My sister plays water polo. For every game each player has a cap that has a specific number on it. My sister always has to have her “lucky number 12” cap. She feels that it gives her the most luck for the game. She says that when she doesn’t have this cap she plays worse. One time she finished a game. I was cheering for her the whole time. When she was done I told her “great game!” She replied, “it should have been better but I didn’t have my cap. I got stuck with this lame cap. At least it wasn’t an odd number though. That would really bug me.” She doesn’t have any logical reason for disliking odd numbers other than the fact that “they are just odd, yes the pun was intended”.  Her “lucky number 12” cap is just a superstition that she has. If she thinks she plays better with the cap then that’s all that really matters. I think she is a great player either way. Maybe the cap helps calm her nerves and helps her focus through the game.

My sister is a political science and economics major. She plays water polo and is a member of many “fandoms”. A “fandom” is a group of people who follow, generally, a television show or a novel. Some of the fandoms that she belongs to follow shows such as Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service(NCIS). The group develops terminology that is only understood by other members of the group. For example, many fandoms “ship” certain characters. This means that the members of the fandom or just fans of the show want two characters to become a couple.

Many people have superstitions that they swear by. I don’t have many superstitions personally. I did have one when I ran track. On meet days, my friend would always have un-matching socks while I always had to have matching socks. It started unconsciously as something we just sort of did. Then one time we had a bad meet where neither of us did well. We noticed that I had the un-matching socks while she had the matching socks and we attributed the bad meet to the socks. After that we always followed this superstition. Then when something bad happened we attributed it to our performance instead since we had followed our sock rule. This superstition is fairly similar to my sister’s “lucky number 12.” Superstitions about sports are often very specific to the athlete. It can often be a lucky number, article of clothing, or pre-game ritual.