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The Coat of Arms

The Student News Site of Menlo School

The Coat of Arms

The Student News Site of Menlo School

The Coat of Arms

    Playing the game: A tradition in itself

    Playing+the+game%3A+A+tradition+in+itself

    This article is the first in a series about traditions in sports at Menlo; this installment explores Menlo coaches’ perspectives on tradition.

     

    Traditions are an integral part of life at Menlo, yet everyone on campus defines the word “tradition” in different ways.  Some people define it as tangible routines that are repeated on a regular basis, while others identify more with the emotion and mental state that stem from these routines. Regardless of the various ways tradition can be described, it is clear that sports at Menlo embody traditions more than almost anywhere else on campus.  While many may assume that these traditions are mostly tangible cheers or special warm-up routines, Menlo coaches actually identify the majority of traditions on their teams as spiritual.  While each team does have more typical traditions such as girls’ tennis’ pumpkin carving at Halloween and the baseball team’s yearly trip to Las Vegas over spring break, coaches emphasized that working hard and bonding as a team is a tradition within itself.

    According to boys’ baseball coach Craig Schoof, the number one tradition in baseball is “how they play the game.” Year after year,  Schoof said, the team always gives 100 percent and takes pride in everything that they do.  One tradition that embodies these ideas especially is always “giving a hard 90,” or sprinting the 90 feet to first base after batting whether the play is good or not.  The team also focuses on traditions involving team unity, such as taking a long, confined bus ride to Las Vegas instead of a short plane flight, and having upperclassmen mentor the younger players. Girls’ tennis coach Bill Shine’s ideas of tradition closely followed Schoof’s.  While he says that one big tradition is performing well, the way that the team gets there is always by working hard and having fun.  “Being able to play for something other than yourself is incredibly important for individual sports,” Shine said.  He adds that team bonding builds the type of community that supports others and works well together.  One tradition that Shine thinks helps immensely with bonding are the team’s trips to Fresno and Dana Point for tournaments, as they bond the girls both on and off the court. Although both Schoof and Shine have coached for over a decade, they think that changes in traditions are necessary and healthy, and both welcome the idea of changing traditions and ideas with changing generations of athletes.

    While the swim team differs from tennis and baseball in that it doesn’t have the same long-standing traditions that come from having the same coach for many years, the ideas that they found themselves on are very similar.  Swim coach Carla Pugliese states that while the swim team “always seems to be developing new traditions,” the one common factor that holds them together every year is the way they are all “hyper, weird, and goofy.”  Pugliese believes that the swim team does not have traditions because the purpose of tradition is to “create a sense of team, and thus must be created by the swimmers themselves.” She also agrees that traditions should not be set in stone and must change with the passing of time. “Teams need to create their own traditions, even if they last only three to four years,” Pugliese said.  If a current team does not feel like they own a tradition, it will “feel foreign to them,” and not serve its purpose of hyping up the team and bringing the players together. Therefore, traditions will naturally weed themselves out over time if they are not popular, and will never have to be forcibly cut from a team’s routine.

    Overall, Menlo coaches seemed a lot more interested in how traditions benefited their team mentally and emotionally than with the actual traditions themselves. Even within longstanding successful sports teams who have been doing things the same way for years on end, these routines have only stayed the same because of the positive effects that they have on players.  This belief should take pressure off of athletes who feel like their team’s traditions no longer serve their purpose but are scared to ask for change. It should also empower athletes to feel like they are capable of creating new traditions that haven’t been around for twenty years, as long as they increase the spirit level and bonding within the team.

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