In The News.
Reaching Out
By Rick Wright / Albuquerque Journal Columnist
Tuesday, 16 February 2010 00:34
Middle-School Students Write To Athletes, Sometimes Get a Response
Former Boston Red Sox star pitcher Curt Schilling's favorite breed of dog is the Rottweiler.
Figure skater Alyssa Czisny is partial to the color purple.
Chicago Fire soccer goalkeeper Jon Bush loves playing against Toronto FC.
Lobo soccer player Elizabeth Lambert's word to live by is "believe."
This knowledge comes courtesy of middle-school students at Albuquerque's Southwest Secondary Learning Center, participants in an ongoing project begun some six years ago by physical education teacher Karen Jeffery.
Here's the history: in 2004, Russian pairs figure skaters Maxim Marinin and Tatiana Totmianina took a terrible spill during a competition in Pittsburgh. Totmianina suffered a concussion.
Jeffery, then teaching at Albuquerque's Hayes Middle School, had her seventh-graders write their impressions of how challenging it might be for the skaters to get back on the ice after such an accident.
Impressed by her students' work, she sent copies, accompanied by a cover letter, to Marinin and Totmianina. The skaters not only responded with autographed photos but talked in an interview for a story published in a national skating magazine, "Blades on Ice," about how much they appreciated the Albuquerque youths' encouraging words.
The skaters and the Hayes students became pen pals, and several of the kids finally met the world and Olympic champions when they performed at the Santa Ana Star Center in 2007.
By then, Jeffery was teaching at Southwest Learning Centers, a charter school with three facilities in the Albuquerque area. Since, she has continued and expanded the project begun at Hayes.
Each year, Jeffery has her students contact an athlete/sports celebrity. The kids write a letter and submit a list of questions.
"I believe it's a fun project and an educational project," Jefferey said, "and it provides these kids an opportunity that's very, very rare to actually be able to hear from (the athletes)."
Writing the letter, she said, is an important part of the project in the electronic age.
"I think we've lost that art of letter writing with (today's) technology," she said. "They actually learn to write a letter, put it in an envelope and actually receive mail.
"That's one of the best parts, when we get the mail -- to see the look on their faces."
Often, of course, the mail never arrives. Jeffery said the percentage of athletes who respond is about 35 percent.
She makes sure her students know going into the process that their efforts might not be rewarded -- or, sometimes, rewarded long after the contact is made. Gymnast Carly Patterson responded to a student's letter two years after it was sent.
"I tell (the students) all the time," Jeffery said, "that world-class athletes may have a stack of requests this high, and they just take them off the top.
"They're very, very busy people, and very dedicated to their sport. The training and the physical and mental concentration that it takes for them to achieve their goals is mind-boggling."
Even so, one wall in the Southwest Secondary Learning Center is covered with the fruit of the students' efforts. Some 130 athletes, Jeffery said, have responded over the project's six years.
Bianca Schrader, 14, wrote to Czisny for the second straight year "to see if she remembered me."
She did. Czisny, the 2009 U.S. women's figure-skating champion, answered Schraeder's questions and sent an autographed photo.
Courtney Cerutti, 12, wrote to Schilling "because I love baseball, and he's my favorite Red Sox pitcher. My dad and my whole family are Red Sox fans."
Tylor Gray, 13, contacted Bush, the Chicago Fire goalkeeper "because I play keeper and I wanted to write to a professional keeper."
Julia Apodaca, 13, wrote to tennis star Roger Federer "because that's my dad's favorite tennis player."
Federer sent Apodaca an autographed photo but didn't respond to her questions.
Was Apodaca disappointed?
"Not really," she said, "because he sent (the photo), and I'm cool with it."
Jeffery's students don't neglect local athletes.
Rebekah Haynes, 12, contacted UNM Nordic skier Polina Ermoshina.
Elizabeth Kemp, 12, contacted Lambert before the UNM soccer player earned international infamy by pulling down a Brigham Young University opponent by her ponytail.
"I went through the list of Lobo women's soccer players and found somebody with my (first) name," Kemp said. "I just asked her a whole bunch of questions, and she answered."
On a recent afternoon, as a result of correspondence with UNM's volleyball team, several Lobos visited the Learning Center, staged a short exhibition and provided some instruction.
Correspondence with Lobo swimmers produced an invitation to visit UNM's pool.
"We got to swim with the swimmers, and they taught us how to do the different strokes," Gray said. "Then we went through their circuit training, but not as hard as they do it."
What's most rewarding for the kids, Jeffery said, are those occasions when an athlete is contacted and goes beyond what's requested.
Bethany Hamilton, a Hawaiian surfer who lost an arm to a shark attack, responded to a student's inquiry by sending a 15-frame photo slide show of her riding the waves.
Olympic trampoline athlete Erin Blanchard sent Alexandra Moore a t-shirt and some Olympic pins from Beijing.
"I call those things a bonus," Jeffery said.
She probably could say that about the entire project, as well.
Posted February 16, 2010