Tradition is the act of passing customs and beliefs from one generation and is one of the most powerful cultural tools that hold our societies together. There are religious traditions, cultural traditions, family traditions and of course school traditions. Some are just silly little acts, like a kiss under mistletoe some are sacred like pilgrimages to holy sites.
Colleges are known for their traditions, silly, good and sometimes even bad. At Yale the Crew Team and others rub the toe of a statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey, class of 1820 and former president of Yale University for good luck. At Le Moyne College they have Dolphy Day – a surprise Holiday that is announced at 2 AM with Fireworks. Then there is the tradition at Auburn where they toilet paper trees on a corner at the University. (It is Auburn, so)
Mansfield has its own traditions too, each team keeps a legacy and we honor our past achievements. The Hall of Fame is there for all to see in Decker Gym and pictures of our athletes of the year for the past 30 years decorate our halls. The shaking of the keys at basketball games when our team is up and the calls of "warm up the bus" and our celebration of the being the first school to hold a night football game sometimes called LUMA are just two of many. Coaches and staff are the stewards of those traditions and sometimes with the help of the students on our teams we make new traditions.
Traditions though, can be really fragile especially in the face of a global pandemic. What traditions were lost in that two years that we may never know about and will never return? Large socioeconomic changes have their impact too. Mansfield, Bloomsburg and Lock Haven faced the "integration" with no real understanding of what it would turn out to be or could be. What held though was that our traditions and our identities as individual colleges remain intact. They did.
And so, we are here, post pandemic, integrations now done, and we have our programs and our traditions with us still. So for the first time in three years The Tour De Mountaineer returns!
A 6 day long contest, that challenges the runners to contest of speed, endurance, strength and running intelligence and their coachability. It will honor those who ran before and show the future to those that are here now. Each day over the next six we will tell the story of the challenges, the success, the failures and ups and downs of a team trying to find their way.
Who will win the "Trial of Truth" and lead the way through the daily challenges ending with the greatest traditions of all: The King and Queen of the Mountain, The Colton Point Time Trail? Who will hold the Maillot Jaune? And for how long? Will it be one of the seniors, Christian Tanner and Carly Daniels who have been through so much already or will it be one of the returning sophomores who came so far last year or maybe one of the talented first year runners? We will know in six days on the slopes of Colton Point.
Original source can be found here.
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