Asitha Jayawardena is a pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon at Children’s Minnesota, which means he spends his days (and nights and weekends) helping young patients overcome all manner of obstacles.

He’s also the dad of two young girls, one of whom, at age 5, is a huge fan of Caitlin Clark, the Iowa Hawkeyes basketball phenom and all-time leading scorer—for both women and men—in NCAA Division I history.

In late February, Jayawardena brought his daughter to see Clark compete against the University of Minnesota at Williams Arena in Minneapolis. The performance was unlike any he’d witnessed. Father and daughter were transfixed and transformed.

He decided to write something about it, maybe for Facebook, mostly for posterity. An open letter of sorts, to this young woman who brings such joy to his daughter.

“To be honest,” Jayawardena wrote, “we really don't have much in common. I'm a first-generation Sri Lankan immigrant, and my parents didn't really know much about American sports, so I found my own path. I remember watching a VHS tape with a documentary I found of Michael Jordan and was amazed by him. I watched ‘Space Jam’ and joined my middle school basketball team. I was terrible. On my best day, on full stretch, I'm a whopping 5 feet 4 inches.”

He sent it to some family members. They urged him to think bigger than Facebook. Get it published, they suggested. Get it in front of more eyeballs, they suggested.

“I literally Googled, ‘Where should I place a sports essay?’” he told me.

Google suggested he write an op-ed for his local newspaper, something he'd never done.

“I wrote a couple pieces for the New England Journal of Medicine,” he said. “I’m like, I’m just a doctor. Really, I’m just a dad.”

Nevertheless, he finished his letter to Clark and sent it to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. They published it the next day.

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