Coach Pierce
January 17, 2012 2:58 PM
A note on the Quidditch Pitch size by Coach Pierce
Normally I would just let this go with a point penalty toward the offending team, but it's happened a couple times already this game so I thought I should make a note here about it.A Quidditch Pitch is 500 feet long and 180 feet wide. A football field (both American football fields and the largest varieties of soccer/football fields) is 360 feet long. The goals hoops are 50 feet above the ground. Doing two laps around a Pitch would be a distance of approximately 2700 feet. Unless Jose was dawdling along at the speed of an old lady with a malfunctioning walker and foot blisters, he could not make a pass once he reached goal height (maybe 70 feet of flying, since he was going diagonally upwards) and have it intercepted by a person who did two laps between the coach's whistle and that pass. I am just going to retroactively declare that those two warm-up laps (2700 feet around) occurred prior to Kirstenna's speech and not while Pecari's captain covered a mere 70 feet. Yes, he's on a school broom, but as Sonora's Quidditch Coach, it's part of my job to make sure all of the school brooms (including the ones I cursed just for Jhonice) are in better shape than that.
Also, all chasers have opposing chasers who are not going to just blithely allow them to carry the quaffle 250 feet into their territory without trying to stop the incursion. I'm not saying half-pitch or longer runs are impossible, but please at least give the other team credit for not being completely useless. Give some indication in your post that the long run was risky and difficult and maybe even a little desperate. It doesn't just insult your opponents, either; it implies you don't trust your own teammates as well.
I understand that you want to help your team score, and goals are a good source of IC bragging rights, but by performing superhuman feats that defeat my suspension of disbelief, you are not helping your House. I dock points when I think a character has done something they shouldn't realistically be able to do. You earn OOC points by the quantity and the quality of your team's posts, and it is OOC points alone that matter when I decide which seeker catches the snitch and how many points are added to your House point score in the Cascade Hall. Getting a goal might soothe your characters' ego but it is not going to help your team win. Long runs of passing are ultimately better because they don't give the other team a chance to post. When you attempt to score, it forces the other team to post and doesn't give your own much to do, which is ultimately to the other team's advantage whether you score or not.
I'm not saying don't try to score either. Your characters want to score. They want to score very badly, in fact. I'm just asking you to please keep it in mind that the Pitch is big and that nobody should make a habit of taking shots at the goals (or setting up for goal shots) after they collected the quaffle in their own territory.
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Coach Pierce
A note on the Quidditch Pitch size
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Coach Pierce
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