Tag Archives: Sports Tradition

Rivalry Festival Tradition

text: “So I went to boarding school in Rhode Island, and we have one really big rival school. Before we play that rival in football and every fall sport, which is one big weekend in the fall, the night before we’ll have a big banquet to kick of the Middlesex weekend. In the tradition, our school makes a cake of a zebra, which is the mascot of the other school, and the headmaster will cut the head off the zebra cake at the banquet dinner. This is basically the start of the weekend and chopping off the head of the zebra shows that we will beat them in all of the competitive sports coming. Also, the school’s art department creates a giant paper mache zebra and burns it in the middle of campus. These are like a good-luck tradition and gives our school an annual spirit holiday/festival weekend.” -Informant

context: The boarding schools of the Northeast all have a very competitive rivalry between one another. Therefore when they play each other in sports they have different traditions and rituals in order to give them good luck. The informant stated that the school has done this ritual for decades and it continues through the present. This tradition only happens once a year, when they play the rivalry school in the fall.

analysis: This tradition reminds me of USC’s rivalry with UCLA. When we play them in any sport we say things like “Beat the Bruins” or “kill the bears.” We don’t burn down anything or cut the head off of a fake bear, but we do have someone dress up in a bear costume and we cake them with whipped cream. I think this is a huge tradition between any school and their rivals, and gives them a sense of pride for where they attend.

Softball Nicknames

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Maine
Performance Date: 04/22/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

Being in a sports team throughout high school, there are many interesting rituals that we practice. The following comes from an interview with a fellow softball teammate as she recounts her favorite small ritual that we practiced in our team.

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Performance

The following is a story told to me by the interviewee.

“In our softball team, everyone has a nickname. And we would put the nickname between the first name and the last name. So First Name–Nickname—Lastname. There was Riley “Ryebread’ Crocker. Maria “No-Pass” Boone. Holly “Freshie” Cohen. Cindy “Splits” Keogh. My nickname was Freshie because I was the only freshman that year. Not the most interesting one and it stuck all the way till I was a senior. Which is weird to be called freshie as a senior. A lot of the nicknames were either endearing ones that were a play on someone’s name. I remember yours was Val “Pal” Tan. And then a lot of them were like really significant things that someone did on the field. Like with Cindy did the spilt to catch the ball, and so she became Cindy “Spilts” Keogh.

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Analysis

Sports teams build a sense of community very quickly. Getting close to your teammates through practice, going through wins and losses together, building emotional bonds. While some sport team rituals build on the concept of superstition to ensure winning a game, the act of nicknames in this softball team appears to come instead from the attempt to build an even greater sense of community amongst the teammates. This team ritual allows the teammates to bond quickly, nicknames are often reserved for close friends. However, even if two teammates are not that close to each other and would not have otherwise called each other by nicknames, the in-built nickname from being on the sports team forces the two to feel like they have a bond between them.

Main Piece: Tennis Court Lines

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: Family CEO
Residence: CO
Performance Date: 04/01/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant grew up playing tennis every single day after school. She and her family members were professional players, and there was an expectation that everyone becomes an expert at the game through endless hours of training and tournaments. She played tennis in college and once she graduated, she coached players on the tour. She is very well respected in the tennis world. The rituals she performed as she was playing competitively never faltered. One of which was the belief that she could never step on the lines of the tennis course. This is a custom that is practiced by many players today because stepping on the lines is a sign of disrespect and bad luck. Player’s go out of their way to ensure that they never touch the white tape in between points.

Context: “As a tennis player, all of my life, I never stepped on the lines of a tennis court. If you watch tennis on TV today, I am in the majority. It was always something- it was something superstitious for many tennis players. It started with John McEnroe and I know that Roger Federer also does not step on the lines. Certainly, Rafael Nadal- I mean would pull a hamstring to step over the alley so he didn’t have to step on the lines… he’s psycho. Do you know what it was…it was more that it made the moments when you weren’t in the point and when you weren’t in the mindset of competition-it made when you didn’t have a lot of control in the point more bearable because the time in between points seemed like they were controllable, right.”

Thoughts: I think that this folk ritual and superstition signals that you respect the game and know the sport intimately enough to practice this custom. Moreover, as the informant explained, became a strategic, calming tactic as well. Having the power to deliberately step over the line and make a decision on the outcome of your movements gives the player a sense of control and is grounding when in such a high-intensity state. The folk tradition has many beneficial implications and has become more popular as more and more players step over the lines. It is interesting to watch how careful some players are never to touch the white lines, and now that I understand this ritual, it is so obvious when watching a game. 

Swim Team Shaving Party

Nationality: White
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Dimas, CA/Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/19/2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

Informant: When I was on the Dive and Swim team we would always grow out our body hair for prelims, which is the race that qualifies you for finals. So you would grow out our leg hair, arm hair, armpit hair haha. Sometimes boys did facial hair. But, if you made finals then we would have a shaving party. The finalists would have a shaving party, so you were seen as like a star if you were invited. It was an honor to go to this party, so everyone would help each other shave to get ready for finals. 

Interviewer: Where did you learn this from?

Informant: It has been going on at my high school for a very long time, probably decades before I went there. 

Interviewer: Why would your team this?

Informant: Shaving helps you swim faster, and I think it was a mini celebration that you made finals.

Interviewer: Did you ever get to go to one?

Informant: I did! At first I was a little weirded out, but when I went it was surprisingly fun. 

Background

My informant is a good friend and housemate of mine from USC and is a senior at the University of Southern California majoring in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention with a minor in Health Care Studies from San Dimas, CA. She says that a lot of her mannerisms and sayings come from growing up in San Dimas which she describes as being a very small town outside of Los Angeles that feels more midwest than the West coast. She attended summer camps throughout most of her life, starting as a camper and becoming a counselor in high school. 

Context

After willing to participate in an interview to collect folklore, the topic of sports came up with my informant and me. She disclosed that she was on the Swim and Dive Team and we began to talk about our experiences playing sports and how some of those celebrations and traditions of sports teams relate to folklore. This celebration got brought up in the interview and the informant gave me more details. 

Analysis

This folklore celebration is akin to rite of passages celebrations, as it is intended to congratulate and prepare the swimmers who qualified for the final races. In another sense, it also promotes unity and cooperation within the swimming team as they are doing something that has potential benefits for their results taking into account the belief that less hair on the body allows swimmers to swim faster. 

After some research, I discovered that many swim teams have similar shaving parties, and some have been documented online. One of these parties is mentioned and written about in the  following article:

Bara, Scotty, and Sapir Frozenfar. “Shaving In Sports.” The Viking Magazine, vikingsportsmag.com/features/2011/10/10/shaving-in-sports/.

Ultimate Frisbee Lingo

Residence: Washington D.C.
Performance Date: 4/29/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

J is a member of USC’s ultimate frisbee team. In Ultimate Frisbee there are many terms that are used during a game to talk about strategy, they are:

“Laying Out” is when you jump forward and go parallel to the ground to catch the disk

A “Bid” is when someone jumps to get a disk

A “Blade” is a frisbee that’s thrown really vertically

“Bookends” are when you block the disc from being caught by the other team, then you catch it to score a point

“Cutter” is the catcher, “handler” is the thrower

“Chilly” is what you say when you want someone to calm down and not just throw the disc immediately.

Context:

J is a sophomore at USC and a member of USC’s Ultimate Frisbee club team. He has competed on this team for two years and enjoys the sport very much. This was taken from a text chat with him discussing ultimate frisbee.

Thoughts:

While at USC I had played with the Ultimate team for one semester before quitting to focus on other things. One thing I hadn’t learned are the terms above. I find that they would definitely be confusing to any new fan or player that has not heard of them before. The only term I knew from J’s list is “Chilly”. During one of the games I played in my one semester on the team, I remember people saying “Chilly” right people got the disc, and I was unfamiliar with what it mean. However, since it sounds similar to “chill” like “chill out” I understood that it meant to calm down. Other terms don’t make much sense to a new player like a “Bookend” for instance. How would one know that it is a term for blocking a disc? I think that this language reflects the culture of Ultimate Frisbee and its uniqueness as a sport as a whole.