General Information about Item:

• Customary Lore, Ritual
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Megan Cornell
• Date Collected: 2-22-18

Informant Data:

• Meg Cornell is an 18 year old freshman defenseman on the Dartmouth College women’s hockey team. She is from Bloomington, Minnesota and is currently undecided on her major. Meg started playing hockey when she was six years old and hasn’t looked back since. Meg is the youngest in her family and has two older brothers.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: This ritual was not bequested nor handed down to Meg and Linda. They began this ritual on their own, and thus the origin of the ritual traces back to this past season (2017-2018). Meg and Linda enjoy this ritual between each other, and believe that it instills a confidence within them to perform their very best.
• Social Context: Before every game before the first period begins, the entire team get into a huddle by the net. In the pregame huddle before her teammate Alyssa Baker joins, Linda and Meg stand next to each other. First Linda slaps Meg’s stick, then Meg slap her stick, then Linda slaps Meg’s stick–it gets pretty aggressive! Meg is not exactly sure how or why this ritual started, but they kept it up all season.

Item:

• The pregame stick slap ritual was not bequested to either of them, but they just began doing it spontaneously on their own and ultimately became a ritual between them. They definitely plan on keeping up this ritual for the next three years and maybe will bequest it to two other players at the culmination of their senior year. This ritual gets them ‘pumped up’ and ready to go for the game!

Meg and Linda are next to each other in the huddle, slapping each other’s sticks a few times

Transcript:

• “Yeah, so Linda and I just kind of started slapping each other’s sticks in the huddle before games–honestly it gets pretty aggressive! We definitely have a lot of fun with it. I’m not sure if we will pass this down to younger teammates, but Linda and I will definitely keep doing this for the next three years.”

Informant’s Comments:

• Like I said, the stick slapping can get pretty aggressive ,so you need to make sure you have your feet (or skates) under you!

Collector’s Comments:

• Meg was interviewed by Sarah Tabeek in downstairs Collis on a friday afternoon. Webpage published by Sarah Tabeek.

Collector’s Name: Sarah Tabeek

Tags/Keywords:

• Customary Lore
• Ritual
• Stick Slap