Dean McCarthy: Negative Effects of Participation Trophies

The main issue from participation trophies and allowing everyone to be rewarded is that the trophy ends up having no value or meaning and changes the meaning of sports. It connects back to the economic term scarcity. As there is an unlimited amount of people receiving trophies, there is no longer any scarcity or limited resources, which causes the value of a trophy to decrease and have no worth. Devaluing the trophy gives children no motivation to work hard and put in the time and effort to achieve something. In other words, there is no positive reinforcement to make children repeat the behavior in order for success to occur again in the future. This changes the dynamic of sports because everybody used to play to win and worked hard to get that first place trophy but with this new generation of participation trophies, people are no longer interested with winning a trophy because of its loss of meaning.

We are teaching our youth a poor lesson by rewarding them for their failure. The people who deserve to be rewarded are only those who come in first place and are the real winners. Louisville’s Women’s Basketball coach, Jeff Walz stated, “I mean, not to be too blunt, but you’re a loser. Like, we’re losers, we got beat. So you lost. There is no trophy for us.” His honesty is something parents and coaches need to hear more often to understand that what we are teaching right now is making even bigger issues for the future of the younger generations. We are failing as a society for rewarding our kids for failure because it gives them the idea that they are entitled to winning instead of truly earning it. In a New York Times article about trophies, Ashley Merrymen writes “it’s through failure and mistakes that we learn the most.”What I personally take away from this quote is that the younger generations need to understand the importance of failure in the amateur years and how it plays a vital role in the development process. Shelley Haggert, an author, said in one her books about losing that, “kids need to learn how to fail, or they end up with an inflated opinion of their ability.” Failure is not a great feeling, but it is a great teaching lesson to find your true potential and gives you motivation to work harder to be the person who is a champion.

From my personal experience with failure in Division 1 athletics, it has taught me many lessons not only in just the game of baseball but life. Failure was always the most helpful teaching method for me as it taught me what I needed to do to be successful as well as keeping me motivated especially when I struggled sometimes to be excited in what I was doing. I also have learned that you are never entitled to anything until you put in time to earn it. I struggled with that concept as a kid because I was a part of the participation trophy generation and fell victim to expecting everything to be given to me. It didn’t hit me until the last couple of years of high school that I learned that I need to put in the effort in order to get into a respectable university and earn an athletic scholarship which was always my dream.   

Luckily I wasn’t raised in a household with much praise. Growing up with four other brothers who were all as competitive as me was exactly what I needed to understand the importance of hard work. I was always given constructive criticism from my parents and brothers which was hard to take in at the time but looking back now has helped me tremendously to be where I am today. More parents, family members, and coaches need to eliminate praise when it is not needed. In a study conducted by the Ohio State University, the results suggested that “constant praise for our kids’ tiniest accomplishments, may have the unintended side-effect of creating an over-inflated ego. And this can have serious consequences both in childhood and later on in life.” Granted some praise is effective at the younger ages to act as a positive reinforcement but more times than not, people are over praising kids for doing nothing. Constrictive criticism is a method that needs to be used more often to communicate to kids what they are doing wrong in a professional and effective manner but at the same time children need to understand that criticism is essential information for making strides forward in their field of work. If constructive criticism was used more often, the meaning of sports could be revived and go back to its original roots so that we could build a culture of winning again.