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Pre-HEPS Dinner and Cheer

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General Information about Item:

• Ritual / Tradition
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: USA
• Informant: TBS
• Date Collected: 11/15/19

Informant Data:

TBS is a ‘23 from Portland Oregon on the Track & Field team. She has been on the team for three years and participates in the throwing events, specifically hammer and weight throw. She began competing in track and field her senior year of high school.  

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: Dartmouth is one of eight colleges in the Ivy League. The Ivy League is a Division I athletic conference made up of colleges and universities all located in the eastern U.S. and extremely rigorous academically. The biggest competition each season for the track and field and cross-country teams that compete in this conference is the Heptagonal Championships, or HEPS for short. This meet is referred to as the heptagonal championships because there used to be only seven teams in the Ivy League. Throughout the years some schools left the league and others joined to create a total of the eight teams there are today, however the name of this championship stuck. This meet is the only one all year where only all eight teams compete against each other, and it is extremely important.
• Social Context: Although not every athlete on the team qualifies to compete at HEPS, the whole team comes together to send off those competing. It is important for overall team comradery and spirits going into the competition. It is also very common for all athletic teams to eat a meal together before competition so they can form deeper connections with their teammates.

Item:

• The tradition is that before the HEPS meet, the whole team comes together and has a team dinner at 53 Commons and does a team cheer at the end as a sendoff for those competing.

Associated Media File: 

Video of the 2010 Dartmouth Track and Field Team doing the team cheer before the 2010 Heptagonal Championships.

Informant’s Comments:

TBS says that before every big meet, specifically HEPS, the whole team sits at the “track team” table at 53 Commons and eats dinner together. At the end of the meal, one of the captains begins the team cheer and the rest of the team joins in and chants together. This is done in front of all the other people eating in the dining hall. While it can be somewhat embarrassing to draw attention to yourself by participating in the cheer, you know you are not alone because the whole team is participating in it. It is a great bonding experience and one that makes you feel really special and proud to be a part of the Dartmouth track and field team.  

Collector’s Comments:

  • As a newer member of the track and field team whose experience has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, this is not a tradition that I have been able to participate in yet. However, I am very excited to do this before the indoor HEPS this upcoming winter. The cheer is something that all new athletes on the team learn very soon after arriving on campus. This is a great example of verbal folklore because the author is unknown, it is passed down orally through generations, and it doesn’t have any true meaning other than for the team itself. The team dinner is also important because of the bonding it encourages between event groups and upper/underclassmen.

Collector’s Name:

Madyson Buchalski

Team Dinner

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GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE ITEM:

  • Customary Folklore – Tradition
  • Language: English
  • Country of origin: United States
  • Informant: Ruby
  • Date Collected: 11/10/19

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: 

  • International Comparison – Team Dinner

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:

  • “I have been able to meet more people in the program through team dinner.”

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: 

  • Luke Cuomo and Annett Gawerc