Title: Sprints Night

General Information about Item:

• Genre: Customary
  • Subgenre:   Ritual, Ceremony

• Language: English

• Country of origin: USA

Informant Data: Wyatt Smith ’19 is a 20-year-old male caucasian light-weight rower from Hong Kong. He is a long-time rower, having rowed competitively before Dartmouth, and was recruited to Dartmouth’s D150 Lightweight Rowing team.

Contextual Data: 

Social Context: Races are incredibly competitive for lightweight rowing, mainly because the team competes directly with other college teams and because all the weekly practices/weight cutting is in preparation for these races. To relieve the pressure, and celebrate the completion of a season, rowers all join together to observe Sprints Night.

Cultural Context: Sprints Night is a regular ritual that occurs every year after the New England Championships to celebrate the ending of another successful season and to build team unity. It is observed by all members of D150 and is passed down from each generation to the next.

Item: This item is a customary piece of folklore that focuses on the passing down of a ritual that is suppose to help build team unity and celebrate the conclusion of another successful racing season. It is customary because it is a single practiced ritual that happens every year in the same way that involves many different people within the folk group. It is folklore because it is performed by all the members of this folkgroup and celebrates their commonalities.

Associated media:

Transcript (8:49 – 8:58):

WS: “We have a thing called Sprints Night which is after our New England Championships, where we have a sort of, like a big team party, get-together.”

BC: “And that also happens like every single year after the last championships…”

WS: “Every year, yeah.”

Collector’s Comments:

• Sprints Night is very similar to Freshmen Fun Night in that the sharing and passing down of this ritual focuses on all members of the folk group. All members of D150 crew participate in this ritual and it helps remind them of who they are and why they are similar to each other (celebrating the end of their common season). This also reinforces the ritual itself because a stronger more unified team is more likely to want to participate in these pan-folk group rituals and to preserve them.

Collector’s Name: Brian Chekal