Going to a birthday party at the house of a member of my under 8s rugby league team, I remember being amazed at the number of trophies the boy had acquired in a few short years of competitive sport.
In fairness, this kid was a heck of an athlete. State runner, swimmer and representative footballer, he was gifted and made many of us look average in comparison.
All the glory was for first, second and third place achievements in a variety of disciplines. Not one of them was for participation or fourth.
In addition, there were no trophies or medals without a name.
Things are very different four decades later. My kids have medals and trophies all over the place. Nameless, vague trophies, obviously pre-ordered and awarded to teams for mere participation in pointless gala days or given by clubs on award nights as thanks for representing them.
It’s great that $200 in registration fees is returned to me in the form of a $5, un-engraved trinket that in years to come no one will be able to identify who the recipient was.
The age of entitlement is here. Kids are lauded and rewarded for participation at every level of their sporting journey – and frankly are worse off for it.
Watching one of my kids play D Grade netball and seeing parents flushed with pride when a semi-final spot is achieved is great. I coached the team and pushing them to achieve their best is what it should be all about.
Yet rewarding those kids with trophies and accolades disproportionate to their success seems silly. Grandparents hear of the achievements, see trophies and start to perpetuate the most horrible phenomena that is crippling our kids in both sport and life itself.
That phenomenon sees kids constantly affirmed, never criticised and told they are in fact better than they actually are.
I see it every day in my role as an educator, as students increasingly expect work to be done for them, while complaints from the corporate sector seem to be regarding graduates with a similar way of thinking.
Athletics and swimming carnivals are evil havens of the phenomena. Elite races are run and the best of the best in a particular age group battle it out, with the top three earning the spoils. As the rest of the races are held and the slower or less skilled competitors compete to gain points for their team, ribbons are handed out at the finishing line of every race.
Watching a very limited child, in terms of skill, run or swim their way to fourth place in a field of five and walk away proudly with a yellow ribbon is something I will never understand.
I am well aware that all kids are at different levels, that some kids will never excel at certain ,endeavours and yes, that people do respond well to encouragement. However, this absurd obsession with making sure every kid is told they are a ‘winner’ helps no one.
My youngest is twice as skilled a netballer as my eldest and plays in a high division. Somehow she has managed to receive fewer awards than her older sister.
She still receives all the tokenistic participation awards, yet due to the tough nature of the competition in which she plays, achieves less major successes such as grand finals, as they are so much harder to reach.
The dynamics of the generation moving through junior sport at this time scares me. By telling kids they are all winners, do we undermine the concept of losing and in turn appreciating the efforts of the opponents in being better? Are we creating another graduating class of Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic types, who seemingly do not see the effort of the opponent or possess the ability to lose with grace or dignity?
Humility is a wonderful human experience. Without it, people live in a proverbial bubble, believing things about themselves and others that will in fact harm them in the long run.
Watching the selfish, brattish behaviour of Andre Agassi as a young man was exciting and the tennis world told him he was every bit as good as what he thought he was. Yet is wasn’t until he got over his threats of not playing at Wimbledon, due to his insistence that he be allowed to wear his brightly coloured gear, that he began to grow up.
The simple act of being told ‘no’ and seeing the greater meaning and significance behind the dress code was instrumental in his 1992 Wimbledon victory, and the improved player and man that he became in subsequent years.
Jack Nicklaus will probably go down in history as one of the best players and people in mainstream sport. His humility is legendary. Listening to him speak about that humility in a documentary was inspiring, and his insistence that all he does is hit a ball around a field and “just happen to do it in less strokes than anyone else”, is a remarkable perspective.
Fanning egos, as we do with our children, might breed more success and confidence in the short term, yet over the course, the most effective way to help people is to encourage humility.
I’d prefer to hear balanced comments around the fields and courts on a Saturday morning.
“The best kid won today and if you want to beat them, you will need to work a little harder.”
“Well played boys, but let’s remember this isn’t the NRL.”
“Let’s shake hands girls, they were way too good for us today.”
Sure, there a lot of great coaches out there who manage the balance between enjoyment, participation and success extremely well. In fact, coaches and managers are probably less to blame than over-expectant parents who, at times, live vicariously through their beautiful children.
Without going to the extreme of telling our kids that they are rubbish, untalented and limited in their abilities, perhaps there is a need for a more measured, honest and reasonable evaluation of their skills.
Life will teach them that very few people actually win prizes, yet those who do generally deserve it.
Charles Winter
Guest
There is no evidence provided in this article to support the opinions expressed. There is no evidence that rewarding children for effort rather than results is harmful, in fact there is evidence to the contrary. Raising children is about teaching children important lessons and the importance of effort rather than results is one of them. In adult life long term success is more about effort and persistence than natural talent. And from a parent's( and coach's) point of view it's modifiable whereas natural talent isnt. In my personal experience the most entitled or brattish junior sportspeople have often been the highly talented ones who do win real trophies. It's not the less talented child who slugs it out week after week for the love of the game who becomes entitled. Kids aren't stupid. They know who is winning on the sporting field. But there's nothing wrong with acknowledging the efforts of the less talented who turn up and try their guts out. While it's important not to have a child feel entitled to expect success without effort, I think it's just as important to instil that effort is the starting point to any success in life. I would argue that more people fail to achieve want they could have because of lack of self-belief rather than entitlement. And to support one of the other commenters, this whole "they didn't give out trophies for trying in my day" argument does sound like the bitter ramblings of old men who didn't achieve their dreams.
Stuart Thomas
Expert
Well said.
NaBUru38
Guest
My opinion: o- Youth sports should be fun. o- Competing can be fun. o- Enjoying the game should be the reward, not trophies and awards.
dave
Guest
The other day I bought a cheap Bali bow and arrow and it to turned out to be quite functional. The next step was creating a target out of styrofoam packaging,After that me and a mate spent a lot of time deciding a balanced scoring system. Then we started and it turned out to be a fantastic competition and we both really wanted to win(i took it out with a come from behind high risk double head shot). There was no medals or ribbons involved. The point Is we grew up wanting to win at everything we played wether its playing marbles or shooting arrows at a styrofoam robot. It would have been a lot less entertaining if we didn't have a winner or loser. Curious to see this new generation in 20 years,what sort of games they will create. Another point I'd like to make is it could be possible these incentives are to get kids away from the computer games,But all computer games are based about winning and If you lose you have to practice to get better at the computer game.
Jock Cornet
Guest
Women's tennis and golf.
BigJ
Roar Guru
Its a absoulte joke that kids receive a reward for turning up, back in my day you only got a reward when you won something. it gave you a sense of purpose to achieve and try to be the best (even if you gloated about it). These days kids have no incentive to achieve or be the best, plus registration and insurance fees are just as bad. its so terrible the way sport is run these days
Paul Ellison
Roar Rookie
Isn't participation enough reward!? Kids shouldn't need a ribbon or medal when they get a day off school or get to run around with your buddies on the weekend.
Stuart Thomas
Expert
Yeah, okay. Seeing as you like to compare people so much, thanks Norm O'Neill.
Jeff Milton
Guest
Scooping the barrel bringing out a television c like Jeff Tarango The great majority of tennis players are well behaved given the pressure they are under Thanks Rebecca Wilson
John Hamilton
Roar Pro
Depending on the age, your kid should've been given an award for working that out. Most kids wouldn't notice that type of thing
Stuart Thomas
Expert
Hope you're not suggesting this is an article written with bitterness after a failed sporting career. Couldn't live a more happy life, more about my kids, the kids I teach and coach. Cheap comment. No disrespect gray but a fair way off the mark.
Gray-Hand
Guest
Ahh, that explains it.
northerner
Guest
Ermm, sorry about that Canadianism creeping in. By school sweater, I mean school cardigan (I think).
northerner
Guest
I guess I'm a bit on the fence on this one. I think participation is important, and I think its important for kids to feel that their participation means something. That, it seems to me, is up to the parents, the coach, their teammates. I'm just not convinced that handing out medals and ribbons is the way to go about it. In my day (more years ago than I care to remember), sports were organized mainly on a school basis, and the kids that were heavily into sport got sweaters with the school letter on it after they'd reached a certain number of games.. So the letters went to the better (or more determined) athletes. That was recognition of participation back then, and a school shirt, team photo, that sort of thing, seemed, and still seems appropriate. Even then, though, not all the kids that played sports got that letter: there were conditions around how many sports and how many games you played. There was always something to aspire to. Sorry about that digression down memory lane. To get to my point, in my mind, medals and ribbons are for accomplishment, not participation. That is not in anyway equivalent to "dismissing recognition for participation as worthless." It is saying that "excellence" deserves recognition beyond team sweaters or school letters. If there's no distinction between the very average player in the team and the really talented and accomplished player who works hard at improving his technical ability, then why would that talented player continue to strive for excellence? And why would the average player work to become better, if there's no one to tell him he's not really cutting it? Participating in sports has plenty of reward all on its own - friendship, exercise, fun, excitement - and for most kids, that's enough. As it should be. He or she will always have the memories and the team photos. The better players - the ones with more talent, more willingness to work hard to improve - get the medals and the extra recognition. That's not a bad lesson for later life. Not to many rewards in employment - promotions, better job offers - come on the back of showing up for work every day. It takes more than that, and kids need to understand that there is no automatic entitlement to success just for being at the desk on time. All of that being said, I think there's an age limit on all of this: I think, for the youngest kids, participation is more important than results, and the coaches that let all the six year-olds play rather than bench the not-so-gifted ones, are doing the right thing, because they're building a love of the sport or of sport in general, into those kids. I'd have a different view if the kids were 15 or 16 though - at that age, they need to understand competition.
Stuart Thomas
Expert
Oh you mean like Murray, ivanisevic, Hewitt, philipoussis, monfils, janowisz, dokic, capriati, strycova, tarango, lucic, Williams etc. The reason Federer, Djokovic and a few other cleanskins stand out is the rest of them are the most poorly behaved, immature and self entitled little you know what's. Tennis players and normal doesn't go. Happy to agree to disagree, but the rothfield thing hit me hard. Thanks for reading mate,
Matt
Guest
Stuart whilst I agree on most of your points, the point about your older daughter winning more awards than the younger misses the mark. Whilst U15 Firsts is the trophy all schools want to win in Rugby, Soccer, Netball, Cricket and whatever if the Thirds win a premiership they should be congratulated. From these performances they can strive to be promoted to the next grade up or they might just have the goal of a team of mates to achieve a collective result. If you are the best team in your division and you win a grand final you deserve some accolades.
Beero
Guest
I get your point to keep things in perspective and to not fan ego's - however, that is where I am confused by your argument. You provide examples of sportsman whose ego's were fanned too much because they were winners (i.e. where trophies are given to a select few and the focus was completely on them because they kept winning), not because they were given trophies for participating. Though I agree that parents/kids should not be self entitled and we should not be enabling kids and parents that display those behaviours. I just do not see any evidence from your article connecting the two. If Kyrgios/Tomic/young Agassi were brought up in a culture valuing participation, instead of a culture that only values winning, then they potentially would be more level headed and less brattish, because the focus would not always be on them.
nick
Guest
Remember my young son coming home one week saying I am going to get an award next week. I said how do you know and he replied I worked it out the teacher is going alphabetically. And yes he did get the award the next week.He also used to throw out his participation medals because they weren't for anything. But then that is my child all are different.
Jeff Milton
Guest
Matt, where is your evidence of this?
Jeff Milton
Guest
How about all the other top tennis players that have been told that since childhood and turned out normal ? This is a column straight out of the Phil Roth field school of journalism