Title: Yale Superstitions – Addie Burton

General Information about Item:

• Customary Lore, Magic Superstition
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Addie Burton
• Date Collected: 11/08/21

Informant Data:

• Addie Burton is a 19 year old female from Orono, MN. She is a female student-athlete in the class of 2024. She went to a private school in Minnesota before going to the University of Minnesota, which she transferred from this year to attend Yale. At Yale she is on the women’s ice hockey team and is in an acapella group.  She has 2 superstitions that she follows strictly before games.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: The cultural context is that putting on gear in a specific order is common amongst hockey players, and re-taping your stick is a very common action that hockey players perform before games. 
• Social Context: The social context is interacting with people who also re-tape their sticks before games, and interacting with others who put a certain side of their gear on before the other side.
• The magic substance in the superstition about taping her stick is stick tape. 

Item:

• This item is a customary type of folklore under the genre of magic superstition. Addie performs these before each home game. 

Transcript:

• “I re-tape my hockey stick and put the blade in the air so it does not touch the ground until game time, and when I get dressed I put my right skate on before my left.”  

Informant’s Comments:

• Addie described the feeling of dread and disdain if her stick touched the ground after she re-taped it, needing it to stay in the air in order to play well. She 

Collector’s Comments:

• I was very intrigued by Addie’s superstitions because while some of her superstitions are common amongst most players, she has a spin on them such as keeping her newly taped stick in the air, something she told me she started doing after watching her older teammates do it. 

Collector’s Name: Currie Putrah