Type of Lore: Material Lore

Language: English

Country of Origin: Hanover, NH, USA

Informant Data:

• Clara Guo ’17 is currently a senior at Dartmouth College, majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Education. She was born in Great Falls, VA. In addition to being a Captain of the Dartmouth Figure Skating Club, Clara is also involved in research on campus, and enjoys writing.

Contextual Data:

• Social: Informant was interviewed by Jonathan Meng and John Gilmore at Dartmouth College’s Berry Library. The informant was asked to talk about figure skating folklore unique to the club, and her role as captain.
• Cultural: Informant began skating at age 7. She skated often, but did not start skating seriously until freshman/sophomore year of high school. She functions as one of the Captains of the Dartmouth Figure Skating Club (DFSC). She encountered this piece of folklore during her time as a member of DFSC.

Item:

Associated Audio:

Transcript:

Jonathan: “Do you feel like theres any like team symbol, mascot of some kind, informally or formally? 

Clara: “So we have a sloth. Whats the sloths name?”

John: “Sloopy.”

Clara: “We also have a bear. The sloth was because of one of our ’15 captains, who was kind of sloth-like.

John: “In a good way”.

Clara: “Not in ambition, but more like a general presentation of very chill and calm, and always put together.”

Informant’s Comments:

• Clara talks about the symbolism of the captain being slightly sloth-like, and how those characterisitics kind of resemble the team as a whole .

Collector’s Comments:

• This is a picture of Sloopy the Sloth, the unofficial mascot of the Dartmouth Figure Skating Team. Sloopy is a stuffed sloth that is believed to bring good luck to skaters, and bought to every competition. Sloopy originally belonged to a ’15 captain (graduated in 2015), and serves as an unofficial mascot of the DFSC.

Tags/Keywords:

Sloth, sloopy, green ribbon, mascot,good luck

Collector:

Jonathan Meng