Okay. I don’t know, I guess what we did is gather up toilet paper and then we…T.P.ed his house. I think it’s always supposed to be the day after Sectionals. Yeah, it definitely is, because it’s to celebrate qualifying for the State meet.

We just knew we had to do it…’cus people do it every year.  It’s always the seniors, doesn’t have to just be the State team or anyone. And I guess a few juniors come to learn how to do it next year…and it’s right around Halloween, too.

I don’t know where exactly the tradition started from. I think it is just sort of a common thing to do in high school. Like, I know Kevin and his friends were always doing it. It’s just a common deed on Naperville North.

But for this, I think it was more “woohoo we won!” or possibly out of vengeance.  Different people came for different reasons to the T.P.ing. Like I know you and I probably came to celebrate and for state and stuff, but Marie I know did it for vengeance for the hard workouts.

And yeah…his family tradition, well it became their tradition, to um, cleaning it up the next day. He said it was like Christmas morning for them, for his kids (laughs).

context of the performance:

The informant, my close friend and former teammate, reflected with me one-on-one about our high school cross country tradition to T.P. or toilet paper our coach’s house after the qualifying State meet.

thoughts on it:

It is interesting how it meant different things to different people, but this act, which is probably considered vandalism, is done as a tradition and sort of out of love. It is even funnier that it has become a part of their family traditions to clean it up together, a “Christmas morning” of sorts, as the informant mentioned.