📝 If Your Kids Read One Letter This Year — Let It Be This One
- Joseph Caligiuri
- Dec 24, 2025
- 3 min read
A Message from Joseph Caligiuri, Founder of Stadium Performance
✉️ Introduction: A Letter You Should Read With Your Child
If there’s one thing you sit down and read this year — make it this letter.
And once you do, hand it to your child. Whether they’re 14 or 21, deep in the grind or questioning their path — this is for them, too.
This is not a year-end recap.
It’s not a highlight reel.
It’s not a business pitch.
It’s about what we live through when nobody’s watching — and what those moments teach us.
💡 Earned vs. Inherited Problems: A Lesson in Ownership
I don’t believe our problems are greater than anyone else’s.
But I’ve learned something:
Some problems are earned — the result of choices we made.
Some are inherited — patterns we repeat, pain we never question, stories we never rewrite.
We earned the pain of our adoption journey. We chose that path knowing it would be hard.
At Stadium Performance, we’re not here to solve your problems for you.
We’re here to give you tools — mental, physical, emotional — to solve them yourself.
And if we do our job right, those tools show up when life gets heavy… not just when the scoreboard lights up.
🦬 The Buffalo Mentality: Go Through the Storm
When fear and exhaustion hit this year — I held onto two truths:
A phrase I stumbled on in a book as a teenager:
“Zindell Amethombo” — This too shall pass.
A story about buffalo.
When storms roll in, cows seek shelter.
But buffalo? They run into the storm. Because they know that running through it is the fastest way out.
That’s how I try to live.
That’s how I teach our athletes to live.
Don’t run. Don’t hide.
Go through.
🏈 What the Patriots Taught Me — and What They Didn’t
In the early 2000s, I was part of the Patriots’ dynasty as support staff.
And we lived by one phrase: “Do your job.”
In that context, it worked.
Everyone was the best in the world at what they did.
But real life? Real life doesn’t operate that way.
Real life is emotionally expensive.
You can’t just “do your job” when you’re juggling fatherhood, business, grief, marriage, and uncertainty all at once.
So I’ve started managing a new currency — not just time and money, but emotional cost.
And sometimes, the cost is too high.
Sometimes, walking away is the strongest move you can make.
🌱 Seasons: Why I’ll Never Ask You to Stay
If you remember nothing else from this letter, let it be this:
I will know you for a season.
Maybe a week. Maybe years. But a season nonetheless.
I don’t care if you train at Stadium Performance forever.
I don’t care if your athlete moves to Compete, Boyle, Bando, or anywhere else.
What I care about is that while you were with us, it mattered.
That it was right for that moment in your life.
Because we are not a brand that asks you to stay.
We are a culture that shows up when you need us — and trusts that we were enough for the season you gave us.
🔥 Passion Isn’t a Requirement — It’s a Filter
So what comes next?
As a husband, a father, a friend, mentor, coach, and business owner — I now live by one filter:
If you don’t have passion for what you’re doing… do something else.
Passion doesn’t beg to stay.
When it leaves, let it go.
And if you fake it for too long, the cost will catch up to you.
That goes for:
Sports
Jobs
Friendships
Family roles
Business ownership
There is no guilt in moving forward.
There is only guilt in pretending to care when you don’t.
So if you take one thing away from this — let it be this:
We are a culture of passion.
To grow. To pivot. To face change — in ourselves, and in others.
🎄 Closing Words: Read This With Your Kids
This Christmas, take a moment.
Read this letter again.
Then read it with your kids.
Let them know:
That change is not failure.
That storms are not punishment.
That leaving something behind can be the bravest thing they ever do.
And that wherever their next season leads, they will carry tools, lessons, and love from this one.
Merry Christmas from our family to yours.
Thank you for spending any part of your season with us.
With love,
Joseph Caligiuri
Founder, Stadium Performance