Members of the original kilt-wearing Men's Cross Country Team. Photo courtesy of Joe Lion, class of 1998.
This year a group of students on the Cross Country team has continued an old tradition of wearing kilts at meets, but even members of the team may not be aware of the origins, even though they showed up for the final race of the season in blue tartan.
The kilt tradition began in the fall of 1997, and while the students wore red instead of Watauga blue, the novelty of the kilts has become a recognizable feature of the Watauga team.
"I believe we had the idea during the summer before school started," said Joe Lion, class of 1998. "The Boys XC team won the State Championship in 1996, and we were a very tight team, and we trained all year round together as a group.”
Like many high traditions, it started just as a group of friends goofing off.
“Since we were so close as a team, we spent a lot of time at each other's houses, hanging out and watching movies and such,” said Lion. “Over the summer, the favorite movie for the boy's team to watch together on VHS was Braveheart, the 1995 Mel Gibson movie about the Scottish warrior William Wallace. We thought it was just about the coolest movie we'd ever seen.”
In Braveheart, Mel Gibson wears a traditional Scottish kilt to represent his family clan.
“I don't know whose idea it was at first, but somehow we convinced Britt Marlowe's mother to buy some flannel at a fabric store and fashion it into a homemade kilt,” said Lion. “Eventually, most of the boy's team had made homemade kilts. We started wearing them due to our pre-race warm-ups, and towards the end of the season wore them during the post-race awards ceremonies.”
Other members of the team reminisce about the first time the kilts showed up at a XC meet.
“[Britt Marlowe] was a Varsity captain who viewed the school team as an army pitted against other armies!” Erik Schumacher, class of 98 and runner on the team said. “In 1995 Braveheart was released and was widely popular. Britt bridged the gap by dressing the part and reciting the infamous battle speech just before a race at a large meet. It was euphoric, being geared up for the race, then being propelled by the speech ALL of us knew. We were so pumped up, we could have gone to battle! Varsity destroyed the competition and they adopted the dress and tradition to both intimate the other schools, and create a clan-like bond for Watauga.”
The tradition was lost for a few years and is now in revival for our current Men's XC team.
"Our tradition now is to have the kilts before and after the races, and also to wear to school that day," said sophomore Emory Maiden.
The Men's XC team considers traditions like this invaluable to keeping their hunger for victory alive.
"Often times after winning for so long a team can become complacent, but because we care so much about our friends and allies we run for our bond, and to not fail our clan," said Maiden.
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