Team Pong Tournament

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE ITEM:

INFORMANT DATA:

Cathleen Li is an active swimmer on the Dartmouth Women’s Swim Team at Dartmouth College. She is part of the Class of 2021, and she has been swimming since her freshman fall. Born on May 13, 1999, she is from Boston, Massachusetts. She started swimming recreationally at three or four years old, but she notes that she began swimming competitively at the age of seven. Her favorite stroke is Butterfly.

CONTEXTUAL DATA:

Cultural Context: This folklore is a customary tradition that the entire Dartmouth Swim Team engages in, every single Fall term. Including the Women’s and Men’s team, this bonding experience is a fun event held by both teams to foster and encourage inter-gender team mingling and bonding, since the activity of Dartmouth pong involves team coordination and team communication. This pong tournament held near the end of the fall term every year has been a favorite tradition of many swimmers, since the game is a fun way to bring swimmers closer together, despite gender. Again, this tradition highlights how collective the sport is, but also how individualistic the swimmers are in their respective sport. Therefore, the team pong tournament encourages a collective team spirit, since swimming is very specifically tailored to a single teammate during meets and competitions.
Social Context: This folklore data was collected on the third floor of the Baker-Berry Library at Dartmouth College. This tradition of a pong tournament is held every single Fall term, yearly. Usually, upperclassmen will be paired with underclassmen, as a way to foster team bonding. The pong tournament includes the game of Dartmouth pong, a game that involves a ping-pong style of activity in which individuals must play ping pong with ping pong paddles, in an attempt to hit a ping pong ball over to the opposing side and into (or hit onto) the cups shaped like a “tree.”

ITEM:

Every Fall term at Dartmouth, the Dartmouth Women’s and Men’s Swim and Dive team will participate in a pong tournament.

TRANSCRIPT:

INFORMANT’S COMMENTS:

“Every year, the pong tournament is something I look forward to. It’s so fun, and the partners get to dress up in a team costume. It’s a fun way to just hang out as a team.”

COLLECTOR’S COMMENTS:

This yearly tradition does not specifically categorically fall into any focused rites of passage, as this event is a fun, relaxing way for swimmers to bond and connect outside of routine practices and stressful swim competitions and meets. However, it can be stated that this pong tournament tradition is still a rite of incorporation, since many underclassmen swimmers are still not closely acquainted with the older members of the team at the end of the Fall term. Therefore, this event is an effective but fun way for the intermingling of all team members, regardless of age or gender. The team can socialize outside of the sport, and it is a fun way for the members to feel like permanent teammates on the Dartmouth Swim and Dive team.

COLLECTOR’S NAME: Sarah Sim

Dartmouth Folklore Archive