University of Chicago Maroons: The C-Blanket

The U of C has a rich history and tradition in collegiate athletics. Amos Alonzo Stagg was big into comporting yourself with dignity, recognizing personal integrity and excellence on and off the field. (See two neat videos of him here and here.) He and his counterpart at Chicago, Gertrude Dudley, founded the Order of the C and the Women's Athletic Association (WAA) at Chicago in 1904. These organizations are run by and recognize the men and women who participate in athletics at Chicago.

Stagg is credited with awarding the first varsity letters to athletes in this country in 1906. Both the Order of the C and the WAA continue in these traditions begun so long ago. As a four year letter winner, I received the following (in order):

Letter sweater (v-neck, somewhere in storage)
Letter jacket
Watch (lost)
C-Blanket

I will have to say that my C-Blanket is one of my most prized possessions. Both the Order of the C and the WAA present athletes with this award in the same way. All four-year letter winners are asked to come before an audience at the year-end ceremony, and your coach places your blanket around your shoulders. It is a really nice ceremony.

Here is an example of male athletes receiving their blankets many years ago. Note they are standing on a 'C' in the field and that there are stars on the blankets. Every sport has a specific color star. Captains have a special star. Each athlete also has his name embroidered on the corner:





Here is a modern-era C-blanket. The black star denotes captain. Green is for volleyball. Silver is track & field. They used to just put one star per sport, but now they put on a star for every year lettered.





I wonder when Wisconsin started their letter and blanket traditions? How many others out there have similar traditions at your alma mater?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more