The following is a heartfelt letter written by retiring Owego Free Academy basketball coach Chris Evans that offers insight into the passion behind the game that he carried. Evans wrote the letter following the OFA basketball team’s final game of the season on Feb. 9. A Jan. 4 article, “Basketball is in his blood,” announced the coach’s intent. You can find that article at www.owegopennysaver.com/PS/2026/01/08/basketball-is-in-his-blood/.
A Love Letter
By Coach Chris Evans
It has carried me to fourteen different countries.
It has given me lifelong friendships I will cherish beyond this earthly existence.
It has defined me.
When I had no confidence, it gave me confidence.
It offered escape from the insecurity of a fractured family and a lonely adolescence.
It became my therapy – a cathartic release that spanned more than five decades.
It taught me how to be a man.
It forced its way into my chest, buttressed against the sinews of an ambiguous heart.
It delivered immense joy – and even greater heartache.
It impaled itself on my psyche, sending waves of pain, anger, awe, and exaltation coursing through neural pathways that kept widening.
It led me to the most wonderful woman, wife, and mother in the history of the world.
It gave my boys and me something to talk about when words otherwise failed us.
At times, it crippled my character, as the betrayal of its values lit fires inside me.
Yet it taught me honor, trust, loyalty, and the fierce edge of competitiveness lessons rarely found in any classroom.
It honed a skill that is mine alone.
It taught me how to lose – and how to hate losing so deeply that sleep fled for days.
It honored character, respect, teamwork, and sacrifice – values the world could use far more of.
It provided hours, days, weeks, months, and years of entertainment -entertainment that binds us to one another in ways often beyond explanation.
It exposed posers and erased my own ignorance.
It demanded ballet-like precision: the song of sirens calling to the communicative, the passionate, and the quick of foot.
It loved the grind. It despised the lazy.
It has given me an entire month, plus the first Monday of the next, to revel in its glory.
It invites solitary rumination, then ignites creative impulse, and finally surrenders to pure instinct.
It has introduced me to diverse cultures – and, more importantly, to diverse thoughts.
It has granted me experiences with thousands: stories that span continents, stories that make us howl with laughter and simmer with wonder.
It has given me far more than I could ever repay.
Thank you to this lovely game … and thank you to the people who have been part of my journey because of it.
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