Title: Sweatpants

General Information about Item:

• Magic Superstition, Sympathetic
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: D.H.
• Date Collected: 11-3-2021

Informant Data:

• D.H. is a male Dartmouth student in the class of 2022.  He was born in Massachusetts.  During his time at Dartmouth, Daniel enjoys playing xbox and video games in general. While at home he often watches sports and would love to gamble if it wasn’t against D1 rules for athletes. He is currently studying economics and government and hopes to find a job in either of those fields after graduation.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: In sports there is always an expectation to perform. Therefore an item of clothing is often associated with a good or bad performance. If a player wears a different pair of socks than normal and performs badly, then they will often associate the poor performance with the pair of socks. For lacrosse, a lot of good older goalies he played with always wore sweatpants instead of shorts and pads on their legs. D.H. saw this as a kid and begun to wear the sweatpants instead in order play well
• Social Context: D.H. explained that his team has a large number of individual superstitions. While he picked up the sweatpants superstition from older teammates, he has found that it is a particularly rare occurrence for lacrosse goalies to wear sweatpants. He has been wearing sweatpants for around six years and does not know if he will ever stop wearing them (maybe if he has a really bad few games in a row he would consider changing). 

Item:

• The sweatpants he wears are not a specific pair of sweatpants, but he always wears a set of sweatpants that represent his team. He knows that the sweatpants do not protect his legs from blocked shots in the game, but he finds them comfortable and relates them to his good performances over the years.

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

Transcript:

• “Most of our team’s superstitions exist from individual standpoint rather than team actions. My superstition originates from a time where I played particularly well while trying something new from an older teammate, so I adopted a new superstition. On the other hand, if I play a bad game, I perhaps will find a new superstition. I’ve been wearing sweatpants for probably 6 years.”

Informant’s Comments:

• “I’m not sure whether it is a superstition or just a tradition I’d like to keep going, but I do know that if I went into a game without the sweats, I would be uncomfortable.”

Collector’s Comments:

• D.H.’s superstition of wearing sweatpants is really interesting to me because when I grew up playing lacrosse, I never saw a goalie wear sweatpants instead of shorts and pads. Therefore, when I originally saw D.H. wearing them during the game I assumed maybe he was cold or thought it was for style. After hearing the origin of his sweatpants, I now consider it to be a superstition and find it extremely unique. 

Collector’s Name: 

• Brock Paul
• Class of 2023
• Dartmouth College
• Professors Apresyan and Gronas

Tags/Keywords:

• Sympathetic Magic
• Dartmouth College Athletics
• English
• Northeast America
• Lacrosse