It's a little bit hard to spot the Snitch - it being awful small and not particularly high contrast against the ground - but if she looks for movement rather than necessarily a 'small golden ball,' she can spot something zipping around near one end of the pitch.

She approaches from above.

It tries to zip away from her! It's not moving nearly as smoothly as something thrown would be - zigging and zagging and bouncing up and down and changing paths at a whim.

Tricky... What she wants to do is kind of herd it in a direction that traps it, cuts off its possible escapes. And if she can maybe find a bit of a pattern to its zigs and zags that'd help too.

Finding a pattern is really hard, but the fact it can't go outside of the pitch or into the area right around the hoops makes it relatively easy to pin in the corner where the quaffle zone meets the pitch boundary. Also, she's actually faster than it, especially since it keeps zig zagging and trying to dart off even while being chased.

With a final burst, she reaches out to snatch it.

Her hand closes around it. It jitters briefly, then settles. 

Success! Back to the captain.

Who's watching with interest. A few of Ellie's potential teammates call out congratulations, and the captain calls out once Ellie lands, "Good show! Most Seekers just chase it directly. Herding it - that's what you were doing, right? Anyways, that was clever."

"It can juke better than I can, so I figured I'd try to get into a situation where that mattered less."

She nods, grinning. "As I said, clever."

"You'll want to be subtle about what you're doing in an actual match so the other team doesn't ruin it for you, but that goes for every strategy and mostly comes with practice."

"Anyways - I'd say you have the position, at least provisionally so. Main thing that'd cause you to lose it would be pretty much just not being a team player, though, or never showing up to practices without an excuse."

Nod.

"We can get you started on practice while I run your friend through her paces if you'd like - it'll take a bit longer for her, reserves need to be minimally competent at every position."

"All right. What do we start with?"

"Isaac and Margot," she gestures to two of the other Ravenclaws, "Can help you learn to dodge bludgers. We don't use the metal ones anymore, so these just feel like getting hit with a pillow - but in a game they'll make your broom sink and ground you for two minutes, which can suck, so don't get hit. The practice ones just change color and beep loudly if they hit someone."

"Okay." She nods at the two named.

They wave, picking up their brooms as Sam turns to ask one of the Chasers if Anathema can borrow his broom. 

"Hey," says presumably Isaac. "That was some nice flying."

"Thanks."

"No problem," he shrugs. "So, bludgers - they're pretty fast, but left alone they just float around the pitch and are pretty easy to avoid. Beaters can hit them," he raises his bat, "Which sets them on a straight path for a little bit, which's usually when you're at risk of getting hit. They can't go out of bounds, like all the balls, and they'll bounce if they hit the edge - smart beaters can use that to set up some pretty unexpected shots."

"Which isn't a concern in school games," Margot interrupts. "That's more of a thing in the really competitive professional leagues."

Isaac turns to her. "Hey!" he says, mock offended. "I totally got Diggory with that last year."

Margot rolls her eyes. "With a lucky shot 'cause he wasn't paying any attention."

He shrugs. "Well, Bray - that's my rival, one of the Hufflepuff Beaters, and Diggory's their Seeker," he directs toward Ellie, "Anyways, she swore revenge, and she's a total nut about training - we can't take the school equipment out if it isn't the official training or game time, but nothing's stopping us from practicing our swing or joining Flight Club or flying at home, and she's got one of her parents' fields set up for pick up Quidditch. So she'll probably try that at least once."

"Oh, she's the nut," Margot mutters. A bit louder, to Ellie, "Anyways, we'll be playing it easy today. Might show you some flying tricks if we have time, though you can pick up more of that with Flight Club if you're really nuts. And if you can stand Isaac and his girlfriend trying to one up each other." (Isaac makes a noise like an offended cat.)

"So you hit bludgers at me and I try to dodge?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Margot says.

"All right." Here we go, then.

They start her out pretty easy, as promised - not knocking the bludger as hard as they can, hitting her mostly from angles she can at least see in her peripheral vision. Still, the bludger's a zoomy bastard.

She can tell this is going to be annoying to deal with in a real game.

It's a bit less of a problem in the actual game, Issac explains at one point, because the two teams' Beaters are interfering with each other, and also there's a lot more targets - Chasers are pretty popular for that, especially if they've got the Quaffle. Still, yeah, avoiding bludgers is a major part of training.