September 7, 2019: Rewarding Participation

How do you feel about rewarding participation?  You know, the whole “participation trophy” thing vs only rewarding the “winners” in each league.  Well, I have some thoughts as you may have guessed.

In professional sports, there are no participation trophies, and rightfully so.  Winning is the number one goal across the board (at least it should be).  Winners should be rewarded; everyone else should not be.  I think that’s the easy one.  The debate on the topic comes into play when we talk about youth sports.  I have coached my son the past 3 years in baseball; Saturday we went to the award ceremony for this baseball season.

Our team finished 0-11; do they deserve a trophy?  Over the past 2 years, in the 4-6 division, all kids got trophies; I agree with that.  These are kids who are just learning the game.  Some will go on to play another year or two, and that’s it.  Some may not play again.  Some may continue playing for years to come.  At that age level, having fun and learning the game are the two most important components; we didn’t even keep score in that age group.  Although I did figure out a way to do it, and did it, so I knew who “won and lost”.  Still, I didn’t make a big thing of it… to my team I did, but not league wide.  Moving up in age group to the 7-9 year old level, I thought:  I wonder if all the kids still get trophies?  My initial thought was that yes, they all should get them, and if they did, this should be the last age group that works this way.  So I asked the question.

We were getting medals this year.  I believe only the first place team got trophies.  I’m totally fine with that.  Trophy, medal, it doesn’t matter.  I still think at this age group there should be some reward for every kid that plays.  It’s not the same as the 4-6 league, but facts are, there were some kids playing organized baseball for the first time.  There are some of them that may not play again.  There will be some returning next year or moving up to the next age group.  Yes, winning creeps up the totem pole in this age group, but having fun and learning the game are still above it… easy to say coming from the coach of a team that didn’t win a game.  But I do believe that.  I love to win; I want to win… who doesn’t?  But still… keeping these kids engaged, seeing them form friendships at least for the summer, seeing them all get a lot better from the start to the end of the season, that is what counts.  However, I think the time to flip that switch is coming… at least for my son who will be 8 years old next year.  Too young still?  I’m not sure.

I don’t want to be that dad who is an asshole, only caring about winning, yelling at the kids when they mess up, trying to find loopholes in the rulebook to win a game; I’ll never be him.  Yet, I think there is a middle ground that as a coach I’ll need to find.  My son and the entire team loved their medals.  I hope next year they’ll be walking away with trophies.  Next sport up…