Persuasive Essay On Trophies For Everyone

Trophies for Everyone In the last couple decades there has been a growing phenomena in youth sports. This trend is the rise of the participation award. Young kids go out and compete in soccer, basketball, baseball, any number of activities and win or lose all members receive a ribbon or medal simply for having a pulse. It has become so prevalent that there is now a debate among everyone from soccer moms to professional athletes as to the value or necessity of participation trophies. The views on this topic will vary depending on the culture and values on which people were raised. However, when all aspects and input are considered it is clear that participation trophies are more detrimental to a child’s sports experience and development than they are beneficial. Participation trophies set kids up to be let down in the real world. As children in a sport the contest ends and the winners get their trophies while the losers start to lose heart watching this ceremony. Then they are handed a participation trophy and told not to worry because we are all winners for trying our best. As the competition level progresses into middle school and high school the picture of the real world will
While this may be true in some cases, there is a backlash to this kind of motivation. Eventually, they will come across an event where they don’t receive an award and simply quite then. Even if this day never comes, you have to consider if keeping them interested in sports by handing them meaningless awards is a healthy act. Sure, by not doing so they feel better about themselves for the day, but most of the time the kind of pain a typical six year old encounters from losing a game disappears by night. Therefore, their threat to quitting is minimal and their self esteem not greatly impacted. If they keep receiving awards though, it can lead to the aforementioned damaging