By Mike Schwartz

This is one in a series of articles for coaches and leaders, inspired by more than thirty years behind the bench. I hope you enjoy it, and pass it along to another coach or leader in your life.

Every season starts with excitement, great expectations, and a roster full of promise.

And then the season happens. Some years it goes the way we drew it up. Others it doesn't even come close. There’s an injury, a losing streak, a parent who won't let something go, or a kid we couldn't reach, no matter what we tried. We never really know what a season is going to be until we're in it. But we do know the hard stuff will find us. Now, the good stuff, that’s what we need to keep.

Recently, I came across these file folders from my coaching days. I stopped having a team of my own in 2006, but I never stopped adding to the file. I just stopped reading it. I spread three folders across my kitchen counter and started sorting the notes, cards and letters. Maybe if I had looked at them sooner, I’d still be behind a bench, but life’s path takes turns we don’t always see coming.

Each one has a tab that says GOOD STUFF. One in thick black marker, one in thin pen, one on a blue tab that looks newer than the rest. The middle one is torn and soft at the corners from being pulled out so many times.

I wish I could tell you whose idea it was, but somebody early on told me to keep the good ones. The idea was simple. Whenever something came across my desk that meant something, it went in the file. Cards. Emails (printed out so they wouldn't disappear). Sticky notes from my kids. A memorial card for my grandfather. Twelve years after he died, on the very same day, my daughter Sophie was born. A thank-you note from my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Parizino, for a handkerchief I gave her in 1963. My mother had saved it all those years. One day she handed it to me. It caught me by surprise, and went straight into the file. A letter from a parent who wrote after four years to say I had promised to take an interest in his son as a person, a student, and a hockey player. "You certainly were very true to your word." A former player, writing the spring I stepped away from college coaching. “If you didn't take a chance on a tall and skinny sophomore at the beginning of the 1995 season, I have no idea where I would be today." And a note on plain white stationery. "Congrats on a great year." Signed Herb.

So why keep it all? Because we throw these things away or take the good things for granted. A kind email gets read once and buried. A card sits on the counter for a week and goes in the recycling. We move on to the next practice, the next game, the next problem.

And then a bad day comes. The kind where we drive home from the rink and wonder why we're doing this. The hours. The travel. The time away from our own families. The volunteer work nobody sees. On those days, we need proof that what we do matters. Those are the days we pull out the GOOD STUFF.

What surprised me going back through my file and reading them all at once, was that the players didn’t just move on. A lot of them became coaches. The tall and skinny sophomore wrote that he planned to coach, and hoped he could do for others what was done for him. A player from our 1986 Alaska state championship team wrote to me in 2009. He was coaching now, and his team had just won the state title for the first time in 22 years. “After we were done celebrating on the ice, you were one of the first people I thought of." And just a couple of years ago, a young coach at a USA Hockey clinic wrote to say he'd found his first mentor.

That's what the file really holds. Not what we did, but what they went on to do with it.

Tucked in one of the folders is a printed email from 2012. A coworker forwarded a Zig Ziglar piece with one line on top: she knew that I was a long-time coach and said she thought of me when she read it.

“Real happiness comes when you are able to teach and/or inspire others to be the very best they can be.”

- Zig Ziglar

One more thing I noticed when the piles were sorted across the counter was that the biggest pile wasn't from players, parents, or other coaches. It was from my family. Birthday cards, Father’s Day cards, notes after wins and losses. "Have a great day, Dad!" Notes and cards from my wife that she would stick in my pocket before each game. The same people we miss dinners for, the ones who wait up when we get home late from the rink - they were cheering the whole time.

I have an ask of every coach reading this. If you already have a file like this, that's awesome. Keep it going. If you don't, start one this season. It can be a folder in a drawer or in your email. It doesn't matter what it looks like. What matters is that when something good comes in, you keep it. Some of it won't come in until after the season. Sometimes years after. That's fine. It takes time for a player or a parent to see what we were doing.

Then before your next season starts, sit down and read what is in your previous files - all of them. Before the tryouts, first practices and expectations start stacking up again. Remind yourself who you've coached, and what it meant to them, and who was cheering for you at home. Then go write a note of your own to a coach who shaped you or to one who's just starting out. Herb Brooks took two minutes to write a handful of words, and I've kept that note for more than 25 years.

Be somebody's good stuff, then go start another season.

Mike Schwartz is a USA Hockey Coach Developer and former NCAA Division III head hockey coach. Mike can be reached at mike@eastwoodhockey.com.