Not your ordinary Teppenpaw Try-Outs on Quidditch Pitch

Captain Ginger Pierce

September 14, 2017 12:17 PM

Not your ordinary Teppenpaw Try-Outs by Captain Ginger Pierce

Three names. Ginger had only three names. Herself. Joe. Eden. This was not looking promising. She had little doubt that she could get Nat on board again, if she could track the fifth year down. She'd always been a stalwart and integral part of the team. Ginger just hoped it was mere oversight and not upset over not getting Assistant Captain that her name wasn't already on the list.

Jozua was a pretty sure thing, too, but he seemed to like to show up for tryouts rather than sign up. If she remember right, he had never signed up first. Maybe he just didn't ever look at the bulletin board. Besides, he was Joe's friend, so she didn't doubt he'd be here.

But even with Nat and Jozua, that still left Teppenpaw two names short of a full roster. They'd had Alex Leifson last year, too, and Ginger could only hope she was still around and interested. Of the new Teppenpaws, though, two were Brockerts, who weren't exactly well known for their interest in sports, but maybe the third one would turn up? He was probably their best shot for getting a second beater and a full team.

She stood in the middle of the pitch, clutching her three-name list, and hoped for walk-ons. She beamed as she got the first one, and her hope buoyed that she might get more.

When two minutes passed beyond when she said they would start, and nobody else could be seen walking this way, she guessed she'd gotten as many as she was going to for today. She pasted on a bright smile and enthused, "Congratulations! You're all on the team! Okay, everyone not on my list, give me your names and what positions you'd prefer. I can't promise everyone gets what they want," she added with a regretful smile in Jozua's direction. She guessed he was probably going to ask to not play beater again and that just wasn't going to work out.

"Okay," she said, once she wrote down the new members of the team. "If any of you know anyone else who wants to play, be sure to send them my way so I can fill in these last slots. In the meantime, let's start with some flying! Three laps everyone! Go!" And she hopped on her own broom and took off, needing the practice just as much as anyone after a summer spent surrounded by muggles most of the time.

"All right," she said once everyone finished their warm up laps, "until we have a full team, we're going to forgo standard drills and practice routines, and just remember that it's fun to fly, and practice getting our brooms to go fast and turn accurately, and so," she reached out and slapped her nearest teammate on the arm and called out gaily, "You're it!"

And grinning and laughing, she flew away from her chosen victim as quickly as she could.

OOC Note: Jozua is mine as well, so I'm not god-modding by saying he's here.

1 Captain Ginger Pierce Not your ordinary Teppenpaw Try-Outs 302 Captain Ginger Pierce 1 5

Assistant Captain Joe Umland

September 14, 2017 8:46 PM

Luckily, we're all extraordinary people. Right, guys? by Assistant Captain Joe Umland

The beginning of Quidditch try-outs was one of those moments when Joe really, really wished he still had one of his siblings at school with him – in this instance, preferably Julian, as she had also been in Teppenpaw and therefore would have a better excuse to be around at the exact moment Joe wanted to make a sarcastic comment about his and Ginger’s popularity. Though she was, all things considered, also the more likely of his two siblings who’d also attended this school to be the one to make a sarcastic remark about Joe and Ginger’s popularity, and that was a different thing entirely than listening to one.

A moment later, though, Joe realized it didn’t actually matter. Julian disliked heights and was easily the least athletic member of the family, so her being on the Pitch would be unlikely and serve no purpose other than make Joe a laughingstock, and even if she had been, or if they had existed in some bizarre universe where John got Sorted into Teppenpaw, Joe could not have actually made his sarcastic remark. He was the Assistant Captain now, which meant standing off to one side looking pleasant, not in the safety of the group where he could mutter sarcastic remarks to a neighboring sibling. His and Ginger’s were high and lonely destinies, he supposed, though he knew well from his childhood reading that only seven-foot-tall aliens were allowed to put it quite like that. Humans who did so just looked kind of stupid, not least because of their inability to rip bits off of lampposts and use these to break the heads of anyone who pointed out that they sounded kind of stupid…He bit his tongue to keep from laughing at the image of himself standing out here with grey hair and badly banged-about Edwardian dress and a certain expression of confusion and horror at how the day was going and how it was proceeding away from his brandy while a seven-foot-tall Ginger (well, the hair color was right, anyway) laid about her with a lamppost.

He refrained from attempting to assign characters to the others on the Pitch. For one thing, the only people he could imagine as Digory and Polly were too old to be his nephew and his nephew's friend. For another, he found it difficult to imagine Julian producing a child that bore any resemblance to Digory Kirke and preferred not to think about Julian producing children at all, come to that. He was the youngest of five children, four of them boys. Babies were not creatures he was remotely familiar with, and at the sight of one, he strongly suspected he’d ask John if John still wanted to hop a wooden boat and go explore the interior of Africa or South America or something and never mind that other people had pretty much completed those jobs before the last century even rolled around. Poisonous snakes and redundancy, or even taking up soldiering and pursuing it enthusiastically enough to become an officer (the closest he thought a couple of Canadian boys could get to John's oldest plan, which was that they become knights), all sounded less terrifying than the prospect of dealing with infants.

He had flown a few times over the summer, but had not found them particularly useful occasions, as they had generally taken the form of Julian’s cousins’ poor excuse for a broom game. One had been better than the others – it had been a free-for-all, which meant Joe had been mostly free to hex people in the back and watch John’s back, both of which he liked much better than all the honorable face-to-face stuff with people who all knew significantly more magic than he did – but none had been much good for keeping in form for Quidditch, so the practice laps were both something he figured he needed and found most pleasant. It was ever so nice to be able to fly again without someone trying to decapitate him. And then, Ginger’s second exercise (Joe made a mental note to try to strike up conversation with the two first year boys, using the prefect excuse to his advantage, and then bring it around to how they should come help out here) gave him a chance to practice evasive flying, as he was not the person closest to her at that moment and therefore did not become ‘it’. Grinning a bit without noticing it, he flew off, too, avoiding straight lines in all four directions as best he could without straying too far from the crowd and therefore singling himself out as a target when it was something of a toss-up whether or not he could win an outright one-on-one race.

16 Assistant Captain Joe Umland Luckily, we're all extraordinary people. Right, guys? 329 Assistant Captain Joe Umland 0 5

Jozua Sparks

September 17, 2017 7:00 PM

Why do I keep doing this to myself? by Jozua Sparks

He had watched the sign-up sheet. The number of names was few enough, that he didn't feel like he'd be letting down the House if he didn't show up this year. It didn't look like they'd be making a full team even with him. But somehow, it came to be try-out day, and Jozua somehow found himself on the pitch at the appointed hour. Habit, maybe. Masochism, possibly. A weird sense of honorable obligation from being on the team this long, most probably. Anyhow, he was here.

"Jozua," he said when the walk-ons were told to introduce themselves. Ginger had already given him her I'm-really-sorry look, so he didn't see much point in saying he didn't want to be beater again. Eden was already signed up for Seeker, and Ginger was keeping Keeper, so that left Chaser and Beater and of those two, Beater really was the lesser of the two evils. Besides, Joe had signed up for it this year, too, sort of, so maybe it wouldn't be completely terrible. "Whatever you need me for," he breathed out in an unenthusiastic tone. He didn't feel the need to specify that he didn't want to be Chaser. His total ineptitude ought to keep him out of that position safely enough. If he was bad at batting, he was even worse at throwing. Next year he could probably snag Keeper, and that would be better, really. The amount of damage he could do to the team from in front of the goals was limited. He just needed to get through one more year as a Beater.

He did the laps, and that went pretty well. He was a fourth year now, solidly middle tier, and after the fire this summer, he'd replaced his street broom with a Quidditch one, and it was a rather nicer model than the school ones he had been using up until this point. It was a bit overkill for flying out to the supermarket, but that did give him the chance to get used to its handling and squeeze in some practice between his summer lessons.

He was sort of zoning out as Ginger talked about drills and stuff, figuring he knew most of them by now, so he was taken aback a bit when she shoved him in the arm. Yelling "You're it!" though did clue him into their current activity, and he pushed off the the ground in pursuit of another Teppenpaw.

Quidditch, Jozua could readily admit, he sucked at. Broom tag, however, was the bread of butter of an Aladren, Oregon childhood. It was a bit different on fast Quidditch brooms rather than kiddie brooms, but the idea was the same.

He picked out one target and chased them down, using a combination of high speeds and cornering maneuvers, until he could reach out and . . . "Tag! You're it!"

He dove to put distance between the new It and himself and hoped somebody would prove to be a more tempting target.

1 Jozua Sparks Why do I keep doing this to myself? 348 Jozua Sparks 0 5

Georgia Kirkly

September 20, 2017 12:54 AM

Not trying out by Georgia Kirkly

There was no way she was trying out for Quidditch. The only things in its favour were that, over the summer, she had discovered that she could hit decently hard - a fact which opened up the possibility that she could play, which was one she hadn’t even entertained up until that point - and that it might, maybe be a chance to make the friends she was sorely lacking. She definitely planned on joining choir. Her dad had said that, next concert, he wanted to see her somewhere other than manning a stall, and had encouraged her to do that. But she wasn’t sure choir was great friend territory, as it seemed to be mostly Pureblood girls and she was actually kind of nervous about going to their first meeting. The trouble was, she long associated sport with being made fun of and being picked last. No one wanted the chubby girl on their team, and the added ridiculousness of how she imagined someone her size looked perched on a little twiglet of a broomstick only added to her resolve not to go. Except… the Teppenpaw team didn’t seem like that. They were all nice people. They were also desperate for players. That made her feel kind of bad for them… If not many people joined choir, then they had a small choir. If not many people joined Quidditch, the people who liked Quidditch didn’t get to play at all, and that kind of sucked.

The day of tryouts dawned, and Georgia had to admit she was curious. She was still afraid of being laughed off the pitch for even trying, and was not quite ready yet to put herself out there. But she wondered what the tryouts were like… And the practises. Maybe she could go see, and then she’d know whether it was ridiculous to think about joining. If they were all doing push ups in the mud, she was out. She made her way down to the pitch, peering out of the changing room door. No one was in the mud. She had to take a step or two out to actually see them. They were zooming about. She couldn’t give much more of a specific name to their activity than that. She was just sure she couldn’t fly anywhere near that fast. She was about to slink away, when someone spotted her…

13 Georgia Kirkly Not trying out 346 Georgia Kirkly 0 5

Captain Ginger

September 21, 2017 10:26 AM

That's what Jozua said too... by Captain Ginger

She had flown sufficiently far away from Jozua that he had chosen a different target to chase down. She looked about to see how everyone else was doing, and noticed the had a new arrival. Hoping that maybe they were one body closer to making a full team, she flew down to greet the potential recruit.

"Hi!" she greeted the girl cheerfully. She was one of the intermediates, Ginger guessed, since she knew she wasn't an advanced student and she looked too old to still be a beginner. She'd seen her around Teppenpaw, so she wasn't a spy, but Ginger wasn't entirely sure of what her name might be. Which meant the reverse was likely true as well. "I'm Ginger, the captain. Were you interested in joining the Teppenpaw team? Right now we're just playing broom tag to make up for not flying much over the summer. Want to play with us? There's some school brooms over there," she pointed to the pile she had picked out from the broom closet earlier, selecting out the ones that looked to be in the best condition.

"No pressure," she added, because recruits from the upper years were rare and she didn't want to scare the girl off by sounding too desperate for players. "You can just play tag with us today, see how you like flying with us before making any commitments." But it didn't take a genius to read the underlying hope in her voice that Georgia might decide to stick around and add her name to the team roster.

1 Captain Ginger That's what Jozua said too... 302 Captain Ginger 0 5

Georgia

September 21, 2017 11:46 PM

He seems real happy with how that went... by Georgia

Were you interested in trying out for the Teppenpaw team?

No scorn. No emphasis on the ‘you’ that implied it was a ridiculous idea. Ginger actually just seemed genuinely hopeful about the idea.

“I’m Georgia,” she replied. That was the easy part. As for whether she wanted to join the team… “Um… I… Well… I dunno. I’m not a great flyer. I haven’t really done it since first year - there’s no way I could keep up with how you guys are flying right now,” she babbled, wondering why she was trying to talk Ginger out of the notion of accepting her. She wasn’t, really. She just really wanted the other girl to know what she was getting herself in for. It was less humiliating to be laughed off the pitch by just one person before she’d attempted to ride a broomstick very badly than once she’d made an idiot of herself in front of everyone. The fact that she didn’t have a broom had been a further excuse, but Ginger had pointed out the school ones already.

“I mean, I just came to see what it was like, and I don’t know… Would you actually want someone like me on the team?” she asked. Whilst ‘someone like me’ was fairly nonspecific, ‘someone fat who can’t fly a broom’ was what she was thinking of, although Ginger was welcome to pick any or all of those elements.

13 Georgia He seems real happy with how that went... 346 Georgia 0 5