By Coy Thompson, Friendship Championthis is a quick update on our previous post about Bryce’s friendship called “Will we still be friends?” which can be found HERE!
Six year old Bryce has been part of the Connecting Champions family since late last summer. Because of Bryce’s love of baseball he was matched with Dan and PJ, two Pitt Baseball players. They “hit it off” immediately (ba-dum-bump), and over the course of several subsequent visits I was able to see their friendship steadily grow.
A few weeks ago I was all set to take Dan and PJ to see Bryce during a recent hospital stay when I learned that Dan had gotten a slight injury.
During practice, he was hit in the face with baseball and would not be able to come. When Bryce heard what had happened he immediately started thinking of how he could help Dan feel better. He finally settled on painting him a picture.
Dan loved the picture, and is happy to report that he’s back in school and at practice again! They’re already planning the next time they get to visit Bryce and have him come to one of their baseball games!
Often when I explain to people how we and our volunteers help our kids and families the word mentorship is often used.
I feel this story helps to illustrate that the best word to describe what we do is actually “friendships.” And like all healthy friendships they travel in both directions.
This small, yet amazing gesture illustrates something really important to our culture at Connecting Champions:
While volunteers may walk into that room ready to be a role model or mentor, they end up walking out of that room with a once-in-a-lifetime friendship.
