The Vanguards

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Jeff Kirchman from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hey, Jeff.

Hi, Jeff. How are you doing?

Very good, thanks. What’s going on?

My local school district refers to its sports and academic teams as the vanguards. The football team is the vanguards, the basketball team is the vanguards, I suppose even the math team is the vanguards. Now, a few years ago, it occurred to me that we might be using the term vanguards improperly. So I looked up vanguard in the dictionaries available to me, and they all pretty much agree that a vanguard is a group of soldiers at the leading edge of an advancing army.

Okay, so in other words, it’s a number of individuals working together to accomplish a common goal, just like a team. So in my interpretation, the term vanguard is already plural, and we should no more refer to the football team as the vanguards than we would refer to them as the Bearses or the Lionses. And I think the appropriate cheer would be go Vanguard.

Now, my wife is not entirely convinced of my argument, so I guess I’m looking for an expert opinion from you guys.

Here’s the thing.

I think you’re more or less right.

But I think the bigger thing here is to understand that each game can have its own Vanguard. There is one group or two groups or multiple groups in each game that are in the front.

So technically, if you take all the sports and all the games in their aggregate, there are many vanguards. And to go further up the tree in the argument here is you’ll find in military context that it’s often used in the plural.

Because different spurs of advancing troops come in from different directions. They maybe form a pincer and they are both vanguards in the same battle at the same moment.

So that’s one thing.

So I think vanguards is a plural. You can kind of twist it around to make it okay.

And then that throws into doubt whether or not you can go with confidence to the school administrators and the coaches and say, this is wrong and it’s always been wrong and you really should fix it.

If anything comes out of this call, we’ve undermined your confidence.

But made your wife very, very happy, right?

Well, there’s no doubt about that.

But I’m very well practiced in saying that I’m wrong to her.

To your wife?

And doing dishes as a result.

I get it.

I think what you’ve certainly pointed out is that while it may not be completely right, it’s not exactly completely wrong.

Yeah, I think there’s an argument made for each one of these people being a fighting force and yet together also being a fighting force and in effect being multiple vanguards on the field at one time.

Yeah, Jeff, I think you summed it up very well.

Okay.

Well, very good.

Well, I appreciate your take on it and I will move forward like the vanguards.

So we’ll send a copy of this call to your wife just to make sure she actually hears it.

And can play it periodically, once a day.

When you’re feeling smug or overconfident.

Right, right.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Jeff.

I appreciate it.

Go Vanguards.

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