College Team Cheer

  1. Title: Ritual of Team Cheer, College
  2. Informant #1: AnnClaire MacArt, 20, Female.AnnClaire (AC) was born and raised in Northern California.  She currently lives in Hanover, New Hampshire and is a sophomore at Dartmouth College.  AC is a member of the Dartmouth College Varsity Swimming and Diving Team.  She has swum competitively for over 10 years, including at the age group (club), high school, and now collegiate level. 

    Informant #2: Andrew North

    Andrew North was a four year member of the Dartmouth Men’s Swimming and diving team. In his fourth year on the team he served as one of two captains of the men’s team. He has lived across the US as well as internationally; contributing to his broad knowledge of the national and global swimming communities: his states of residence include Indiana, Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, Nebraska as well as the Philippines. Andrew continued to swim in all of these places, spanning over more than a decade of competitive swimming.

  3. Customary, Ritual
  4. Language: English
  5. Country of Origin: United States
  6. Social / Cultural Context:This ritual involves a brief team meeting followed by a cheer at a swim meet.  These cheers are performed at competitions prior to the start of races.  It is not just one team that participates but many; although the actual cheer itself differs for team to team, the ritual of performing a cheer is found as a commonality among all teams.  It seems that there is even a recognized time that these cheers be performed; after the first team performs a cheer the other teams’ cheers quickly follow.
  7. Video: AC
  8. Transcript: Andrew North:“You know, for me, it was always about the cheer after everyone kindof does their own thing for the pre-meet warm up and their own pre-meet ritual…just feeling the excitement of everyone building up to a big cheer… you do it so that you and your team get pumped up and you literally do, you start screaming and jumping up and down, it would be really hard to walk away from that without getting your heart rate up.”
  9. Informant’s comments: The team cheer is always done, one of the strongest rituals in swimming.
  10. Collector’s comments: As both informants were from the same college team, their description of this ritual put together for this piece of folklore.
  11. Tags/Keywords: Team Cheer

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