WHO: The Montrose Magpies (and staff) WHAT: SEEKER DAYS WHEN: Nov 9th WHERE: Montrose Practice Pitch, best pitch Warnings: Seeker FUN
Seeker Days!
It’s everyone’s (except one beater’s) favourite days of the year!!!
A seeker extravaganza, all the training of a seeker squished into a fun day of drills and competition. You’ll develop your broom skills, coordination, and a set of sharp eyes. You might not think this relates to your position but remember...if you can catch a snitch a quaffle should be a piece of cake!
Let’s get this snitch party started.
Off to the races
You always need a warmup so the first drill is bread and butter simple. Race around the pitch to get those brooms revving. Ignore all the obstacle stuff in the middle for this. Speed is key here, keep your head low and let’s see what you can do!
The coach is timing you and you’re free to race people directly, but top times get a head start at one of the other stations.
Obstacle Course
Throughout the pitch there are scattered hoops, on the periphery, high up, through the middle, etc. They start out black and transition to fifty various shades of grey until the last hoop is white to give racers an idea of what hoops are next. They’re not all smoothly running into each other, some require rather sharp turns and dives to make it through them, and some hoops are tight fits to go through.
Merc holds up an orange ping pong ball and says these will substitute for a snitch for the obstacle course. There will be multiple runs of the course. First is just the stationary hoops, then the ping pong balls will float up. Nab as many of them as you go through the course without missing the hoops. Some of them are out of the way from the next hoop so you’ll need quick reflexes and some sudden direction changes to get a lot of them. If you’re not used to flying like that, it’ll be an adjustment but it’s fun, he promises.
On the third round the hoops will start moving as you fly through, changing as you go. And the snitch-fillins will starts flying around too. It’s staggered entry so watch out for other fliers cutting across your path as they go through theirs. Full speed chaos, catch as many as you can!
And because of *cough* some beaters, he’ll allow a round if they want where the beaters whack bludgers through the course and racers have to try continue on without getting knocked out.
After this will be a break but you’re free to use the more empty and bludger free course to do some trick flying through the hoops for the fun of it!
The coordination station
Those tiny ping pong balls? They're all over the pitch when you lot come back from your break. With a wave of his wand one shoots up and lands, then it starts a chain reaction. All at once balls are flying through the air everywhich way. Only the orange ones count so ignore all the other ones distracting you if you can!
But good luck catching them, they’re going fast enough that the tend to bounce off your hands and are quite small compared to those huge quaffles some of you are used to.
But remember! If you can catch a snitch-proxy, you can catch a quaffle no problem!
Again the hoops are floating up, but near the ground are those ping pong balls
There isn’t much distance between these hoops you’re supposed to fly through so you need to dive and pull up FAST to get there in time to make it through the hoops.
Dive after dive is tough even on experienced seekers so expect to make some clumsy skids and have to use your feet without wanting to!
Final challenge:
Last fun challenge of the day! MG holds up two real snitches, wings fluttering between his fingers, and smiles wide.
This game is simple. Catch the snitches.
Oh, and it’s seekers vs. the rest of you. With those countless ping pong snitches flying through the air, along with exploding cauldrons of them every time someone flies over. The orange/gold ping pong balls don’t count. He’ll think of a prize for the non-seeker than catches one. [Will prob roll, if a seeker’s number comes up um...they get to pick the next bloc seeker day is!]
Now go get them!
VOLUNTEER SPOTS VOLUNTEER 1 gets overconfident and challenges JASON KING to a race [decide amongst yourselves or roll!]
CHO CHANG is all butterfingers today and those damn little pingpong snitches keep bouncing out of their fingers. Can they at least catch one?!
ROGER DAVIES doesn’t quite pull out of their dives fast enough, and nearly has a few crash landings on the dive station and misses some of those hoops! (If they actually crash..to the medic!) But they still nab the pingpong!snitch so you know...results matter?
ELEKTRA YAXLEY wants to prove themselves and gets ultra-competitive with one of the seekers [LENNOX CAMPBELL] and tries chasing them down all across the pitch and using a few elbows where needed to try and get it first. KAL SHARMA decides to try and help them out and also chase down that one seeker. The race is on! [Watch out for CHO CHANG who is very likely to try and use their teammate’s distractions to nab one of the snitches]