The awarding of participation trophies is a highly controversial topic. The argument between simply giving awards for participation, compared to giving to only the high achievers, has sparked much conversation. On one hand, people believe that participation trophies are great for rewarding participation and improving athlete attendance. On the other side, it is believed children become less motivated, less resilient, and unable to handle failure or criticism when they receive a trophy for simply showing up (Diller, 2011).
Benefits
A benefit of awarding participation trophies is they encourage children to keep showing up for practices and games. Their attendance in a sport or activity means they are involved with others and are being active. Attendance is an important aspect of many areas in a person’s life such as schooling, sports, family, and jobs. A person is unlikely to be successful by simply showing up, but it is a great starting point and will often lead to more success. Furthermore, an athlete’s attendance in a sport or activity means they are involved with others and being active.
A participation trophy can be a symbol of the effort and time a person put into an endeavor or it can serve as a reminder or memento for a sport or activity. Many people oppose this and believe children put too much value into participation trophies. Sports reporter Donnie Collins (2015) stated, “My kids never treated their trophies like the Vince Lombardi Trophy. I’ve never met one kid, as a writer, as a parent, or as a youth coach, who bragged about his or her participation trophy.” Participation trophies do not have to mean the world to a child but can simply be a friendly reminder of something they have done.
Participation trophies are commonly seen at younger ages in youth sports. A question can be proposed at what age should participation trophies no longer be awarded. Allowing kids to devalue participation trophies over time promotes the benefits of them at a young age, and could avoid consequences at an older age.
Drawbacks
A consequence of participation trophies is that they can lead to laziness and dependency. Children who are used to receiving participation trophies can lack independence and need help from others to succeed. They are unable to solve problems on their own and struggle to have success through difficult tasks. Some say it has killed competition and produced a generation of young adults who cannot get into college or even apply for a job without help from their parents or guardians (Zadrozny, 2014).
Participation trophies may be used to help children feel like they did not lose. However, losing can be a part of the learning experience in youth sport, it is okay to make mistakes, and oftentimes it is these mistakes that teach valuable lessons. It is common in sports to hear the phrase ‘that you learn more by losing, than by winning.’ It almost seems that this message has been forgotten at the youth level. Youth sports are a teaching area for young athletes to begin to understand that losing is going to happen and how to handle it (Wallace, 2015).
Many people struggle with criticism as they get older. Participation trophies are one item that is often blamed for people not being able to handle criticism. Participation trophies are handed out to all the players on the team regardless of performance and effort. Some players are told ‘great job’ and praised greatly regardless of success and effort. Children who receive this constant approval can struggle to handle criticism later in life. They have not learned how to handle and use criticism to their benefit which results in them lacking coping skills to handle failure and change (Korenich, 2018).
Sport participation has many potential benefits such as being active, working with a team, and developing life skills. These all relate to and are benefitted by a child enjoying and having value for that sport. This value can be decreased by extrinsic motivation such as trophies. A potential result of extrinsic motivation is that a child may become dependent on rewards and will always expect something after completing a task of any sort (Zadrozny, 2014).
How does extrinsic motivation stack up against intrinsic motivation? Tsorbatzoudis et al., (2006) reported that intrinsic motivation was shown to produce significantly higher motivation and more likely for continued participation compared to extrinsic motivation. The extrinsic motivation was only rated higher than amotivation or no motivation at all.
Kobe Bryant is known as one of the most competitive athletes of all time. He had a unique response to when his daughter’s team was going to receive a fourth-place trophy. Kobe said, “Well listen, get the fourth-place trophy, go home. You take the fourth-place trophy, you put it up right where you can see it, and when you wake up in the morning, you look at the trophy and you remind yourself of what you’ll never win again.” Many would have argued that this trophy would motivate kids as they would be happy, they received a trophy. Kobe on the other hand used the trophy for motivation but changed the perspective on why it should motivate his daughter’s team (Windsor, 2017).
Conclusion
There are many ways participation trophies can influence a person. There is no easy answer on whether they are good or bad, or what ages kids should stop receiving participation trophies. The value of them is going to be in the eye of the beholder and will be different for everyone. There will be children who benefit from participation trophies and there may be children who achieve less because of them. In the end, each coach, parent, organization will have to decide on what they believe is best on whether to reward youth in sports with participation trophies.
References
Collins, D. (2015, Aug 19). Participation trophies” hardly a societal scourge. The Times – Tribune. https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/
Diller, V. (2011, Nov. 19). Do we all deserve gold? Setting kids up to fail. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/face-it/201111/do-we-all-deserve-gold-setting-kids-fail
Korenich, M. (2018, Apr 10). Too many trophies make children less resilient. University Wire. https://www.uwire.com/
Tsorbatzoudis, H., Alexandris, K., Zahariadis, P., & Grouios, G. (2006). Examining the relationship between recreational sport participation and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and amotivation. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 103, 363-374.
Wallace, K. (2015, Aug 17). Does sports participation deserve a trophy? Let the parental debate begin! CNN Health. https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/17/health/participation-trophies-parenting-debate/index.html
Windsor, S. (2017, Jul 06). What’s wrong with youth athletics? Snacks, not participation trophies. Detroit Free Press. https://www.freep.com/story/sports/2017/07/06/youth-athletics-participation-trophies/453934001/
Zadrozny, B. (2014, Aug 22). My loser kid should get a trophy. The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/my-loser-kid-should-get-a-trophy
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Great Article. I appreciate how various positions were addressed. Each individual athlete’s situation is different, and realistically should be treated and rewarded as such.
Let’s stop the nonsense that participation trophies are bad for younger children. The article was great in emphasizing both diverse perspectives in this matter. It is nurturing for young children to receive an acknowledgment of their participation in a sport. Of course, when they get older, participation trophies should not be given. Only then, and not in their very early years, does it reflect how you will assimilate to the world as a young person and adult!