Go ahead...grunt. This increasingly covered, debated, hated, encouraged phenomenon is taking youth sports and social media by storm. Participation trophies. Should we give them out? What do they mean? What are the pros? What are the cons? What the hell even is a participation trophy? What do they say about generations to follow? Is there a certain age where they shift from appropriate to just plain old stupid and pointless? All valid and relevant questions, but there appears to be a different answer depending on the person you ask, their age, and their experience in life.
Of course, everyone has their own thoughts on them, but here is mine. I definitely received participation trophies in my youth years up until middle school. Of course, it made me feel special, it made me feel like I actually did something regardless of if I was useless to the team or not. But in reality, I was too young to really know the difference or to give a damn, I just wanted to have fun and eat popsicles afterward, and if I was lucky enough, convince my parents for some ice cream too. I wasn't worried about how I played, but more so focused on trying to have a sleepover on a school night instead. I sure as hell learned what it meant to lose at a young age too, and that prepared me to face adversity in the future. Acknowledgment is good. Otherwise, they are bullshit. If you didn't win, you lost.
As soon as I hit middle school, the competitive nature began to increase in the sports arena and even more so as high school came around. This is where the passion really starts to build, the interest, the seriousness, the hard work, the specialization of your sport. You sure as hell don't need to be recognized for participating anymore. I mean, what's the point of those God damn reading medals we got when we were in elementary school? I remember not doing a lick of reading just to get the damn medal, ooooooo. There becomes a point in your life where showing up isn't enough anymore. I think that's the real issue here. Participation trophies may spark the initial interest in a sport, but pursuing sports further requires hard work and effort. Everything after the conception of the initial passion and understanding of competition needs to come from within the young athlete themselves. Trust me, it'll pay off way more down the line.
I may be reaching here, but participation trophies after elementary school give athletes the completely wrong idea about sports and what it means to compete. This potentially grooms athletes into feeling like a subpar effort and/or performance is okay and that athletes who slack off and do the bare minimum still get rewarded in some shape or form (aka the participation trophy). A mediocre effort isn't enough. Granted, not everyone is able to be as great as they want or their parents want them to be, but that's life. And learning that you may not be great at everything is an important thing to learn at a young age. The premise of being rewarded for showing up is no longer beneficial, but rather, detrimental. You become soft. You become entitled, whiny, needy, lazy and consequently set the foundation for the whole "what about me" mindset. Sports are almost never about the "me" and most certainly about the "we." It's about the common goal of team success and team growth.
One of the most valuable traits in an athlete is their ability to be coached. You could have an incredibly skilled athlete with a horrible head on their shoulders and inability to listen, a coach's nightmare. An athlete's ability to hear criticism, but also listen to it, and respond with an even more determined attitude is paramount. The best players make the players around them better. Your ability to persevere and fight through loss, failure, and unmet expectations, imperative. Losing and failure are the catalysts for growth. They totally suck, but are entirely essential. Losing teaches you things about yourself and your team. Losing wakes you up. Your effort and ability to work for their position and their playing time matters. The fact that you show up or that your mom is a team booster doesn't. Even more so, if you never experience failure and disappointment, how the hell will you be able to handle adulthood? Life?
I am a firm believer that hard work pays off. If you put in the time and the effort, respect the game and competition for what it is, then you will get the recognition you deserve. As one of my friends once said: "There are winners and losers in life. Not everyone gets a prize."
