Dancer Mail starts to pave the way into the home stretch of THON. For dancers, it’s one of the most emotional events of the weekend, where friends and family send in their messages to help them through their remaining time on the dance floor.

Dancers started receiving their mail at 2:46 this morning, between the pep rally and general Sunday festivities. At an off hour like that, it gives some much-needed to the dancers an a pretty empty BJC. So we wanted to find out what kind of stuff dancer mail was made up of.

We asked dancers what they got and non-dancers what they sent. Most of the responses were pretty conventional, but many worked within the bounds of traditional cards and letters to make something truly creative and unique.

Crossword puzzles, mazes, weird news stories, and one person said he wrote song lyrics and incorporated his dancer’s name into them. But it’s not just letters and cards, either: a picture cube, homemade cookies from Grandma, and toys from the dollar store were some of the more unorthodox gifts dancers opened.

But whatever works to inspire the dancers and keep them up and fighting is what works best. So next year, if you know a dancer who gets really amped from, God forbid, Ohio State memorabilia, go for it.