Toughness

Title: Toughness

General Information about Item:

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

Informant Data:

  • Name: Buddy Teevens
    • Dartmouth YG: 1979
    • Residence: Hanover, New Hampshire
    • Years of experience coaching: 26 years
    • Current position: Head Coach of Dartmouth Football
  • 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:
    • The coaches encourage the team to be tough in everything that they do, particularly in practices and games.
  • Social Context:
    • This belief is fostered as the team’s culture, players are taught to use this belief to guide their behavior in everything they do.

Item:

  • Belief: The team holds the belief that they need to be physically and mentally tough as a way of life and as a football program.

 

Transcript of Associated File:

Coach Teevens: My memories of Dartmouth Football, and Curt was a part of it he was one of the older guys he was kind of the star of the team, the captain and so forth, there was always a toughness associated. And you know we didn’t have some of the fancy things that Princeton might have or Harvard or Yale but it was just kind of there’s a Dartmouth spirit and you heard about it, and okay what was that? And to me it was kind of embodied by the tough guys. And who was that center from Seattle?

 

Coach Oberg: Jim Lucas

 

Coach Teevens: Jim Lucas. He would just broken hand, sprained ankle, you know he would just go out and play. And there was really a pride in being the tough guy. We’ve had to kind of modify that a little bit here because of injuries with concussive issues and all that but still the idea of “we’re from the woods”. And that’s something that’s creeped in, the granite of New Hampshire, the muscles and the brains, we’ve kind of said hey where are we? From a recruiting standpoint whats the negative? Well you’re in the middle of no place. Let’s spin that into something that’s a positive. We’re in the middle of no place, the frost, the woods, the lovely dark and deep, its uh kind of ominous, and uh kind of preaching that with our guys. So there’s a toughness that hey, Princeton gets on their bus they’ve got their Gucci loafers, their scarves on and so forth coming up 91 it just gets where we’re going. So we kind of play in the mindset of tough physical play. And that was the onset you know, we weren’t real good when we first came back here, I think, the importance of Dartmouth football somehow kind of drifted. And there was almost a “we’re mediocre and that’s okay”. And trying to change the mindset to where “hey it’s real important”. You guys are athletes you put a lot of time and effort into it. For what? And are you just playing for yourselves and to say it’s about me? No you’re playing for all the guys that wore the uniform before. In your cases you know the different sports that you play. And does that resonate with people? I think you have individual goals and you have team goals. And there’s if you look out here we got the All-Ivy’s Players individual goal, and then the team deal. And those are the two, hey how good can you be? Because the better you are the better we’re gonna be. And then what are you willing to sacrifice for the good of the team. And so we talk about toughness in practice and physicality, and kind of playing through stuff. You have bumps? Okay I get that you can play with that. You have injuries you’re crutched up you’re surgically repaired, but you still have that mindset that I’m committed to what I’m doing. And I think it’s passed from class to class and you know when I first came back we were graduating 6,7, 9 guys. You know the attrition rate was just horrendous. And why did they not come out, “I lost the love of the sport, my hearts not in it” I heard all that stuff, And I just flipped it back I said, “Guys weren’t tough enough to see things through” And the guys that are here I don’t care if you win or lose or what, how tough are you in your mindset that’s a Dartmouth mindset that you’re tough guys up in the woods, that’s we’re gonna all compete. And that seemed to kind of take hold over time. Pride in who you were. We’d sing the alma matter, win or lose didn’t make a difference and you know no body used to stand in the stands and some of the guys I think were a little bit embarrassed by it, but I’m proud this is who we represent, which resonated that was a big thing.

 

Coach Oberg: Singing when we were in school was always a big thing. We had gotten here just after women had started coming to Dartmouth so 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, belief, football, toughness

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