General Information about Item:

• Verbal lore/superstition/tradition
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: BH
• Date Collected: 10/13/21

Informant Data:

• BH was a Dartmouth class of 1977 graduate. While at Dartmouth, he was a distance athlete on the men’s cross country and track teams for all four years. After graduating college, he became a track coach, first at other schools, but eventually back at Dartmouth. BH coached at Dartmouth for 28 years before retiring last year. He is still a big team supporter and comes to cheer on the mens and womens teams at any races he can.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: The day before a big cross country race, many teams will arrive at the location of the race. The teams arrive a day early so that they can run through the course and see what it is like. In track meets, a track will always be the same or almost the same, so there is no need to do a “run-through”. However, cross country courses can range wildly, so it is important for teams to know what the course is like so they can make their race plan accordingly. During this course run through is where the superstition detailed below comes into play.

• Social Context: This is a superstition that is passed down through the team as seniors warn freshmen of the potential dangers of crossing the finish line before race day. Additionally, as BH pointed out, this is likely due to the runner’s focus on performing well and crossing the finish line on race day, not the day before. Due to the effort that runners put into each race, it can sometimes be difficult to even reach the finish line, so focusing on putting the effort in there may require going easier on days leading up to it, but this is an important aspect of the sport that upperclassmen remind the underclassmen.

Item:

• When doing a course run-through the day before a cross country meet, you should never cross the finish line or else it will be bad luck and cause someone on your team to have a bad race the next day.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

AB: Ok, um, so yeah! Do you want to give a quick background on who you are?

BH: Yes, um, my name is BH. I am a Dartmouth class of ‘77 which I am quite proud of. I share that class with President Hanlon. I was a college track coach for 40 years, 28 of which were at Dartmouth College. I am still an active runner myself, I still live in Hanover, and I still follow the Dartmouth teams very closely, so I like to stay in touch with the students!

AB: Perfect! So do you want to give me the piece of folklore that you told me?

BH: When I came back to start coaching at Dartmouth back in 1992, one of the things that every coach does is the day before a big race is they have their team jog the course the day before. So that was pretty straightforward, however I noticed something really unusual, like as we were nearing the end of our run. As we were approaching the finish line, a couple of the seniors pulled everybody to the side and said, “Remember, nobody crosses the finish line”. So instead of going down the normal path, everybody veered off the line at the end there. I asked one of the seniors about it and he said, “Well, we never cross the finish line during warm up because it is bad luck-it will be a bad race for somebody tomorrow”. So I kind of thought about it and said, well, no harm no foul, so we’ll just keep on doing that.

AB: Perfect, um and then yeah do you have any like thoughts on, you know, maybe where this came about or what this meant to the team or anything like that?

BH: If I was going to try to analyze it, which is probably difficult to do with a lot of superstitions, I would say that it kind of goes back to the idea that the important thing is the day of the race, not the day before the race. So hopefully it makes people think about, “I really want to focus on crossing the finish line when it counts”, which is on race day, not just on the day before where we’re just kind of warming up and doing something very easy and everything there. So hopefully it’s a superstition that’s rooted in the fact that races are more important than practice.

AB: Perfect thank you so much!

Informant’s Comments:

• Cross country coaches often have the ability to stop superstitions or allow them to continue based on the requirements they set for their athletes. BH explained that in his mind, this superstition was relatively harmless, so he allowed it to continue on his team.

Collector’s Comments:

• This is a superstition that I have also heard throughout my time as a cross country runner, so it is not something that is only done by Dartmouth men’s cross country team. However, I have been on some teams that are adamant about this superstition and some that don’t care, so it is interesting that the men’s team at Dartmouth is so strict about this tradition.
• This is a superstition in the form “If I do A, then B”, where in this case, B is something bad that will occur if the athletes cross the line the day before the race.

Collector’s Name: Abby Brazil