#logan trask

THE FOXHOLE COURT: OCTOBER 8-OCTOBER 14

ONLINE:

“After two disappointing results, the Palmetto State Foxes secured their first win of the season in a 4-3 overtime victory against the Blackwell Jackrabbits. The overtime game winner was scored by fifth year Neel Avery, who had a two-goal night, off of a strong save and a strong play by fifth year and Captain Grant Rollins and new Fox and Ohio State Buckeyes transfer Casey Hendrix.”

“The Foxes’ first victory also came in their first game without any red cards, and with a pared-down roster after their penalty-ridden loss to the Belmonte Terrapins. The Foxes were without sophomore Octavia Dawson and freshman Raphael Peruggia due to red cards in that controversial game, and two additional players were scratched due to what Fox Coach David Wymack described as “not listening to directions even worse than usual,” believed to stem from their conduct during the Southeastern District’s Fall Banquet, which the Foxes hosted: fifth year Logan Trask, ending what had been a two game point streak; and senior Grayson Sharpe, who hasn’t played since earning a red card in the Foxes’ first game of the season.”

“The Jackrabbits will look for a comeback in their next game against the faltering Golden State Eagles, who have yet to win a game, while the Foxes will take on the dominant Edgar Allan Ravens with one question lingering: are they a stronger, more unified team without some members of their roster dragging them down?”

- COLLEGE EXY ONLINE, “FOXES GET FIRST WIN IN OVERTIME VICTORY AGAINST THE JACKRABBITS.”

“Two teams with a long history will go head-to-head on Friday night, as the Edgar Allan Ravens venture into the Foxhole Court to take on the Palmetto State Foxes. The Foxes may have secured their first win of the season last week against the Jackrabbits, but their upward momentum might stall again—the Ravens are charging through yet another undefeated season, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down.”

“Ahead of Friday’s clash, we return again to the curious case of Leo Duarte. Duarte was briefly on Edgar Allan’s roster to start the 2014-2015 season, a decision that raised eyebrows at the time, for Duarte hadn’t been in any of the scouting reports for top high school players. But Duarte never played a game for the Ravens, disappearing from Exy until he turned up in Class II playing for the San Diego Tritons, and then was added to the Foxes’ roster last year. We have yet to see what, if anything, the Ravens originally saw in Duarte, who has yet to score in three games with the Foxes this season.”

“Matchups between the Foxes and Ravens over the past few years have been a family affair, with brothers Landon and Brayden Sykes in opposing colors. Things will be slightly different this time, however, as Landon Sykes is no longer on the court but behind the Ravens’ bench—though still undoubtedly looking for a victory for his team.”

“But the biggest story is one that started off the Exy court—or, more accurately, on the small screen—due to some fighting words from Fox sophomore striker and former star of the TV show On The Line Akira Sato at a fan convention last week. ‘I’m a Fox now,” Sato, who played Ravens founder Tetsuji Moriyama in the movie First Court, said to a young fan, “and we’re better than the Ravens by a long shot.’ While Sato seemed more than confident in the struggling Foxes’ chances against the undefeated Ravens, the Ravens don’t seem to be putting too much stock in his words. ‘We don’t really pay attention to that stuff,” Ravens Captain Dylan Ratliff said. ‘We’re not celebrities, we’re athletes, and we’re focused on playing real Exy here.’”

“With all this in play, one thing’s for sure: this game will not be one to miss.”

- COLLEGE EXY ONLINE, “RAVENS AT FOXES: PREVIEW”

ON CAMPUS:

The elation from the Foxes’ victory against the Jackrabbits is short-lived: the Ravens are the most difficult opponent the Foxes will face during the regular season, and they need to focus if they want to have any chance of coming out on top.

The game will be on the Foxes’ home turf, so Friday, October 12 starts off quietly, with a shortened practice in the morning and a full day of classes after that, all of them only counting down until the Ravens—and the black-clad horde of fans that follow them everywhere they go—descend upon Palmetto for what will surely be a difficult, if not outright nasty, game.

(OOC information related to the game under the cut)

THIS IS YOUR GAME

Name: Logan Trask Age: Twenty Two Class Year: Senior Position: Striker, #2 Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Related Bios: Cameron Trask

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

TW: drug and alcohol abuse, death.

They didn’t start out as a tragedy. In fact, they started out completely normal. More than that, they started out happy. Money was tight, sure, mother and father and sister and brother living overtop of each other in a small apartment. But they were, above all else, a family. Logan was a darling only son and a protective older brother, with Cameron following behind him like a shadow of the most persistent kind. But then their father died: he was a dock worker for a large shipping company, and when Logan was twelve and Cameron was ten, he died on the job in a freak accident. There one day and gone the next, just that suddenly.

Logan watched his childhood die as his father did: his mother descended into sorrow, into drunkenness, into uselessness. And so Logan grew old before his time: he was the one to make sure his sister made it to and from school, that there was food on the table, that their bills got paid on time, and that his mother was poured into bed at the end of the night. But there was one thing he wouldn’t let go of: if in one hand he held tight to his sister, in the other he held a racquet. Exy. And he was good at it, too. It was early in his high school career that Logan started to accumulate buzz. He landed an impossible shot in a high school semifinals game, and the world sat up and took notice: Logan Trask is one to watch, that kid is going to be Class I someday.

He wanted that future, he wanted what he was promised: his name on the back of a jersey, a crowd screaming it back at him as he took to the court, racquet lifted above his head. When he and Cameron came home one day after practice when Logan was fifteen to find their mother facedown in a puddle of vomit, body cold, he mourned that vision slipping away from him more than he did his own mother’s passing. And maybe that’s why he came up with the plan that he did. Their mother had been useless, and yet Cameron and Logan had survived, had thrived as best they could, without her. Why did that have to change? Logan could take care of Cameron, and they wouldn’t have to worry about foster parents or foster siblings or being separated in the system. They could have all that they needed, just the two of them.

So that’s exactly what they did: disposed of their mother’s body, and spent the next several years living a lie. They were grueling, relentless years: Logan went from school to practice to picking Cameron up from her school to one of several after school jobs to—if he was lucky—homework, maybe managing to snag a few hour’s sleep before waking it up and doing it all again. But while his present was a well-concealed battle, his future was a beacon drawing him on: his future was Exy, and through it all his performance on the court only improved, his star only rose higher.        

They called Logan one of the best strikers in the nation, his team a well-oiled machine that won game after game on a march to repeated championship titles. The last months of his high school career were a whirlwind courtship: recruiters flew him out first class to visit their schools, told him that they’d be the ones to cement his fame, that if he signed with them he’d be one step closer to one day making Court. But what none of those teams knew was the secret that Logan had so carefully concealed behind a champion’s smile, that meant that no matter how much he ached when he thought of joining one of the Big Three teams and playing alongside other future champions, the only team he could even consider joining was the one that didn’t seem interested in him at all—the Palmetto State Foxes.

SEIZE IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT

His senior year of high school, he drove to South Carolina to surprise Coach David Wymack after one of the Foxes’ home games. In his office afterwards, he laid it all on the line: his mother was dead and had been for years, he couldn’t leave his sister alone in Pittsburgh, he needed a team that understood how important that was to him, and so the Foxes were his only option. He came out of that meeting with a contract and a promise that Cameron would be taken care of. And, with one announcement, he shocked the Exy world. Diehard fans began looking at him with new eyes, wondering what exactly it was about him that they had missed, what it was that made him a fit for Wymack’s halfway house of a team.

When Logan moved to Palmetto for his freshman year, Cameron moved with him. But while she seemed to thrive, Logan soon began to flounder. He originally thought that he would be able to lift the team up—but the truth is that they’ve only dragged him down. Or maybe that’s just misplaced teenage rebellion: with Cameron safely looked after by Abby, Logan was freed of total responsibility for his sister for the first time in years, and he let it go to his head with late night parties and hungover practices and missed classes and grades that just barely toed the line of acceptable. His performance on the court, too, suffered, but he couldn't see why he should push himself to be better when his teammates were so relentlessly mediocre. There were times when he couldn’t help but wonder about what it might have been like if he had decided to be selfish, if he were a Raven, a Trojan, a Lion—anything but a Fox. And though his teammates and his coaches all stood behind him and Cameron when their mother’s body was found last year, when they were put on trial for identity theft and tax fraud and found guilty, the judges’ kindness the only thing that spared them from a sentence worse than community service, it’s still a thought he still can’t quite shake. 

THE FOXHOLE COURT: SEPTEMBER 3-SEPTEMBER 9

ONLINE:

“It was a disappointing start to the season for the Palmetto State Foxes as they took on the Breckenridge Jackals, erasing much of the goodwill they’d accumulated in a surprise Championships performance last year. Early in the first period, it look to be a fair fight: a save on a penalty shot from goalkeeper and Captain Grant Rollins kept the score at 1-0, and then a tying goal from Senior Arlo Booth gave the Foxes a chance to fight for the lead—but the Foxes soon fell apart and, with the exception of a late goal by Fifth Year Logan Trask, were outplayed by the Jackals on every metric and on the scoreboard for the majority of the game. After last season’s performance, the Foxes resembled more of what we’ve been used to seeing from them: better at throwing punches than scoring goals—or blocking them.” 

“Rollins, however, appeared optimistic, even in the face of a 6-2 loss: ‘Last year was a success. This year will be too,’ he said following the game. Junior Elior Lowell, new to the Foxes after last year’s scandal with the Breckenridge Jackals that saw fellow former Jackal Conor Bristow imprisoned, also spoke to the press, and was full of kind words for the Foxes—and less-than-kind words for his former team. ‘Even if I was given the opportunity to go back to [the Jackals]...I wouldn’t even waste my time considering it,’ Lowell said. For the Jackals, the feeling appeared to be mutual: ‘Tonight we showed what a good team we are,’ said Senior Jackals striker Skyler Erickson. ‘Losing teammates hasn’t made us weaker, it’s made us stronger.’

“Next, the Foxes will play their first game at home against the Belmonte Terrapins, the team they narrowly beat out for a slot in the Spring Championships last season. One loss might be a bad night, but two in a row might be a pattern, and we’ll be waiting to see if the Foxes can get their season back on the rails after a disastrous start. Elsewhere in Class I: The Ravens got off to a strong start in the Southeastern district, as did the Trojans in the West. In the Northeast, the Lions have yet to return to full form after a disappointing and scandal-wracked previous season—could this be the year that the Buckeyes finally overtake them as district champions?”

- COLLEGE EXY ONLINE, “AFTER PROMISING PREVIOUS SEASON, FOXES FALTER AT FIRST HURDLE”

“The Foxes might not have scored much on the court, in their first game of the season, but some pictures posted to Twitter from the Breckenridge Jackals’ parking lot after the game show that, for two Foxes at least, scoring off the court might not be a problem. Young love, so cute—but we’ll start taking bets now on how long it lasts, and we’ve got our money on trainwreck.”

- FOXWATCH, YOUR SOURCE FOR GOSSIP AT PALMETTO STATE UNIVERSITY

ON CAMPUS:

The Foxes’ and Vixens’ return to campus is less-than-triumphant, and with the surging rivalry between the campus’ cheer squads, it seems like the Palmetto student body is paying more attention to the Foxes than ever—and keeping score.

THIS IS YOUR GAME

Name: Logan Trask Age: Twenty Three Class Year: Fifth Year Position: Striker, #2 Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Related Bios: Cameron Trask

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

TW: drug and alcohol abuse, death

They didn’t start out as a tragedy. In fact, they started out completely normal. More than that, they started out happy. Money was tight, sure, mother and father and sister and brother living overtop of each other in a small apartment. But they were, above all else, a family. Logan was a darling only son and a protective older brother, with Cameron following behind him like a shadow of the most persistent kind. But then their father died: he was a dock worker for a large shipping company, and when Logan was twelve and Cameron was ten, he died on the job in a freak accident. There one day and gone the next, just that suddenly.

Logan watched his childhood die as his father did: his mother descended into sorrow, into drunkenness, into uselessness. And so Logan grew old before his time: he was the one to make sure his sister made it to and from school, that there was food on the table, that their bills got paid on time, and that his mother was poured into bed at the end of the night. But there was one thing he wouldn’t let go of: if in one hand he held tight to his sister, in the other he held a racquet. Exy. And he was good at it, too. It was early in his high school career that Logan started to accumulate buzz. He landed an impossible shot in a high school state semifinals game, and the world sat up and took notice: Logan Trask is one to watch, they said. That kid is going to be Class I someday.

He wanted that future, he wanted what he was promised: his name on the back of a jersey, a crowd screaming it back at him as he took to the court, racquet lifted above his head. When he and Cameron came home one day after practice when Logan was fifteen to find their mother facedown in a puddle of vomit, body cold, he mourned that vision slipping away from him more than he did his own mother’s passing. And maybe that’s why he came up with the plan that he did: their mother had been useless, and yet Cameron and Logan had survived, had thrived, as best they could without her. Why did that have to change? Logan could take care of Cameron, and they wouldn’t have to worry about foster parents or foster siblings or being separated in the system. They could have all that they needed, just the two of them.

So that’s exactly what they did: disposed of their mother’s body, and spent the next several years living a lie. They were grueling, relentless years: Logan went from school to practice to picking Cameron up from her school to one of several after school jobs to—if he was lucky—homework, maybe managing to snag a few hour’s sleep before waking it up and doing it all again. But while his present was a well-concealed battle, his future was a beacon drawing him on: his future was Exy, and through it all his performance on the court only improved, and his star only rose higher.        

They called Logan one of the best strikers in the nation, his team a well-oiled machine that won game after game on a march to repeated state championship titles. The last months of his high school career were a whirlwind courtship: recruiters flew him out first class to visit their schools, told him that they’d be the ones to cement his fame, that if he signed with them he’d be one step closer to one day making Court. But what none of those teams knew was the secret that Logan had so carefully concealed behind a champion’s smile, that meant that no matter how much he ached when he thought of joining one of the Big Three teams and playing alongside other future champions, the only team he could even consider joining was the one that didn’t seem interested in him at all—the Palmetto State Foxes.

SEIZE IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT

His senior year of high school, he drove to South Carolina to surprise Coach David Wymack after one of the Foxes’ home games. In his office afterwards, he laid it all on the line: his mother was dead and had been for years, he couldn’t leave his sister alone in Pittsburgh, he needed a team that understood how important that was to him, and so the Foxes were his only option. He came out of that meeting with a contract and a promise that Cameron would be taken care of. And, with one announcement, he shocked the Exy world. Diehard fans began looking at him with new eyes, wondering what exactly it was about him that they had missed, what it was that made him a fit for Wymack’s halfway house of a team.

When Logan moved to Palmetto for his freshman year, Cameron moved with him. But while she seemed to thrive, Logan soon began to flounder. He originally thought that he would be able to lift the team up—but the truth is that they’ve only dragged him down. Or maybe that’s just misplaced teenage rebellion: with Cameron safely looked after by Abby, Logan was freed of total responsibility for his sister for the first time in years, and he let it go to his head with late night parties and hungover practices and missed classes and grades that just barely toed the line of acceptable. His performance on the court, too, suffered, but he couldn’t see why he should push himself to be better when his teammates were so relentlessly mediocre. There were times when he couldn’t help but wonder about what it might have been like if he had decided to be selfish, if he were a Raven, a Trojan, a Lion—anything but a Fox. And though his teammates and his coaches all stood behind him and Cameron when their mother’s body was found last year, when they were put on trial for identity theft and tax fraud and found guilty, the judges’ kindness the only thing that spared them from a sentence worse than community service, it’s still a thought he still can’t quite shake.