Title: The Gauntlet

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Folklore: Ritual
• English
• United States of America

Informant Data:

• Name: Curt Oberg
  • Dartmouth YG: 1978
  • Residence: Hanover, New Hampshire
  • Years of association with Dartmouth Football as an assistant coach: 3
  • Current position: Special Assistant to the Head Coach

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context:
  • This is done by players to help the team get energized and prepared to play the game ahead.
• Social Context:
  • Before a Dartmouth football game there is a tradition of lining up outside the team’s locker room so that teammates could run through almost as if it is a tunnel.

Item:

• Ritual: Gauntlet
  • Before a Dartmouth football game there is a tradition of lining up in two tight lines outside the team’s locker room so that teammates could run through almost as if it is a tunnel. This energizes the team and pumps them up for the game

Transcript of Associated File:

Coach Oberg: There was still not a large number of women on campus so there was a lot of singing in fraternities and singing in the football program and so you know one of the things Coach T did was bring that back in terms of singing the alma matter and you know another thing that was a tradition when we played was which is sort of back in a different kind of format was when we came out of the locker room the entire freshman class would line up in a gauntlet coming out of the old Davis Varsity house and you as football players would run through the gauntlet all the way to the field all the way to the sideline so it was a really awesome tradition for us and then that was gone when Coach Teevens came back and you know there’s a little bit of that now when we come out of Leverone when we have the gauntlet coming out. But that gauntlet was really neat back then because you would literally walk in between, just people were really tight to you and there were like two or three people deep and you’d come through and you got chills up your spine when you were coming out of the locker room. It was a pretty neat tradition back then.

Collector’s Name: Kristen Maiorano

Tags/Keywords:

Verbal Folklore, ritual, football, gauntlet