Abbey Pierce

Every patient in the children's hospital next to Iowa's football stadium got a letter this week from the team that came to beat Iowa. Ohio State plays there today. Ranked fifth in the country. They are the visitors. They wrote to the kids anyway, and the reason why is the part nobody is talking about. The letter is dated Friday, October 2nd, 2026, on Woody Hayes Athletic Center letterhead, signed by head coach Ryan Day and the entire Ohio State football team. It takes the word that program is built on and hands it to them. At Ohio State, we talk often about what it means to compete, to stay together and to give your best in the moment in front of you. Those are defining characteristics of our culture which is built on FIGHT, meaning every day is a FIGHT to be the best version of yourself. Then this. We know you are facing challenges that take real strength. You do not have to take on everything at once. Focus on the current step, the current day and the people who are there to support you. Now here is the context that makes this more than a nice gesture. A children's hospital is not a random place for Ryan Day to send a letter. It is the thing he does. In 2019 Day and his wife Christina created the Christina and Ryan Day Fund for Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Wellness at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus. Reports put the family commitment at a million dollars. The fund produces something called a Day Time Break curriculum, free lesson kits on mental health that go to middle school and high school classrooms. More than 200,000 of them have gone out, in English and in Spanish. Thirty dollars puts one in a teacher's hands. He and Christina have also given to Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine. Day has said he wants Ohio State to be a place where people can be open and honest about their mental health, and he has explained the whole thing in seven words. Based on the way that I grew up. So when his team walks into a stadium with a children's hospital looming over the east side, and the whole place turns around at the end of the first quarter to wave at the twelfth floor, that is not a tradition Ryan Day had to have explained to him. He told his players about it in advance anyway, so none of them would be caught standing there confused. And he sent letters to the kids in the windows first. Be honest about it. It is paper. It does not change a diagnosis or shorten a stay, and every program in the country does community work with a camera somewhere nearby. But an Iowa fan posted a photo of that letter yesterday and wrote this underneath it. Thank you Buckeyes, but GO HAWKS. That is exactly how it is supposed to work.