Tag Archives: American

Clean Locker Room (Jake Guidone)

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  1. General Info
    • Locker room tradition
    • Type of Lore: Customary
    • Informant: KB
    • Place of Origin: Princeton, New Jersey
  2. Informant Data:
    • Kevin Bruce is a twenty one year old male who plays football at Princeton University. Kevin was born and raised in Needham, MA, where he attended Needham High School. He is currently a senior defensive lineman on the Princeton football team, and has resided in Princeton, New Jersey for the past four years.
  3. Contextual Data:
    • Princeton considers themselves to be atop the Ivy League, regardless of their record or season trajectory. They hold themselves to a high standard, and feel they play better when all players hold themselves accountable.
  4. Tradition
    • After every practice, every single Princeton player is responsible for helping to clean their locker room. Princeton takes their locker room very seriously, and believes if they can keep it looking clean (by doing the little things right), it will help them achieve perfection in the season. A clean locker room is the sign of a well organized team, and well run a team. This also brings the team closer together as a whole, helping build trust among players that everyone will do their part, and do it to perfection.

“Locker Room Pre-Game Chant” (Jake Guidone)

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  1. General Info
    • Locker room tradition
    • Type of Lore: Verbal/Customary
    • Informant: DG
    • Place of Origin: Providence, RI
  2. Informant Data:
    1. Daniel Gioioso is a twenty-two year old male who plays football at Union College. Daniel, who goes by Dan, was born in Newton Massachusetts but raised in Walpole Massachusetts. Dan attended Xaverian Brothers High School where his love of football flourished. Currently, he resides in Schenectady, New York, where he attends Union College and has played football for the past four years. 
  3. Contextual Data:
    1. The Union football team has seen great success since Dan joined the team in 2017. They recently won their national championship at the division 2 level. Dan started for the team throughout his entire collegiate career, and has helped Union by recruiting kids, and improving the culture at the school.
  4. Text/Tradition:
    1. To do this, Dan, amongst the other players, employ a locker room chant to get the players riled up and ready to play. This chant is a tradition at Union that had fallen off a little before Dan’s arrival. This chant was inherited from the older players, and said before every game. The chant is 16 lines, and the captain of the team gets in the middle of all the players in the locker room. This chant helps to build character, and ignites the fighting passion of the Union football players.
    2. Here are a few lines:
      1. “As I walk across the field today, it comforts me to know that I am the roughest, toughest guy on the field. I have been coached well, I show no mercy, so help me God”. 

Pregame Prayer (Evan Hecimovich)

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General info:

  • Type of Lore: Verbal/Customary/Material
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: N.G.
  • Date collected:11/4/2021

Informant Data: N.G. is a 5th year Senior at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. He has lived in Naperville his entire life. While playing for Naperville North High School, he would play one game a year at his current team’s stadium.

Context:

Cultural: North Central is a very successful division 3 football program with a national championship on their record from 2019. It is a private Christian university. The teams head coach takes the schools religious background very seriously.

Social: William Shatzer was a member of the North Central College class of 1942 where he was an All-American football player. He had an opportunity to go the NFL, but with the entrance of the USA into World War 2, he volunteered for the Navy Air Corp. in 1944 he was shot down over the Pacific and never seen again.

Item: Before each game, the team heads out the statue of William Shatzer that stands outside the entrance to the locker room. Here the coach speaks about the sacrifice Shatzer made and they take a moment of silence to reflect. After this the team is led in a prayer by the head coach.

Transcript: “Before every game we head out to this statue of someone who played here in the 40’s and was a fantastic player with a chance to go the league. Instead, he joined the Military and went MIA. Here our coach talks about selflessness, and we have a chance to reflect. He then leads us in our pregame prayer.”

Informant comments: “I think its really about being selfless. Here you have this guy that had a great opportunity for his future but gave it up to fight for something bigger than himself.”

Shower Games (Evan Hecimovich)

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General info:

  • Type of Lore: Customary, Games
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: A.L.
  • Date collected:10/29/2021

Informant Data: A.L. graduated from Valparaiso University in 2019 after playing four years of football. He is originally from Lisle, Illinois where he grew up with his two parents and sister. A.L. has always been a large individual for his age and began football in the 4th grade. A.L. and his friends growing up would often play tackle football without pads in the park, which is where he first discovered his passion for the game.

Context:

  • Cultural: Valparaiso is a division 1 FCS football program. They typically do not win most of their games. Valparaiso is in the non-scholarship Pioneer League and most of the players are playing for the love of the game. It is a private Catholic University in Indiana.
  • Social: With Valparaiso traditionally not a winning program, the occasions in which they win games are very special. Players get especially excited over wins. The team enjoys celebrating these wins together in the locker room.

Item: Following a victory, players head into the locker room as they usually do and after some initial celebrations, begin to get in the showers. In the showers, several upperclassmen will cut to the front of the line with only their helmets on. The people in the shower will spray their soap in the middle of the shower and turn their showerheads so they are spraying the middle of the shower. The upperclassmen will then slide through the middle of the showers into the far wall.

Transcript: “After we win and talk with our coaches, we head to the locker room to celebrate. Everyone begins to take their stuff off following the game. The seniors put on their helmets and head to the shower. The people in the showers already spray their soap in the middle of the showers to make it slippery. So, then the seniors slide down the middle of the showers sort of like a slip n slide into the wall at the end.”

Informant Comments: As wins are not come by that often, the celebration with your teammates afterwards makes it that much more special.

Club Dub (Evan Hecimovich)

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General info:

  • Type of Lore: Customary, Dances
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: M.A.
  • Date collected:11/8/2021

Informant Data: M.A. is a member of the class of 2021 at Amherst College where he plays football. He returned for the 2021 season after the Covid-19 Pandemic cancelled his senior season. He is originally from Cheshire Connecticut where his father is a high school football coach. Being the son of a football coach, the sport has always been a huge part of his life and upbringing.

Context:

  • Cultural: Being a division 3 school, there are no scholarships for athletics. The athletes on these teams are playing primarily for fun and their love of the sport. M.A. plays for this reason and believes many of his teammates share his passion. Amherst is a competitive school in their collegiate division.
  • Social: A handful of individuals on the team are from Illinois and therefore fans of the Chicago Bears. In 2018 the Chicago bears started a tradition where they would hire a DJ, have colorful lights set up, and have a dance party amongst the team following wins both home and on the road. Videos of these celebrations were often posted to the internet and spread widely.

Item: Following a victory, Amherst celebrates with their own version of “Club Dub”. Someone on the team, typically a senior or captain, takes control of the speakers and plays music in the locker room. Another individual (or a few) will flip the lights in the locker room on and off rapidly to create a sort of strobe light. Others will take their phones out and flip the flashlights on and off to add to the light show. In this environment the teammates dance and celebrate their win together.

Transcript: “We do a sort of celebration after each of our wins. We call it Club Dub and it’s based on the Club Dub that the Chicago Bears are known to do. It started in 2018 when the Bears started doing it and someone on the team brought it up and thought it would be a fun way for our program to celebrate victories. We obviously don’t have the same funding as an NFL team so we just have one of the old guys take aux and create the light effect by flashing the lights on and off in a strobe and using phone lights. “

Informant’s comments: It is a fun way to celebrate a win and let loose with teammates after a hard week of preparation and game.

Freshman Conditioning (Evan Hecimovich)

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General info:

  • Type of Lore: Customary, Initiation Rite
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: E.W.
  • Date collected: 11/2/2021

Informant Data: E.W. is a 2/021 graduate of Butler University where he played football from 2017-2019. He played running back and was transitioning to cornerback before Covid-19 cancelled the season

Context:

  • Cultural: Butler is a private university in Indiana. While the Basketball team is well known for its national success, The football plays in the FCS non-scholarship Pioneer Football League.
  • Social: The item serves as a rite of initiation that every upperclassman had gone through at one point. It enables bonding through shared experiences and humor. It is done with harmless intentions and everyone has a good laugh about it afterwards.

Item: The upperclassmen would tell the Freshman they were going to run sprints early in the morning. As a rite of passage, the Freshman had to go to the locker room and put on all their pads and gear. Everyone would line up to begin the sprints, and as they began, the upperclassmen would fall behind and leave the field. The Freshman would continue running downfield for up to 100 yards before realizing it was all a joke.

Transcript:” So during camp each year we convince the freshman we are going to do extra conditioning led by the upperclassmen. This is during camp when the days are very long already. We get them early in the morning and tell them they have to go into the locker room and put on their pads for it as a sort of initiation thing. Once they come out, we line up for sprints and start. At the start of the sprint we all just go kind of slow and then stop and let the freshman continue to sprint as we all just leave the field and go back to our rooms. Some of them go the whole field before noticing we’re gone. “

“The Brick” (Jake Guidone)

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  1. General Info
    1. Locker room tradition
    2. Informant: Andrew Irwin
    3. Place of Origin: Cambridge, MA
    4. Material Tradition
  2. Informant Data:
    1. Andrew Irwin is a twenty-two year old male who plays football at Harvard University. Andrew was born and raised in Altoona, PA, where he attended Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic High School. Andrew is currently a senior linebacker on the Harvard football team, and has resided in Cambridge, MA for the past four years.
  3. Contextual Data:
    1. In recent years, Harvard has always been at the top in terms of Ivy League football. But it wasn’t always like that. Back in the 1980’s and most of the 1990’s Harvard football was a disaster. They were not playing well, and it was like the program had hit a roadblock. The coaching staff and players were unsure if it was just their time in history to be average, or if they were cursed. Something had to be done in order to get the program back on track. In the year 2000, after having lost to the Ivy League champions (University of Pennsylvania) by just one point, things seemed to be trending in the wrong direction. However, things changed after a team trip to the local swimming spot nearby. 
  4. Item/Tradition:
    1. No one is sure of how this tradition started, or by whom, but on that trip to the swimming spot, a Harvard football player picked up a brick in the middle of the lake. He began throwing in the air as high as possible, and everyone had to run away before being hit. Apparently, the team was enthralled by the brick since there was nothing to do at the lake besides swim. They ended up bringing the brick back to their football locker room. As a joke, the player who found the brick brought it to the team’s first game. They pumbled their opponent by 35 points. Since that point, the team brought the brick to every game, and would make sure to safely return it to the locker room immediately after. That year, Harvard went 9-0, and was one of only two teams to ever go undefeated in the Ivy League. Now, the brick resides in the Harvard Locker room, and is brought to every game for good luck.

“Friday Night Locker Room Watch Party” (Jake Guidone)

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  1. General Info
    1. Locker room tradition
    2. Informant: Callum Flanders
    3. Place of Origin: Providence, RI
    4. Verbal and Customary Tradition
  2. Informant Data:
    1. Callum Flanders is a twenty-two year old male who plays football at Brown University. Callum, who goes by Cal, was born and raised on the south shore in Braintree, Massachusetts. He attended Xaverian Brothers High School where he developed his love for sports. Cal currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island, where he has attended Brown and played division one football for the past four years. 
  3. Contextual Data:
    1. College football was a lot different than Cal had expected. At Brown, the football team is not the focal point of the university (like many serious division one colleges), where attendance and the perception of football are at a low point. This was due to a continually losing football program at Brown. Players were not getting excited when their teammates were making big plays. They were not celebrating like other winning programs would, and it showed.
  4. Item/Tradition:
    1. In order to change culture, a few seniors (who graduated in 2010) began the “Friday Night Locker Room Watch Party”. No one knows who exactly started the tradition, but the players get together as a team on Friday night before the game, in the locker room. There, they watch the Ivy League Friday Night game on tv. They get food catered, bring gaming consoles, and play super smash bros. Players eat, talk and generally spend more time with each other (outside structured time). Friendships and true bonds are built through this unstructured time, and the tradition helps players become more willing to celebrate when their teammates/friends make a big play. 

“Senior Spotlight” (Jake Guidone)

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  1. General Info
    1. Locker room tradition
    2. Informant: John Dean
    3. Place of Origin: New Haven, CT
    4. Verbal and Customary Tradition

  1. Informant Data:
    1. John Dean is a twenty four year old male who plays football at Yale University. John was born in White Plains, New York, but was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Xaverian Brothers High School, where he played both football and lacrosse, and was also named to the academic scholar athlete all-star team. Currently, John resides in New Haven, Connecticut, where he has attended Yale for the past five years. John is the current and only captain of the Yale football team, and has played football his entire life. 

  1. Contextual Data:
    1. John decided to attend Yale University out of high school, a wise decision both academically and athletically. He had received offers from bigger and better schools in terms of football, but decided that he wanted an Ivy League education. As a freshman, John was worried about college expectations, and what managing football and academics would entail. College, especially Ivy League institutions, can be overwhelming for new students at times. This is why Yale Football has a tradition that helps the younger players get a feel for college life, and it’s called “Senior Spotlight”

  1. Text/Tradition:
    1. “Senior Spotlight” is a week to week tradition that takes place during every Yale football season. The night before every game, a random senior is chosen to give a speech in front of the entire team in the Yale locker room. These speeches usually last around twenty to thirty minutes, and are about that seniors’ experience with the school, team, and/or their life. “It is meant to be an open conversation”. The significance of this tradition lies in the unity of the team. It gives everyone a senior’s point of view of what they went through. It also helps the young players, bringing them closer to the team as a whole. Yale does this every season to help better the culture of their team, and bring the new players up to speed on what it means to be a Yale football player. The origin of this tradition is unknown, and has been going on since John arrived as a freshman (and well before that), making this a piece of Yale folklore. 

Note Cards Under the Pillow – American (Caroline Carr)

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Title: Note Cards Under the Pillow

General Information about item:

  • Customary Folklore, Superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: LB
  • Date Collected: 10-26-21

Informant Data:

LB is a (’24) sophomore at Dartmouth College. She is majoring in economics and is a member of the Dartmouth Investment and Philanthropy Program. She is from San Diego, California and has lived there her whole life. She attended The Bishops School for high school.  

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: LB’s family is very academically motivated, and both her parents have studied at amazing institutions. Her mother attended Stanford University for undergraduate school and later Georgetown Law School. Her father attended Yale University for undergraduate school and later Harvard Law School. Growing up her parents always expected very good grades and therefore LB studied very hard just like her parents had done.     
  • Social Context: LB first learned this superstition from her dad when she was younger. One night when she was struggling to study when she was around 8 years old, her dad told her to write out notecards with the material she needed to know and before going to bed that night to put them under her pillow. By putting the notecards under the pillow right before going to bed, it would allow her brain to absorb the information as she slept. Once LB’s younger brothers got old enough, her dad also shared this superstition with them, and they have since started to do it. LB explained that many of her friends also do it now after she told them about the superstition. This superstition was collected in an in-person interview.

Item:

Prior to tests, LB would sleep with her notecards under her pillow so that her brain would “absorb the information in her sleep”. 

Transcript:

“My pre-test superstition is that the night before a test, I sleep with my notecards under my pillow so that my brain will absorb the information as I sleep. By doing this, I hope that I will know all the material on my notecards so that I can get a good grade on the test. My dad told me that he and all his siblings did this when they were going through school, so my siblings and I started doing it when we were younger, and we still continue to do it. Even some of my closest friends started putting their notecards under their pillows before tests after I told them about the superstition”.

Informant’s Comments:

  • “Despite there being other more efficient ways to study, I still write out notecards so that I can put them under my pillow. I plan on doing this the rest of college and to pass it on to my children”.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I found it interesting that LB continues to do this despite there being easier and more time efficient ways to study. It is evident that LB feels this superstition is important in her success in school because she continues to do it and plans on passing it to her children.

Collector’s Name: Caroline Carr

Tags/Keywords: 

  • Superstition
  • American
  • Female
  • Dartmouth
  • Note Cards