E.T.A. institutional lore: the saga of Head Trainer Barry Loach

texture · 20 Nov YDAU (recounts back-story)

• When: told as standing tradition, framed on 20 Nov YDAU in the pre-gala locker room; the events recounted predate the present by years
• What: A worked example of how the academy transmits its own history: "One E.T.A. tradition consists of Big Buddies recounting to new or very young Little Buddies the saga of Loach and how he ended up as an elite Head Trainer" without a Training degree. The tale — Loach, youngest of a staunch-Catholic brood, and his seminarian brother's collapse of faith in human goodness; the "touch me, just touch me, please" experiment outside Park Street Station that nearly sank Barry into Boston street-life — resolves when E.T.A.'s own Mario Incandenza, fourteen and clueless, simply shook Loach's outstretched hand, "which led through a convoluted but kind of heartwarming and faith-reaffirming series of circumstances" to Loach's hiring as Assistant Trainer. The saga also encodes an institutional-policy origin: Loach was promoted to Head Trainer "just months later when the then-Head Trainer suffered the terrible accident that resulted in all locks being taken off E.T.A. saunas' doors and the saunas' maximum temperature being hard-wired down to no more than 50°C." See the Mario timeline.