reinhardts, it did look like Teppenpaw had a full team without him, but somehow he found himself on the Pitch during the Teppenpaw tryouts. He told himself he was there just to cheer everybody on, like Ginger had encouraged on the signup sheet, but Liac greeted him like he was a returning player, and Jozua just didn't have the heart to correct him. He figured the only way he'd be in another match again would be if someone was deathly ill like last time, and if that was the case, he guessed he would rather play himself than force his House to forfeit, or worse, the ill person making themselves more sick by forcing themselves to play when they should be in bed. So really, Jozua told himself, reserve was the probably the most heroic position on the team! And Jozua believed in heroes.

So he jogged around the pitch until he was gasping for breath and he held his ankle for quads until he was hopping around on one foot to keep from falling over, and doing the exercises everyone else suggested with good intentions but often mediocre results. Jozua was not a sporty guy and he panicked a little when it was his turn to lead a stretch.

"Uh, Jozua," he introduced himself, "um," his brain was empty. He could not think of a single exercise and in his growing anxiety, he blurted the first thing to bubble to the surface that involved physical activity. "Ring around the roses!" And then he was stuck with that. He mumble-sang, making the whole group of teenagers circle around like toddlers, "Ringroundthe roses, pocketfulofposes, ashesashes, all fall down." and then he fell down. He was good at that at least and he wasn't sure he truly wanted to get back up again, but he did and it wasn't his turn anymore, thank Merlin, and why in the name of all that is magical was he even out here?

Thankfully, they soon put the stretching behind them and got into the air. Jozua was on a school broom. His personal street broom was still home, being entirely useless here with a top speed only a little faster than jogging and totally unfit for the rigors of Quidditch. The school one served him well enough anyway. Jozua got nervous going too fast anyway, and his flying skill was pretty basic. A top line broom would be wasted on him.

He did okay in the chaser drills, catching some passes, but dropping others. At least he caught all the ones that came right to him at any rate. His throwing was marginally better than his catching, but some tosses did go wide or fall short. He pretended like he did that on purpose so his partner could show off their catching skill.

As Keeper, he was a little better still, only occasionally actually catching it, but being pretty good about knocking the ball out of a scoring trajectory. The assistant captain was Keeper, though, so he didn't think his reserve status was threatened.

Beater was just sad. He didn't hit a single one of the red dummies. On the plus side, he didn't hit any of the yellow ones either.

When he went up against one of his teammates for the seeker contest, he didn't even spot the teeny tiny ball until it was already in the other person's hand, so that was glorious.

Yeah, he though, landing down on the ground again, in something like relief that it was finally all over, I am totally going to be the reserve again.

1 Jozua Sparks 'Walking on' 348 Jozua Sparks 0 5

Jake Manger

November 02, 2016 2:52 AM

Okay! :) by Jake Manger

Jake was surprised to find how much he was enjoying Quidditch. Sure, the one year he actually got to play he had managed to basically lose the game for his team--all of the positions were important, of course, since it was a team sport, but at the end of the day, the Seeker had to get the Snitch--but it was still a fun time anyway. Jamie Park’s attitude hadn’t really been much appreciated when they flew in the same sky in search of the same Snitch, but what was important was his own teammates, not the opponents. And he was still happy for Jamie’s success. At least if they had to lose, they lost to the team that went on to win the championship.

Maybe this year, Teppenpaw would do that. How cool would that be? Jake wasn’t really horribly competitive, preferring playing just to play and have fun, but other people looked at matches differently. Really, nobody on the yellow team seemed that competitive as far as Jake could tell, but he did want to try to win this time around for Ginger’s sake. His girlfriend was a great Assistant Captain, and in a couple years she’d be a great Captain. She deserved the victory, and if he could provide it for her, all the better.

Captain Liac had them try all the positions, which was a smart way to do it, Jake felt. Unfortunately, he was not very good at any of the other positions besides his normal one. He was tolerable as a Chaser, a bit better as a Keeper, but simply awful as a Beater. He didn’t even want to hurt the dummies: how did anybody actually try to hurt other people? (Obviously, a little voice said, he was not very much like his father. He did his best to make that voice be quiet.)

But he was a pretty good Seeker. That was what mattered. Maybe he wasn’t as good as Jamie Park or Clark Dill or Uzume Shinohara, but he tried his best. And, assuming he got his position back, he would always continue to do his best. Maybe luck would help him out if skills failed. Either way, he would never stop trying.

12 Jake Manger Okay! :) 280 Jake Manger 0 5

Joe Umland

November 04, 2016 12:33 PM

Hurry, hurry, here's your chance. by Joe Umland

On the Quidditch Pitch, Joe thought his peers at least respected him, and this often made him feel a bit like a fraud. It was not that he thought he was a worse flier than he thought other people thought he was. He knew he was fairly good on a broom; that was just a fact, not even something he took any particularly great degree of pride in. Some of it was through his efforts, after all, but some of it was sheer dumb luck, a happy accident of the genes he’d inherited from his biological parents and the upbringing he’d gotten from his adoptive ones. Those were nothing to be proud or ashamed of particularly, as he’d had the least say of anyone in any of them – he’d only come into existence, at least on this plane of reality, when the genes were inherited and had been a toddler when the upbringing began. It was something else which embarrassed him whenever his brother (or anyone, but particularly John) said anything about him being good at Quidditch, and that something else was the fact that he was nervous, right on the borderline of afraid, every single game he played.

This year, though, he thought it was going to be better for him. For one thing, after the fun times at Julian’s house over the summer, Joe now thought Quidditch seemed almost safe and sane. For another, it was a lot harder to be afraid of Aladren’s revenge now that he had gathered that the person who’d be hitting Bludgers at him specifically, at least, was probably going to be a girl who’d had, one way or another, never played the game before. Girl Beaters could be good, of course, and he suspected Aladren’s would actually be decently trained (Julian had burst out laughing when Joe had told her John was actually not entirely bad with younger students, but had looked stunned when Joe had assured her he wasn’t joking) but even Lena Westley, though taller than the younger girls, was rather…dainty. She was not likely to be able to hit the Bludgers nearly as well as his brother did, which was probably going to help opposing Chasers unless Aladren completely changed its strategy….

Which, John and Clark being John and Clark, was entirely possible, he had to grant, but that was really Liac and Ginger’s problem. If his brother let anything slip that he thought his captains could use, he’d engage in a little sports espionage without a second thought, but otherwise, his job was to do as he was told. Accordingly, he jogged along with the rest of the team after Liac welcomed them, relishing an inch or so of height he had gained since the last time they had begun a new year until it came his turn to lead a stretch. Then he had trouble completing the toe-touching exercise he himself had proposed, which was a bit embarrassing.

“…Looks like I was right about needing to work on this one,” he said as he straightened up, hoping to play it cool. “I’m Joe.”

Joe passed the Quaffle back and forth with one of his teammates without any major problems, but did not feel he did terribly well when it was his turn to be Keeper. He was sure it was possible to do far worse, but the position just didn’t seem to…fit, somehow. Beater practice, however, went better; John mainly used Joe for target practice in MARS, reasoning that this improved both of their relevant skills (Joe had not asked how he benefited from sometimes pretending to be a Seeker, as he suspected John’s reply would just be to threaten him with the last argument of kings), but his brother had taught him how to handle himself on both ends of a Bludger and Joe managed to hit two red dummies. He lost his race for a Snitch, but since his roommate wanted to be the next Seeker, he didn’t feel too badly about that. On the ground, he suspected Liac of at least a little of what John called ‘Teppenpaw complicating things to be nice’ when he said they had all done exceptionally well, but he still felt pretty satisfied with his afternoon’s work as they disbanded.

16 Joe Umland Hurry, hurry, here's your chance. 329 Joe Umland 0 5

Tobi Reinhardt

November 06, 2016 12:49 PM

Distracted Driving by Tobi Reinhardt

Tobi was feeling rather conflicted. Makenzie had held hands with him the entirety of the walk from the gardens to the opening feast although she'd left him for her best friend upon arrival to the hall. Tobi couldn't say he blamed her since she had still grown up in society even if her family had fallen from grace recently and was rather surprised she had allowed even the few people who had seen them together see them hold hands. He was a Reinhardt, albeit one of the pureblooded ones, but still of the craftsmen class nonetheless. He normally didn't envy others nor place much stock in the pureblood class hierarchy, but German metal charming and French fashion design were utterly different things even if both were considered trades, and he almost resented the young French heir to the Valois fashion empire for being of the sort of craft which gave him an "in" into society if only because that "in" would make him appear acceptable to Makenzie's eyes.

It did seem like Makenzie was making moves towards leaving society—she had signed up for Quidditch the previous year and although he hadn’t asked, Quidditch wasn’t something you randomly started at age fifteen against society’s more stricter and ridiculous rules just to drop it the next year and so he was fairly confident she was playing again. At least she was Keeper, he thought as he walked to the Quidditch Pitch for try-outs that day, that way if he wouldn’t have to deal with a wayward bludger he’d hit injuring her and, if it did, it would be considered a foul and he’d have to sit out so it wasn’t like he was just going to get away with harming Makenzie.

Normally he would have offered to help Liac with setting up for the try-outs but just as he’d been preparing to leave, he had received a rather distraught letter from his mother which he had felt important to find Arne, discuss, and reply to. Tobi loved his mother dearly and he felt that sometimes she worried too much, but this time he wasn’t really sure that her worries weren’t too far off the mark. Matti’s behavior as of late had been worrisome to Tobi and, it seemed, that Kaili was finally picking up on her only daughter’s somewhat sociopathic tendencies when she felt like she was being overlooked. Tobi could only hope that Matti would straighten herself out before arriving at Sonora.

With his brain thus full of worries regarding Makenzie and Matti and try-outs he was only at because Liac liked Quidditch and needed another player, Tobi’s mind wasn’t fully there and he absent-mindedly jogged the Pitch, not keeping pace with anyone as he usually would have done and finishing his laps much faster than the rest of them. Running was something that Tobi liked to do when he had a lot on his mind and as he’d had a lot on his mind over the summer it was something that his body was very used to.

Likewise, he was only half-listening as the team suggested various different stretching activities and had only part of his heart in it when they split off to try-out for the various different parts. It was not his best effort at a try-out, that was for sure, and he wondered if one of the newer arrivals would perform better than he did, feeling slightly guilty that he almost hoped that one would take his spot on the team. But half-way through his Chaser try-out, he remembered why he was doing all this. It was for Liac, and so for Liac Tobi did his best to clear his mind and focus on the task at hand.

10 Tobi Reinhardt Distracted Driving 289 Tobi Reinhardt 0 5