If you’ve passed just about any sports field the past few weekends, you’ve probably come across one of the rites of autumn: kids in shorts, shirts and cleats playing soccer.
It won’t be long before many of those kids will be enjoying another tradition: their team’s end-of-the-season party. They’ll gather at a pizza restaurant or somebody’s house where their coaches will hand out trophies, medals or other awards to celebrate each kids’ participation on the team.
David Petti, 8, of Oakland said it was “exciting” to get a medal after the first season he played soccer. David, who’s playing again this year, keeps the medal on a bookshelf in his room.
One of David’s coaches, Serge Kogan, said his son Sasha and other team members all earned those medals last year. “They all showed up, they all played hard. Besides learning soccer skills, it was a great socializing experience for them.”
Not all parents or coaches, however, would agree with this pro-participation award viewpoint, certainly not Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison. The five-time Pro Bowl player, who struggled early in his career, touched off the latest round in the ongoing parenting debate about the pros and cons of participation trophies.
Last month, Harrison posted on Instagram a photo and message saying he had taken away the trophies given to his 6- and 8-year-old football-playing sons.
“While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they earn a real trophy,” Harrison said, signing his post #harrisonfamilyvalues.
To raise his boys to be men, he said he needs them to understand that even trying “their best” shouldn’t entitle them to awards.
Thousands of comments followed Harrison’s post, and sports writers and parenting experts came down on different sides of the ongoing discussion over whether participation awards for young athletes boost their self-esteem and appreciation for sports and teamwork — or hurt their ability to learn that success comes through hard work and persevering through failure and loss.
Ashley Merryman, author of “Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing,” said handing out trophies undermines kids’ success. “The benefit of competition isn’t actually winning,” she told USA Today. “The benefit is improving. When you’re constantly giving a kid a trophy for everything they’re doing, you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about improvement. I don’t care that you’re learning from your mistakes. All we expect is that you’re always a winner.’ “
Likewise, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has said our society has gone overboard in giving kids praise, particularly when it focuses on an innate ability — “you’re smart” or “you’re a natural at this sport” — rather than on effort.
Dweck is credited with studies that question central tenets of the self-esteem movement that emerged in the late 1960s and is believed to have encouraged the participation-trophy craze. The movement holds that self-esteem is the key to happiness; anything that damages it in kids, such as proclaiming winners and losers in classrooms or on the playing fields, should be discouraged.
But Dweck told NPR that giving out participation trophies is tantamount to giving kids the wrong kind of praise. The practice could also mean giving an award to a player who demonstrates a bad attitude on those rare occasions she actually shows up.
Author, sociologist and UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center senior fellow Christine Carter takes a less hard line about the awards, though she agrees with Dweck that distributing awards en masse can diminish the value of being honored. She also agrees that kids should learn from an early age that success comes from sometimes failing but trying again.
On the other hand, if coaches use trophy presentations as a way to acknowledge each player’s unique effort or contribution, that message can be powerful.
“I can go either way on the trophies,” she said. “The important thing is what is being communicated with the trophy.”
When Carter’s daughter once received a participation trophy, her coach gave the girl kudos for the way she hustled on the field. “That’s sending out the message that kids have control over their success,” she said. “It’s not about an end result, but about a particular effort.”
Other Bay Area parents, coaches and players think concerns about the practice are overblown.
In interviews, they agreed the practice should end by the time kids are in middle or high school or playing on competitive teams. Actually, by that point, they say, kids might enjoy getting a T-shirt as a memento for competing in some tournament, but they know which awards matter: a first, second or third place for individual or team achievement.
Steve Miller, a kinesiology professor at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, sees no harm in younger kids getting tokens of participation. “For some kids that participation trophy or ribbon might just be something that helps them reflect back on a good experience,” he said.
Having fun running around and playing games with friends is perhaps the most important reason for kids to join a youth soccer, baseball, football or basketball league, he said. The experience can inspire a lifelong love of being healthy and physically active, he added. “We shouldn’t assume that all kids are participating to become champions.”
Even for kids one day destined to play at high levels in high school, college or beyond, getting some trophy at a team party isn’t likely to undermine their competitive drive, says Mike Woitalla, executive editor of Soccer America magazine and a longtime coach for his daughter’s teams in the East Bay United soccer club.
“The participation trophy issue is much ado about nothing,” he said, “because children are much smarter than they’re given credit for by those who think a piece of plastic will make them soft and unambitious for the rest of their lives.”
For one thing, he said, kids have a pretty idea who is good at scoring points, who they can trust to catch balls in the outfield or defend a goal, who tries hard and who mostly complains and goofs off, he said. Similarly, kids usually know where they stand in the hierarchy of ability, he said. A participation trophy won’t convince them they are better than they really are.
Finally, most kids don’t come to practice, learn to work with teammates or try to get better because they have their eyes on a prize they will get at some pizza party someday in the future, he added. They are mostly focused on the practice or game in front of them. Or they are just being kids, enjoying the opportunity to explore the sport at their own pace.
Woitalla recalls one former Stanford University star and current World Cup champion who would have needed extra-indulgent coaches to garner a participation trophy her first year playing.
As Christen Press told Woitilla in a May 2015 interview, her then-4-year-old self spent most of her first season picking daisies, doing cartwheels and avoiding the ball because it was “dangerous.”
The next year, Press tried soccer again, and things clicked. She scored eight goals in her first game, and she emerged a die-hard competitor.
Jenny Ruiz Williams, of Newark, coaches girls at the 8- and 13-year-old levels with the Palo Alto Soccer Club. She also plays professionally with the Mexican National team and is raising two soccer-playing kids.
She agrees that the drive to play well usually comes from within. The players on the teams she coaches share that drive, so handing out participation trophies are not part of their “culture.”
The most amazing feeling comes from scoring a goal, she says. “Especially if the goal lifts the team to win,” she said. “To be part of something: That’s what feels so good.”
Still, she understands the appeal of giving and receiving awards just for being on a team. “When I was growing up and playing recreational soccer in Southern California, I remember getting trophies. I remember knowing it wasn’t for winning anything but for participation. It was exciting to be able to put my first trophy, with my name on it, in my room.”
The Great Trophy Debate
“It’s not about winning or losing. It’s something that shows (kids) they accomplished something for those months they were on the team.”
— Hugo Sousa, a San Jose-based coach with the Barcelona Bay Area youth soccer club
“He’s teaching his kids not to be like the rest of the soft people in America. His kids will know from a young age that stuff is earned from going above and beyond. Not for just for showing up. “
— Instagram post supporting the decision by James Harrison, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker, to take away his son’s participation trophies for football.
“He’s taking the fun out of his kids’ lives is what he’s doing.”
— Instagram post deriding Harrison’s decision
“The participation trophy issue is much ado about nothing — because children are much smarter than they’re given credit by those who think a piece of plastic will make them soft and unambitious for the rest of their lives.”
— Mike Woitalla, executive editor of Soccer America magazine and longtime coach with the East Bay United soccer club
“When I was growing up and playing recreational soccer in Southern California with the AYSO, I remember getting trophies. I remember knowing it wasn’t for winning anything but for participation. It was exciting to be able to put my first trophy, with my name on it, in the room.”
— Jenny Ruiz Williams, soccer coach with the Palo Alto Soccer Club, member of the Mexican National team and mother of two
“While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they earn a real trophy.”
— Instagram post by Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison
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