Over the past year or so, I have noticed a rallying cry amongst radio personalities to condemn the practice of handing out trophies at the end of the season for Little League sports. This is absurd. Every single year I played any type of Little League sport, I got a trophy. If we won the championship, we got a special trophy that dwarfed the trophy we received for participation. This trophy signified that we beat the tar out of our opponents and they knew it!
Receiving a trophy – whether you win a championship or not – is a physical memory of the season played. It is remembering the other kids on your team. It is something you can proudly put on your dresser that reminds you that you gave it your all and had fun doing it. There is not a kid (in history) that received an end-of-the-season trophy and then mistook that to mean that they really did win the championship despite losing most of their games.
But what did they remember? They remembered the plays where they came together and achieved something against the odds before them. They remember goofing off at practice and making new friends. They remembered the cheering parents mistaking their game for a pro sport and screaming at the top of their lungs. They remembered how it felt to win together. That trophy cements these memories.
Last year, I coached my son’s basketball team. We didn’t lose a game. At the end of the season, my primary concern was that each child enjoyed playing the game and hopefully I was a part of making that happen. I wanted them to understand that it took every member of the team to achieve the success we attained. Moreover, I hoped each child grew as a player and a person during the course of the season – that they were able to take on a larger challenge and succeed. [You should have seen the precision of our Box-In-One!]
Yes, we won. That is supposed to be the end result, but these games are about so much more than winning (and I am a strong advocate of winning). If we had lost that last game and not won the championship, would these kids still have deserved a trophy? Of course they should, because the game is just so much more than the last team standing.
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