Look to your left.
Now glance right.
Check out the person stumbling on top of you on the bus.
That's right. You're surrounded. They come from destinations like Long Island, New Jersey and other places best not mentioned in polite conversation and they probably applauded at the end of Gone with the Wind.
You got it-Yankees. Damn Yankees, Bob's Big Boy-eating, live and in person, people not from the South. They know the difference between original, famous and famous original pizza, but, and Southerners, this is the most important information you'll get during your first year, they don't know that barbecue means pig (sigh).
But we love them, anyway. They brought us Jason Williams and Dunkin' Donuts after all, and what kind of person would let silly little tiffs stand in the way of good donuts? Besides, 18 years of collard greens should have taught you there's life where there ain't grits.
Thus, in an effort to bridge the gap between the South and the not-the-South, I have devised this quick guide for you, the Southern student, to help understand the games they play.
Duke has 26 varsity sports, and, when I got my sportswriting start at The Warren Record in Warrenton, N.C. (pop. 863), my high school had exactly eight of them: football, baseball, men's and women's basketball, tennis and track.
Now for all you who came from similarly small, rural Southern high schools (spot redundancy, win tobacco), we proudly present The Chronicle's primer to Duke sports you've never played.
Field Hockey - Along with Olympic women's trampolining, a victory for guy-kind alike. The only thing I'm really sure of is that the object is to score. Beyond that, it makes no sense. Whistles blow constantly, apparently as mood music. Just say penalty corner a lot and people will think you know what you're talking about. Works here.
Fencing - Believe it or not, we actually have a fencing team. Roughly 18 out of 20 fencers are from New Jersey, which is just a bit lower than the actual student body. They use lots of French words like epee, touche and truffles. Each of these words features at least one of the following: . We at The Chronicle aren't sure which, but that doesn't matter, because we don't know how to make those things anyway. Play is more or less like deer hunting, except without the deers or beers. And you gotta change all uses of the word Bubba to something like Jean-Luc or Kelli with an 'i'. But let's be honest, we all saw the Real World IV, we know what the deal is.
Soccer - Granted, we play soccer in the South. When I was in high school, one of the best programs in the state was nearby Roanoke Rapids. (Having grown up in a town with one stoplight, and, as of May 1987, we're proud to say, one caution light, we simply called Roanoke Rapids The Metropolis). But until I was in middle school, the word remained a verb to me:
Principal: Johnny, why are we here?
Johnny: Sally wouldn't shut up, so I had to soccer (rimshot).
Men's Lacrosse: There are some sports that, with the urbanization of the South and the national trends toward the advancement of said sports, will eventually be as much a part of Southern culture as the outhouse. Soccer is among these; lacrosse is not. When a bunch of white guys put on masks and start running around beating people, the South doesn't have the best track record.
Women's Lacrosse - Unlike men's lacrosse, it doesn't involve beating people. By rule, checks are illegal. The only way to legally play defense is to run near the opponent and scare them into dropping the ball. The point is, the game doesn't involve contact at all, which is why it will probably never catch on. We like sports with, as the French say, les 'splosions or, failing that, lots of injuries, hence NASCAR and Alabama football. (As for why the South has not embraced hockey, see Lacrosse, men's.) Play calling in a lot of women's lacrosse games goes something like this:
Coach: Kelly, take the ball from that end to this end and score.
Kelly Lacrosse: OK.
So unless you're Carrie and the cool kids just dumped pig's blood on your prom dress, you're probably not a good defender.
Crew - The newest of Duke's varsity sports, crew's apparently popular in places like Connecticut (Kon-net-i-cut) and Massachusetts (Mas-a-chew-sets). Call a boat a shell and a paddle an oar. It's a lot like Bass Masters, except it's not on ESPN and Braves hats are optional.
Swimming - Unfortunately non-scholarship, which in diplomatic terms means we're not competitive on the national level but in realistic terms means it's a moral victory when no one drowns. A great team to root for though, and sometimes they do come out on top-it's just face down. But we do love them at The Chronicle, even if it's not in that way.
Football - You're right, we play football in the South, and a lot of it, but I want to use this space for the power of good, and freshmen here's a tip from a seven-year season ticket holder ($53 per win and counting): You can't beat Wally Wade for getting a tan. Twenty-six thousand empty aluminum bleacher seats all reflecting sun, all yours for $32,000 in tuition or a season ticket, whichever comes first.
Freshmen beware; you'll soon have to get the upperclassmen to tell you about the halcyon days tanners had during the Fred Goldsmith era, because a bowl-bound Airborne this year means the end of the Wally Wade tanning bed as we know it (rumor is, it also functions as a stadium). After all, if a man who makes coaching decisions at Bullock's can't win, what kind of world are we living in?
As for Duke's other sports, I'm pretty sure they're just like the sports we watch on TV every day down South. It's just a shame wrestling coach Clar Anderson missed out in the recruiting battle for The Rock.
UPON FURTHER REVIEW is a weekly column written by a Chronicle sports columnist. It appears every Wednesday.
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