Pushing Coach into Pool

  1. Title: Pushing Coach into Pool after a Win
  2. Informant: Andrew North, 24, Male.  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: Celebration
  4. Language: English
  5. Country of Origin: United States
  6. Social / Cultural Context: This ritual would be performed after a victory in a competition at a high level.
  7. No audio, transcribed Skype interview.
  8. Transcript/ Text: “Well, there are a lot of pretty standard interactions between a swimmer and coach, whether it is at a meet or during practice.  But those are important all the standard symbols that you might see from a coach during a race. But something that was always really unique to swimming outside of that kind of day to day grind type stuff is that every other sports team dumps a gatorade bucket on their coach or water bucket on their coach when they win a championship, but swimming is different in that we push our Coach in the pool. I’ve always thought that was something really unique that swimmers do when they celebrate.”
  9. Informant’s comments:Andrew had also stated that he was on a very successful team in high school and they had celebrated in this fashion numerous times, however he did not have the opportunity to do so during his Dartmouth career.
  10. Collector’s comments: This ritual was especially unique to swimming as it involves a large body of water.
  11. Tags/ Keywords: Celebration

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