SPORTS & CHILDHOOD: The Lessons We Teach Our Kids

A boy sits in his room, waiting for company to arrive – distant cousins he has never met. He’s a boy who doesn’t stand out in anything he does, be it sports, school or music. Wondering what he will talk about when his family comes he looks at the trophy he got a few weeks ago from his baseball coach commemorating the most recent season. He wasn’t a star on the team, but as he looks at the trophy he remembers the game when the team’s usual second baseman had a soccer tournament and he got a chance to play the infield. He remembers how his improbable, game ending, unassisted double-play helped his team win, casting him as the hero with his teammates chanting his name. He takes the trophy from the bottom shelf of his bookcase and puts it in a more prominent position on his dresser, hoping that his newfound cousin will notice it and give him an excuse to gush about the day he was a hero.

Each day it seems participation trophies are ridiculed more and more by people from all walks of life, and there is even a car commercial mocking them now. As a Little League coach and a father of two, each of whom play multiple sports, I regularly overhear parents decrying the practice of giving such awards, with critics suggesting that participation trophies reward mediocrity and diminish the accomplishments of “elite” players.

Growing up I played all four major sports. In in high school, I was on a championship school football team and in baseball I was good enough to get a college scholarship. The mantle at my house was filled with trophies that I personally earned; trophies that my teams won; and participation trophies that I was given. Of course, I was proudest of the trophies that were earned – either by myself or my teams – but in no way did I feel that the participation trophies that my peers received diminished my accomplishments. To me, the word-of-mouth validation I received from my peers for my athletic achievements was more important than any trophy on my mantle. As such, it is hard for me to understand how critics of participation trophies believe that these mementos diminish the accomplishments of those whose impressive athletic achievements are self-evident.

If participation trophies lead to any real negative effects – either for individuals or for society – I haven’t found any evidence of it. On the flip side, I think we as coaches and parents should be more concerned with the more obvious byproducts of a win-at-all-costs attitude. To me, the embodiment of Vince Lombardi’s motto “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” is a major contributor to the ethical failings of adults that we see all around us: in sports and in life. When winning is all that matters, children grow up learning that losing has worse consequences than cheating. The Cubs all-star first baseman, Mark Grace, even coined the phrase: “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.” Indeed, every day’s news seems to have another story about one type of cheating scandal or another, and there are many ways of cheating.

In sports, some of the more familiar forms of cheating include steroid use and blood doping (as per Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong); deflating footballs (as per Tom Brady); illegally spying on other teams (as per Bill Belichick's Patriots); or giving college athletes grades they didn’t earn so they can maintain athletic eligibility (as per the University of North Carolina grade fixing scandal, among others). Outside the lines of sports, cheating has commonly taken the form of high school students paying other kids to take their SAT exams; politicians gerrymandering electoral districts so incumbents from their party are easily re-elected; or banks overrating worthless bundles of mortgage derivatives to sell them at an inflated cost.

Beyond cheating, a win-at-all-costs attitude can lead to other forms of bad behavior, like parents pressuring kids to get back into a game when they might have a concussion; coaches assaulting referees after a bad call (as per the story of the Neshaminy, PA High School basketball coach); and an esteemed university athletic department allegedly paying for escorts to "entertain" high school athletes on recruiting trips to its school (as per the University of Louisville scandal that, in part, led to the firing of famed coach Rick Pitino).

Of course, the pursuit of victory is an important aspect of youth sports – one that teaches lessons in its own right: about perseverance; the positive effects of hard work; and finding the courage you didn’t know you had. However, if we as parents and coaches aren’t mindful about tempering our own desires to win (vicariously through our children), the lesson we may be inadvertently teaching them is that it is better to cheat and win than to lose with character.

Furthermore, as a father of two kids under 16, it has become increasingly evident that the world children inhabit today is much more hostile to traditional notions of childhood than ever before. At younger and younger ages it seems children are being groomed for adulthood with diminishing time for unstructured play, experimentation and non-goal-directed activities. Social media has not only contributed to kids losing their innocence in myriad ways but also to parents succumbing to peer-pressure, pushing their kids harder and harder on the treadmill of success earlier than ever before.

Whether it's school, sports, or other extracurricular activities, children as young as six are being coaxed into specializing in a single endeavor (with advanced training) year round to boost their chances of becoming a professional or getting into an elite college. These patterns beg us to ask: if children can no longer afford time during childhood to play frivolously, without consequences for failing, will they ever be afforded this time? My experience as a psychologist has suggested that one of the reasons why video games have skyrocketed in popularity over the past 20 years (amidst the rise of helicopter parenting), is that the virtual world of video gaming grants them certain freedoms - including the freedom to fail (and to reset their games when they do) - that childhood used to afford children, but no longer does.

In the final analysis, are participation trophies really to blame for the problems of character afflicting children AND adults of the current age? Or are they an easy scapegoat, distracting us from the deeper problems that we as parents may not want to examine within ourselves?

John G. Cottone, PhD, is a licensed psychologist in private practice and the author of "Who Are You? Essential Questions for Hitchhikers on the Road of Truth."