This Saturday the men’s basketball team will attempt to do something which has been done only once since 1990: take back a decrepit old goat which St. Olaf historian Joseph Shaw describes as a “miniature, undernourished sawhorse” with a whisk broom for a beard. The symbol of two basketball victories in one season between rivals St. Olaf and Carleton has been residing in the West Gym trophy case with the exception of the 2002-2003 season when St. Olaf won two overtime victories. Current St. Olaf sports information director Mike Ludwig hit a jump shot with four seconds left in the deciding “goat game” to bring the goat back to its birthplace on Manitou Heights. Temporarily.

The construction of Sayles-Hill Gym at Carleton in 1910 spurred annual basketball clashes and in 1913, after Carleton won both home and away games for the first time, the victors claimed an effigy of a goat labeled Carleton which had been strung up in the rafters of the St. Olaf gym by two St. Olaf students. Late in 1919 hooligans from Hamline took the goat hostage for a brief period before the goat was rescued by two Carleton students. A lengthy sojourn of the goat in exile at Carleton from 1913-1924 ended in 1925 when the Vikings of St. Olaf (as the team was then called) won 26-18 under coach Endre Anderson, who had constructed the goat as a student. When St. Olaf retained the goat in 1926, a writer in the Carletonian said, “Now that they have the goat another year, they must be overcome with a sense of progress. The next thing you know the Norwegians will be dancing or talking about evolution.” Carleton had the goat again from 1927-1941 before the quadruped had a long residency feasting on lutefisk and lefse at St. Olaf from 1959-89.

Last season Carleton won both contests, 72-69 at St. Olaf and, in overtime, 84-73 at Carleton. This year St. Olaf is 15-9 overall and has already clinched a playoff berth with a 14-5 MIAC record while Carleton is 9-15 overall, with a 6-13 MIAC record. St. Olaf won 67-66 at Carleton on Jan. 21st and thus has a chance to win back the goat with a home victory at Skoglund Center at 3 p.m. on Feb. 18. As an Ole, I will be there rooting for that old goat to make its way back up the hill at long last.