Teppenpaw Try-Outs on Quidditch Pitch

Assistant Captain Ginger Pierce

April 05, 2017 12:29 PM

Teppenpaw Try-Outs by Assistant Captain Ginger Pierce

Liac liked to involve Ginger in the running of the Quidditch team and she occasionally was in charge of running a practice every now and then. Today, though, she was running the try-outs. She'd done that before, too, and he was right there, so she wasn't too worried about it.

What she was worried about was numbers. There were very few names on her list. They had barely pulled a full team last year, and had needed their one reserve. Now Jake had graduated, leaving them down a Seeker, and Tobi lad left too. Also, she hadn't seen Gabe or his cousin since coming back to school this year, so it was possible the Valentis had changed schools, though she hadn't heard that officially.

Unless Jozua got up off the bench (and he hadn't even signed up so far) and they got at least two new people, the current year was not looking promising for Teppenpaw Quidditch.

"Hi, everyone!" she greeted cheerfully once the scheduled time to begin had rolled around. She had cause to be cheerful. There were already more people present than there were on the sign-up sheet in her hand, and that showed promise. It didn't look like she'd have to beg Jozua, at least, to come back. He'd arrived as a walk on, like he had last year, just as she'd been really hoping he would.

"Congratulations," she added a bit wryly, "You've all made the team. Obviously, numbers are a bit of a problem again this year, so if you know anyone interested, please encourage them. If we don't get a full roster, we'll still hold practices and train, but we may not be able to play unless another House has a similar problem. For now though, we'll just settle which positions everyone here should be assigned to, in the case we can fill out a full roster. For those of you not signed up already, any preferences?" Once she added those names and positions to her list, they were ready to begin.

"We'll start with basic warm ups. First, some stretches, then one lap of jogging around the pitch. After that we'll do three laps of flying. At that point, we should all have remembered how brooms work if we couldn't practice over the summer." This was a problem Ginger herself had, living as she did mostly in muggle camping areas during the summer.

"Our first priority is to fill our open Seeker spot, so we'll start tryouts by seeing if we have any Seeking talent among us. From there, we'll move on to Chaser and Beater." She didn't see much point in having tryouts for Keeper as that was her own position, unless she found herself in the unlikely position of having the most Seeker talent present.

"So start stretching," she set actions to words and bent over to touch her toes.

OOC: Walk ons are very welcome. Just answer Ginger's question about preferred positions. Liac's decision that she should run occasional practices is assumed based on his internal monologue in previous games. Likewise his handing over the tryouts to her is assumed, based on necessity to get the tryouts posted. Feel free to post about just the particular part of the try-out that you feel is most relevant to your character (but if you don't mind, please include as least an overview of your Seeking performance if only as an internal monologue that your character is glad that exercise in humiliation is over). You don't need to cover the whole thing unless you want to. This is just to get a basic idea of your IC skill (so you can be assigned to a position that makes IC sense) and assess writing ability which is how we actually get points in games.

1 Assistant Captain Ginger Pierce Teppenpaw Try-Outs 302 Assistant Captain Ginger Pierce 1 5

Jozua Sparks

April 05, 2017 1:39 PM

Do you want to be my nemesis, Ginger? by Jozua Sparks

OOC: Ginger is mine, so I give myself permission to write for her. BIC:

Jozua had seen the dearth of names beneath Ginger and Joe's. He had resisted adding his as a form or protest to prove her really wasn't that into Quidditch and people should not count on him as a player. But Ginger was counting on him. He could see that every time their eyes met and she meaningfully looked at the bulletin board (if they were in the Common Room) as if to remind him, 'hey, there's something you didn't do yet!' He pretended not to notice. It was harder not to notice the look of worry and disappointment.

So he knew showing up would be akin to signing up, and not just as a reserve this time either. He knew that.

But if he didn't, he also knew he was on the top of Ginger's go to list for arm twisting and he'd really rather avoid causing them both the trouble and pain, so here he was.

He sighed as he was asked which positions he liked because the only honest answer was the one she had dibs on. "Preferably not beater," he said instead, as that preference might actually be considered and accommodated. "And I'm not that good at Chasing either," he added in case she hadn't noticed that in the last game they had. Of course that left Seeker - the most important position in the game so obviously not the one for Jozua - and hers, which he'd already decided not to get into a bidding war over, so he had less expectation that his lack of talent would be material given the lack of other people trying out today.

He stretched, upon being told to do so, mostly just copying what those around him were doing, then puffed his way through the jog. He wasn't horribly out of shape or anything, as he enjoyed climbing, pretending to fight monsters, and walking for miles exploring new places as his primary hobbies, but when speed was called for he was far more a sprinter than an endurance runner and he was heaving for air and barely stumbling nevermind jogging anymore as he finished his lap.

He took his first flying lap slow, trying to catch his breath from his run, but her next two went quicker and easier once he could breathe again. He'd gotten a real Quidditch broom over the summer and had been practicing with it (so yeah, his reluctance to join the team was totally expected to end in futility, though not being a reserve hadn't really factored into his plans at all and was the source of more of his resentment over the current situation) so the flying part came naturally enough now, even at the higher speeds that were standard in Quidditch, though he still preferred a more sedate pace when given a choice.

Then it was Seeking time, which actually was not as disastrous as he expected it to be. He'd never been much of a ball player so catching and throwing and coordinating with teammates were not things he had much experience or skill in. However, a snitch barely counted as a ball. It was little and had wings, and it was actually fun, chasing it down and pretending it was a troublesome miscreant creature that needed to be captured for the good of wizardkind. He could also keep his speeding limited to when it made sense to go fast instead of needed to fly near his limit all the time, which was one of his many problems with Chasing.

He still doubted he was an ideal Seeker, but he did catch a practice snitch and he wasn't as awful at it as most of his Quidditch skills seemed to be.

The Chasing and Beater segments did go as badly as he expected them to go.

1 Jozua Sparks Do you want to be my nemesis, Ginger? 348 Jozua Sparks 0 5