Mud Cup: A History of Sportsmanship
On October 18, 2019, the DTM Dynamos faced the GL Pistons in the 23rd World Mud Cup. After a remarkable show of skill from both of the campus' historic teams, the Dynamos solidified their status as soccer champions for the second year in a row with a 2-1 win over the Pistons.
Tim Jones, captain of the DTM Dynamos and Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow, led his team to victory. After a dramatic, last-minute win, Jones offered the following to his teammates, "I'm proud of the Dynamos for keeping their cool when we were down and working together to find the decisive goal in the final minutes of the game.”
A History of Sportsmanship
The history of the match runs deep on Carnegie Science's Broad Branch Road campus. It all began in 1976 with a tongue-in-cheek letter from the Geophysical Laboratory, which at the time was located fewer than two miles away on Upton Street. Naming their team the "Laboratory Pistons," they challenged the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism to the first-official interdepartmental soccer match. Responding with a letter of their own (and putting post-game drinks on the line), DTM chose their team name–the "DTM Dynamics.” The rest, as they say, is history.
with this letter from the Geophysical Laboratory to the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. At the time, the two departments were located a few miles apart.
The First “World Mud Cup”
After the two departments were co-located to the Broad Branch Road campus in 1990, the friendly rivalry heated up. The competition eventually precipitated the creation of the the Mud Cup” in 1996, as coined by Carnegie Science reporter Stony Kornblower. Kornblower, who is absolutely in no way related to Alan Boss, is also responsible for creating the physical trophy.
Kornblower reflects on the moment he constructed the cup, stating, “I found a silver-plated pitcher that my wife had picked up at a yard sale and which she did not want to keep. I inscribed "World Mud Cup" on the pitcher with a magic marker for presentation to the winning team at the next match. This has been the tradition ever since.”
At the time of writing this, the Mud Cup is displayed proudly in the office of DTM Director Rick Carlson, who commented, “Though we are disappointed that the Mud Cup has not yet attracted the level of attention that it deserves by recruiters for the World Cup, perhaps because interviews with team members too quickly switch from soccer to discussions of Gruneisen parameters and exoplanet radial velocities, the level of enthusiasm and competition in the Mud Cup is a delight to watch.”
He continued, “The comradery the event inspires is its best outcome. We look forward to future attempts by the Pistons to liberate the Mud Cup from the overwhelming force of the Dynamos.”
As for Tim Jones, “It's not about competing with another part of Carnegie. It's an experience that brings us together as a whole and distinguishes Carnegie from other workplaces. We're all here for science but Mud Cup, among other events on campus, adds to the fun of it all!”
Editors Addendum: Mud Cup Today
When originally writing this story in 2019, we had no way of knowing that in the coming months, the Geophysical Lab and Department of Terrestrial Magnetism would merge to become one department and that we'd be forced to stay home as we quarantined through a global pandemic.
Despite the ups and downs, the Mud Cup is a tradition that holds strong to this day. We held a virtual trivia MudCup in 2020, and in 2021, the Pistons and the Dynamos met on the soccer field in person once more—even though choosing which team to be on is a bit more complicated since we're all one department!
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