Team Dinner

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE ITEM:

INFORMANT DATA:

Ruby is a new member of the Dartmouth Women’s Ultimate Frisbee Team, Dartmouth Daybreak, formerly known as Princess Layout. She is a member of the class of 2023 and intends to major in Geography. She played frisbee extensively in in high school on her school’s frisbee team, and she knew that she wanted to continue playing frisbee at Dartmouth. Born on November 6, 2000, she is from Shanghai, China.

CONTEXTUAL DATA:

Cultural Context: Team dinner happens every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in both fall and spring term after practice. In the winter team dinner is often before evening practice. This is a time when the program gets together in upstairs FoCo and dines together. There are traditions incorporated during this meal time as well, for example, it is common for individuals to “rosham,” commonly known as rock, paper, scissors, for who has to take down all the dirty plates. But mostly, team dinner is an unstructured meal where members chat about whatever is on their mind.

Social Context: This ritual was documented in a one-on-one interview in Novack. The frisbee program bonds over team dinners, where topics can range from program activities and frisbee to anything under the sun. Most team members will show up for team dinner, resulting in a crowd of two dozen often times. Sitting together in upstairs FoCo is a great way for team members to become more familiar with each other, and also allows for new members to have the chance to chat with the group in a calm environment, as opposed to practices or game time.

ITEM:

Recording:

TRANSCRIPT:

“So, I have played three years on my high school team, and it was in a completely different cultural setting than Dartmouth. It was a high school mixed [gender] team. Transforming from my high school frisbee experience to Dartmouth, I found one significant similarity that we share, like my high school team and the Dartmouth Ultimate team. And it is that we spend a lot of time together eating meals. We used to eat meals after every tournament [in high school] and there was a specific restaurant that we’d always go to when we finished every tournament. It was kind of like a celebration and we just had a really fun time there. And I feel like its very similar to what we have now on the Dartmouth Frisbee team because we have team dinner after every practice.”

INFORMANT’S COMMENTS:

COLLECTOR’S COMMENTS:

Across cultures, we have found that team dinners are a commonality between Ultimate Frisbee teams. Both Ruby’s frisbee experience in high school in China and Dartmouth’s frisbee program have a very similar team dinner tradition. Ultimate Frisbee is a sport that relies on team dynamics for good performance, and this intricate dynamic is fostered over time. Traditional team dinners serve as an additional avenue for teams to foster this sense of community. The similarities between these two frisbee experiences is particularly notable because of the wide sociopolitical and cultural differences between Shanghai and Hanover.

COLLECTOR’S NAME:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive