The students participated in a series of events including trying to get the ball past Blades. See more photos here.

CHESHIRE, Mass. — Jondavid Chesloff remembers when he was just a child attending Cheshire Elementary School.

Recently, when he found out that the children were writing letters to professional sports teams asking for money for school, he joined in.

Chesloff is now the Massachusetts Business Roundtable executive director and he knows Boston Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs personally. He wrote Jacobs and told him about the letter-writing campaign.

 

"I sent an email to the CEO, Charlie Jacobs. He's a great guy and the Bruins are active in schools," Chesloff said, and from that email, an exchange between the organization and the school began.

 

On Tuesday, some two weeks after Chesloff's email, a team of the organization's youth hockey development — including the mascot Blades — traveled to the school to hold a pep rally and deliver street hockey equipment for the gym.

 

"We saw the letters and we were thrilled to come out here," said Mike Dargin, manager of youth hockey development for the Bruins. "It is great to get farther out [of Boston] to see our fans."

 

Dargin, Blades, and two others showed up with arms full of T-shirts, hats, pucks, and sticks. The gymnasium is now stocked with a full street hockey set up. And two sticks autographed by the entire team were given to administrators to raffle off.

 

"It is not just today, it is a legacy we're leaving behind," Dargin said.

 

The legacy isn't just the goods they dropped off. The legacy will be in the minds of the students who participated. The gymnasium was filled with roaring screams as the pupils dressed in black and gold and spoked Bs rooted on their classmates in a teachers versus students series of games.

 

The organization holds similar rallies all across New England, but this was the first in the Berkshires.

 

"This has been wonderful. This is something kids will remember for the rest of their lives," said Principal Peter Bachli.

 

The students swept the teachers in all three events. Dargin presided over rally and the first event asked students to handle the sticks around goalies masks on the other side of the gym. At that point, Blades was still "sleeping" so the students had to yell as loud as they could to rouse him. Blades then came out of hibernation and greeted students with high fives and hugs.

 

Then, the students took the second event — a shootout. With Blades in goal, the students soared pucks into the back of the net and the teachers couldn't keep up. The final event was trivia and again, the students out performed their mentors.

 

The Bruins weren't the only ones to answer the letters. The Boston Celtics organization is going to put in a brand-new computer lab. The Boston Red Sox sent tickets and VIP tours to raffle off. Bachli said it all stemmed from "thinking outside of the box" in the budget process.

 

"I was reading about the salaries of professional athletes and I thought, there is money," Bachli said. "What's the harm in asking?"

 

The staff then crafted a lesson around letter writing. Every student hand wrote letters, with proper addresses and format, and then as a group they all walked to the post office with envelopes addressed and filled out.

 

"It was a great writing lesson for the entire school," Bachli said. "It nothing really came of it, we still had a great lesson."

 

While the students may have learned about writing, what they'll be talking about will be those slapshots that skirted past Blades.