SportsLeader encourages all coaches and athletes to take this age old ritual of love and admiration to another level, implementing the Letters to Mom ceremony. For to publicly thank our mothers in writing and speech in front of our peers can communicate so much more about how much our mothers really mean to us.
Below is an article written by Sports Illustrated author, Steve Farrar on exactly what his mom meant to him. The Letters to Mom ceremony requires the athlete to write a letter as well, although, your athletes probably won't be as articulate as Farrar. (although you never know-your athletes may surprise you!)
On moms, football and love
By Doug Farrar
February 13, 2012 11:42 AM
Edited
I have never doubted for one minute that when athletes say, "Hi, Mom!" from the bench, or after a victory, it's far more than a cliche. It comes from the heart, and for many of those players, it's an acknowledgement of the one person who helped them the most through their journeys to the top. While I was far too athletically inept to reach the highest bar in any major (or minor) sport, I know where those guys are coming from.
As the only child of a single mother, I can't tell you the number of times I've spoken with football players over the last decade about this. So many young men of my generation and after grew up with their mothers as the primary guiding light. When the subject of "Mom" comes up, the toughest glass-eating linebacker will go soft. You'll hear a quieter voice, and you'll occasionally see tears. There is no repayment large enough to compensate those amazing women for the things they did -- very often under ridiculously trying circumstances. And the biggest guys know it best.
My mother, Ann Farrar, was a singer, and a great one. She sang with the Metropolitan Opera, and the Roger Wagner Chorale. It was during her time with the Met that she "won" my dad in a card game. They were together just long enough to have me. Then, Mom wanted to return to the states, and Dad wanted to remain in Europe. And that was that.
Like so many of those football players, I was guided by a mother who had to make do. It wasn't always easy, to say the least, but we always got by. And she always made sure I didn't lack what I needed. My embryonic (and ultimately disastrous) football aspirations? Bam. The uniform showed up somehow. I wanted to write about the game? Bam. Any other half-baked scheme of mine? Bam. Whatever I needed, I somehow got.
Through my time as a football guy, my Mom -- who preferred tennis when she was a young girl -- became a football fanatic. Not only did she watch the games, she peppered me with questions. Why is this happening? Why is that happening? In recent years, I'd bet she could identify a zone blitz better than half the guys on TV.
Clearly, she didn't go to all that trouble because football was so very fascinating to her. She wanted to know and share what I was doing, especially when I somehow managed to climb the ladder in this business.
On Wednesday, Feb. 1, I got the call. After months of failing health, my beautiful and brilliant mother had passed away. However, before that day I had enough time to tell her how I felt.
I wrote a letter to her, which I read to her on our last day together. I wanted to say how grateful I was for her strength, her compassion, her endless love and support. I tried to express my knowledge that everything good in me came from her. I tried to tell her how much it meant to me that she had been my very best friend for so many years, but I do not possess the talent to speak those enormous and infinite things into the air. One suspects that had I hired the best writers in history to put that letter together, they would have fallen short as well.
For some things, there simply are no words.
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