Several weeks after completing one of my favorite assignments, write a thank you letter to a teacher or a coach, I received the following email. As you can see, one letter can make a difference and that is the goal of the activity.
I have been remiss in responding to the letter sent to me by your student [name omitted] as part of the Letters of Appreciation project. The truth is I’m not sure I can compose a reply that will do justice to how I felt when I got the letter.
I’ve always considered being a youth sports coach to be its own reward and, even though it’s a big time commitment, we get a lot more out of it than we put into it. But getting a letter like that from a former player was very meaningful. His letter was well written and it brought back some great memories from my hockey coaching days.
I coached [the student] for many years and one thing we could always count on was that he would give everything he had on the ice, whether it was a practice or a game. No one played harder, and his love of the game was very apparent. Our teams won a lot of games and lost a lot of games, but our main goal was for the kids to have fun playing hockey.
I think the Letters of Appreciation project is a tremendous idea and I encourage you to continue doing it in the future. I hope you received many replies (and much sooner than mine!).
Please pass along my thanks and appreciation to [the student]. I’m no longer coaching but the book Coach is now on my reading list. I may even try to track down one of my old hockey coaches to let him know the impact he had on me.
Best Regards,
“Coach”
