For the Deerfield football team, "The Norm Chop" has become a rite of fall, but no one seems to remember how it started...who started it...or why they started it - not even Norm himself.

Nevertheless, "The Norm Chop" will remain until Norm Therien, the man for whom this tradition is named, either retires, "Or my legs give out."

Therien, who has been working at Deerfield since he graduated from high school 30 years ago, is one of three people-along with Dottie Harris and Ron Connors-who run the stockroom area. And around these parts, finding the bright side of things means a whole lot more than just the thousands of uniforms Therien, Harris and Connors help transform from grubby to gleaming.

Down in the belly of the athletic building, down where their office space is affectionately dubbed "The Cage," they have nurtured an oasis of sorts. They have created a destination smack dab in the middle of campus for the athlete- or the student-who sometimes needs a place to get away from it all. Whether it's a subtle shoulder to cry on or a sounding board to reverberate off, Harris' window is always open for business for her girls.

As for the boys, "The Norm Chop" is a less subtle way of letting off steam.

"Next to the game itself, it's what the team looks forward to all week long," said Josh Lesko, a four-year starter on the Big Green football squad. "After every Friday practice we'd all meet at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the locker room," explained Lesko '05. "Then we'd start the chant of 'Nooooooooorm'

And at the same time, we'd hold up our helmets and swing them back and forth thus...'The Norm Chop'. I think I can speak for all my teammates over the past four years when I say that we all looked forward to that time. It always helped break the tension that had been building...especially if we had a big game coming up."

"We didn't have a Dottie chant," said Steph Olchowski '05, who, like Lesko, was a four-year, three-sport standout and who is playing hockey at Boston College this year. But maybe they really didn't need one. Harris, who moved to "The Cage" when the school returned too co-education in 1989, is too busy being everyone's second mom.

"Dottie's a godsend," said Olchowski. "She has everything under control...give her two weeks and she's memorized what face belongs to which uniform number. But more than that, she's always got a shoulder to lean on. And that's pretty important, especially for a young freshman who's away from home for the first time. No matter what's wrong, you always knew you could talk to Dottie...you knew she'd always make time for you...She's awesome."

And it's not just the students who bestow the superlatives upon Harris. The faculty thinks she's pretty wonderful, too. "It's like she has a sixth sense about kids," said Jim Lindsay, the school's athletic director. "She's always there to give encouragement and she'll put her arm around a student, talk and make things better. I know-I've seen it happen."

Overall, Lindsay considers the entire stockroom team second-to-none.

"Norm pays great attention to detail," added Lindsay. In fact, I'd bet that anyone who ever played a varsity sport at Deerfield could come back here and Norm could tell them what uniform number they wore. They might forget but Norm never would."

As for Connors, who has been on the job now for 20 years, "He's our mister fix-it," explained Lindsay. "If anything's broken...anything from scoreboards to helmets...Ron's the guy we call upon. He's also involved in purchasing uniforms, as well as selling some of those orders in the stockroom store, which he manages.

Next to the school's Dining Hall crew, these three members of the stockroom have more direct contact with the students than any other element of the school.

Deerfield has just over 600 students "and I'd say we deal with 580 of them during the school year," said Harris. That figure may seem a bit staggering, but not when you consider that Deerfield fields 59 teams in 31 different sports. And due to that fact, the first assignment for Harris and Therien every Monday morning is to pick up a copy of the athletic schedule for the coming week.

"It's my Bible," quipped Harris, holding up an 8x11 sheet of paper, "I'd be lost without it." It tells them everything they need to know. From there, everything falls into place.

"Home games mean green uniforms," said Therien, "and away games mean white, unless you're playing public high schools or colleges. Then it's the other way around."

When they return, the players hand over their uniforms. They are stashed in huge hampers and put through commercial-sized washers and dryers. The next morning, they are back in the "The Cage," waiting to be either hung up or folded. It sounds simple, but it's not. The washers are computerized, and computers do malfunction. Like the time Harris wheeled the boys hockey uniforms over there. "They went in green and they came out blue," she said.

And for once, it was Dottie Harris who needed a shoulder to lean on.