Hoping to get lucky on Quidditch Pitch

Coach Patricia Reilly

August 02, 2018 4:36 PM

Quidditch Sign Ups! by Coach Patricia Reilly

Coach Patricia Reilly hadn’t needed to look for a job long between when her last position dissolved due to budget cuts and when Sonora accepted her to fill a long held vacancy. The Sonora Quidditch program had languished a bit during the years without a proper coach, and she was determined to fix it.

The main problem seemed to be a small population that couldn’t quite support a four House tournament style of play. Patty had a solution for that. Her last position had also been at a small school, so she knew for a fact there was a local league down a team, which would be glad to have another school join them, and which Patricia herself was already well acquainted with and had some small amount of influence toward herself.

So she got Sonora signed up and registered and scheduled for games both at home and at other small private magical schools in the American West. The only thing left to do was get a team and appoint a captain.

Sonora already had three captains and a couple more assistant captains - nearly enough for a team by themselves, so she had no doubt Sonora could at least manage one full team, possibly even including a full set of reserves, with no trouble at all - but she decided to hold tryouts first, then award the captain and assistant captain based on merit and skill rather than seniority and previous badge wearing experience. She didn’t expect to hand it out to any first years, of course, simply because seventeen year olds may have trouble following the orders of an eleven year old, so age would probably factor slightly, but overall she planned to be pretty open in that decision.

So on the night of the Opening Feast, after the students left for their dormitories, she posted up the Quidditch announcement on the Cascade Hall Bulletin board, with its heading in large green letters that she hoped wouldn’t be easily overlooked.

Sonora Quidditch!

New School Wide Team
Try-Outs on Wednesday
All are Welcome

Once those important details were declared, the font grew smaller and grammar began to assert itself as it switched from key points to full sentences.

Starting this year, Sonora Quidditch will be changed from four house teams that played amongst themselves to a single school team which will complete against other small magical schools in this part of the country. Games will be hosted both here at Sonora and at other schools.

One single tryout will be held for all students, first through seventh year, on the Pitch this Wednesday. Brooms will be provided if necessary. All ages and ability levels are welcome to try out.

Positions will be awarded by skill, as will the team captaincy, so bring your A game to tryouts! The final roster will include a first string team as well as a full second string reserve team. Those who do not make the team or reserves will be allowed to attend practices but will not be able to play competitively or attend away games.

Please sign up below if you are interested.

The bottom half of the page provided space for each potential student’s name, house, and year, as well as a grid for them to make a checkmark if they wished to be considered for Seeker, Keeper, Chaser, Beater, and/or Captain (check all that apply).

OOC: I know I said this is set in the Cascade Hall, but I posted it here because Cascade is busy with the OF and soon the HoH speeches. The Quidditch Pitch is lonely, and this is thematically appropriate. Just please remember it is, In Character (IC), in the Cascade Hall when you write your post about your student signing up. This is a normal post, so the minimum 200 word count rule still applies. Make sure you provide all the details the sign up sheet requests. Welcome to a new era of Sonora Quidditch!

Subthreads:

A little too ambitious by Eden Manger

Cool! Quidditch! by Malikhi Hill, Pecari

Here goes nothing! by Evelyn Stones, Pecari

I nominate myself the sportiest sports guy by Ben Pierce

Practice only by Jozua Sparks

Hoping to get lucky by Winston Pierce

Scoping out the competition. by Lily Spencer

Everything is Winston's fault. by Simon Mordue

Once more into the breach. by Joe Umland

Weighing my options. by Amelia Layne

Mildly enthusiastic. by Nathaniel Mordue

In it for the adventures. by Tatiana Vorontsova

Signing up by Ness McLeod

Thank heavens! by Parker Fitzgerald, Pecari

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Winston Pierce

August 07, 2018 2:51 PM

Hoping to get lucky by Winston Pierce

Winston was concerned about the Quidditch announcement. He was co-captain of the Crotalus team and it seemed likely that he would loose his authority and badge if all the teams merged into one, what with Teppenpaw’s captain and The Pecari both being seventh years.

It had been bad enough when Crotalus and Pecari had needed to team up before, when The Pecari hadn’t been the senior player. If he got made captain of the whole school . . . well, maybe Winston would get lucky and that would go to Joe Umland, or, even better, him or Simon (though Simon getting it without him was also quite terrible to think about). Or even Eden would be relatively tolerable, he thought as he saw she had made a mark under that column as well. Playing under a captain younger than himself was not ideal, but at least she wasn’t The Pecari. He was at least allowed to speak her name. That was an important quality in a captain.

Winston briefly forced himself to consider what he would do if The Pecari did get captain. Would he have to quit the team in a huff? Surely that would ruin his chances for getting it the year after. Simon had already made first string over him once. If Winston took a whole year off Quidditch, that would surely give his roommate a clear advantage down the road. Not acceptable. Unless he could convince Simon to quit with him in protest against The Pecari, but he wasn’t sure Simon cared enough about Pierce politics to take that much affront to The Pecari’s existence.

Given the choice, Winston didn’t like giving this much thought to The Pecari’s existence either.

Deciding that not acknowledging such existence was the best course of action until proven otherwise, Winston ignored the one line on the sign up sheet ahead of him, as he always tried to ignore The Pecari in person, and added his own line to the sign up.

The good news was that he was now old enough that he probably wouldn’t get cut from the first string, even in a whole school team.

Winston Pierce, Crotalus, 5th year

He put a number 1 under Seeker and a number 2 under Chaser to show his order of preference, but he wasn’t going to get held back to reserves again if it meant Eden - or worse, Lily - got to play and he didn’t.

He also gladly made a large check mark under captain, just in case he was far luckier than he really expected to be.

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