Leo mutant ninja 🐢 (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} challenge) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} gooseberry, |
Weirdly, Leo's in a good mood. He hasn't played Quidditch in a little while now, and it's nice for him to get out of his head and be able to enter Pure Quidditch 100% Adrenaline Mode. He's gracious; wishing everyone good luck before the tryouts start. Ebonhide Quidditch members get an extra special pep talk, with reminders to play to their strengths, which Leo knows and will recite now. He can't quite divorce himself from Captain mode, either. Everyone else gets a cordial "Good luck," which people who know him can tell also consists of Leo looking them up and down to decide how tired, how distracted, how nervous they are. It's like a tic he can't quite turn off, when something competitive is involved, even if he won't be directly competing against them.
Drills are, as his team is notoriously aware, his forte and his lifeblood. He thrives off developing tricky ones to run through dozens of times until they're flawless. He hasn't had a chance to run through Thorn's hundreds of times, though. Leo's naturally very strong and by practice, also accurate. But if there's a flaw in Leo's performance, it always comes at the beginning of the drill, when he hasn't had a time or two to perfect it yet. He's much better at implementing skills when he knows what's coming. The good news is that he's a fast learner. Though Leo isn't solely interested in professional Quidditch as a career, he wants it as a backup, AND he's cringing to think what it would look like if he couldn't make the Gooseberry team as a Captain. He knows he can't afford to be at anything but 100% dedication, and he is. He goes hard. He flies like he lives, not showy, just very scarily dedicated to what he's doing at any given moment.
When he's not in the air, he watches everyone very carefully, taking in their performances here to at least use in school games. Even in the event that he doesn't make the team (which he's trying to accept as an outcome, difficult as it may be,) he wants this to be a valuable experience. Seeing people without a team to support them, alone in the air with some drills, is always a good opportunity. He stops just shy of actually taking notes.