Disbanding

Salt Springs Morris, after dropping from ten active members at its peak to three earlier this month, has disbanded.

We wish to thank Thornden Morris and the Bassett Street Hounds for their cooperation and encouragement in the nearly six years (three of them active) Salt Springs existed.

I personally would like to thank all the people who danced or played for the team: Carol Hatch, Cydney Hinson, Peter Hoover, Ann Horan, Maria Hosmer-Briggs, Bob Hughes, Tom Keays, Noah Pitts, Julia Wittner, and especially our Fore, Heather Holmes, and our first Squire, Karin Howe, who with me were the co-instigators of the team. Of course I'm disappointed the team did not survive its recent downturn, but I'm proud of what we did accomplish: the first mixed side in Syracuse, the only team at the time east of Seattle and west of England (to my knowledge) doing Wheatley (and for good reason, some will say; well, pooh: I liked it!); the only team I know of in upstate New York to develop its own Cotswoldish style; the only side I know of whose entire repertoire dated from years beginning with a "2"! Salt Springs also was the point of entry into morris for Carol, Cydney, Bob, Noah, and Julia, three of whom then went on to dance with Thornden and the Hounds. And though Salt Springs is gone, much of its spirit lives on in Newport News, Virginia, where Flying Bark Morris is looking forward to its fifth anniversary; even beyond the obvious similarity of kit, Heather and I based Flying Bark in many ways on the Salt Springs model.

There were naysayers who said Syracuse could not support three morris teams, and they may think they've been proved right. I disagree: In fact, I think Salt Springs proved a third team can succeed, not that it can't. The fact that we did have ten active members for our 2000 season shows the interest was there; if interest wasn't sustained, I believe it was due mainly to internal team problems which in retrospect we could have dealt with better and sooner. If anything, having two other teams to "tag along" with when our repertoire couldn't sustain dancing out on our own helped a lot. And while most of the members were involved in other local morris teams before joining Salt Springs, there are hundreds of thousands of people living in our area, and I cannot believe we couldn't have recruited ten more of them if we'd known how to reach them and show them how much fun we were having. That, of course, is the tricky bit, but the success of many morris teams in towns far smaller or more morris-saturated than Syracuse convinces me it can be done.

Someday, I hope, it will. For now, raise a glass to Salt Springs, if you will, and I hope we are remembered fondly...

- Rich Holmes, 11 Oct 2001