A Million Miles Away

Chapter 11: January Part Two

For our first full week back, Camish was going easy on us. Maybe he knew something the rest of us didn't, maybe we were performing better in practice, or maybe he knew we were all bloody exhausted and thought it best to not tire us out even further before the first game of the new year. Whatever his reason may have been, I was immensely grateful for it.

Typically Dean gives us strategies to use to our advantage, however 'cruel' they may be. He's like a vulture, stalking the opposing team before the game, digging up any dirt that they have that we may be able to exploit. Of course, none of this involves cheating or rigging any part of the match, a win that way would be no fun at all. No, this is a mental game. Figure out your opponent's weakness, get into their head, distract them, exploit the one thing they can't control.

Sure, sometimes the games we play could be seen as mean-spirited, but I think it's anything but. Any good competitor, no matter the sport, knows they have to study their opponents. It's vital to the competitive nature of it. But typically, most teams don't have a captain that uses their free time to psycho-analyze their competition to use it to their advantage, usually the main (and likely only) focus is on improving physical performance through practice.

I, however, am of the party that feels your mind is just as much of a factor as your body is in Quidditch. Take a game of Chess, for example, to really excel, you have to know and master the 'body' of it which is the chess game theory, styles, openings, mid-games, and end-game moves. But memorizing movies and tactics can only get you so far, you have to be able to adapt in the moment to what your opponent is throwing at you, and the best way to stop them from throwing you off is to throw them off first.

It was for that reason that I now sat on the barstool at the kitchen island, studying for the 500th time since this Monday, the issue of Quidditch Weekly that Camish had slipped to me last week.

He had dog-eared to pages for me, page 23 and 47. On page 23 was a full-page spread dedicated to my catch against Canada, more specifically the technique. The article debated whether or not I had just created my own technique. Personally, I didn't believe I did, but the article pointed out that never in an international match before had someone dived down for the snitch at a complete 90-degree angle. I would have just called it a variation of the Levenfish dive, but the author of the piece seemed to argue that the technique required for what Levenfish once did and what I did against Canada was different.

"By altering the angle of the dive as Potter did, however slight it may be, it requires different skill than the typical Levenfish dive which averages at 75 degrees.

Because Potter's dive was at a 90-degree angle, entirely perpendicular to the pitch, she not only had to master the control of her wind resistance (most commonly done by Potter by adjusting the distance between her torso and broom) required in the Levenfish, but also an acute control over her speed, agility, and posture.

In order for Lily Potter to have successfully completed this dive as she did during Ireland's match against Canada, she not only had to precisely control the speed at which she was racing toward the field, but also her ability to pull up out of the 90-degree dive. Pulling up from a 90-degree dive is an entirely different sensation and force exertion than a regular 75-degree dive. Not only was this move a dangerous one to execute, but it also had to have required an immense amount of forethought and training beforehand to muster up the courage needed to perform it."

I chuckled, I had never dove that steep before and I definitely didn't feel confident I wasn't going to come out injured afterward.

I turned to page 47 like Camish had told me about. We had two days left before our match against Finland at their stadium on Saturday and this would be the first time since my seventh year game against Hufflepuff where I'd be going head-to-head with a female seeker. If I was being honest with myself, this was the most nervous I had been for a game yet. Males who don't understand how to calculate for the fact that I am faster than them on a broom are one thing, but another girl who is on par with my biological advantages? This was another story.