MEDAL OR PERISH

Winning is Everything?

Booty for your drawer

Fellow parents, caretakers, coaches, and kids, we took participation trophies too far. Who in the IKEA even has the shelf space for all those soccer trophies?

I knew participation trophies had gone off the ledge when my son came home proudly after a swim meet and shouted, “Mom! I got my first non-participation trophy!”

Congratulations?

When my son tried out for the basketball team, we veered out of the soccer, and baseball world of participation trophies into the arena of endless far-away tournaments.

Now, my son plays non-stop basketball tournaments every weekend. Two games on Saturday. Two games on Sunday. They don’t get trophies anymore. They get medals, but they have to win them. No more “thanks for coming, kid.”

Grab your prize on the way out. This basketball stuff isn’t Chuckie Cheese.

Each day the teams play, they get an opportunity to medal — but they need to win both games on the same day to get their prize. That seemed like an improvement to “Here’s a medal. Thanks for showing up. Who was your team again?”

This past weekend, on Saturday, my son's team won the first game, and it seemed likely they’d win the second. The second team they were playing had tiny athletes — a few under five feet tall. Their imminent win seemed like a given.

I have a lot to learn about sports, but I learned this lesson right away.

Don’t underestimate tiny basketball teams.

They have other skills. Endless layups, sneaky passing, speed. The tiny team quickly got way ahead because of their superpower of being underestimated.

Even the ref said to my son’s team before the game, “Those guys are tiny, I expect you guys will beat them by 20.”

Ever heard of David and Goliath?

The tiny team murdered my son’s team, dead. Left them dribble-less on the court. Knocked their buckets right out of their nets. I don’t think those are real expressions, but you get the idea.

When I initially saw the game headed in that downward plummet, I felt moderately devastated.

Boo hoo. No medal for my son.

Luckily, because I hate to anchor my brain in stupidity, I realized there was a lesson to be learned here. Why did I care so much about medals? Our house was filled with ribbons and trophies stuffed in drawers. I had spent years lamenting participation trophies and look at me now — I was metal-starved.

I decided to make a list of why I wanted a medal for my son. The list was titled “What I want my son to get from basketball games.”

1. A medal — I had to be honest. I wanted him to get a medal, but why? What was that about? Some over-identification with my son’s successes and failures? Peripheral bragging rights? The desire for my son to get as much dopamine as possible? A happy kid is a happy mom? Isn’t that Target’s slogan?
2. Learn about strategy — one of the beauties of team sports is you develop skills and learn strategies. Who doesn’t need those abilities when mucking through life?
3. Community building — kids coming together, playing, and connecting on a shared goal.
4. Toughening up — getting your butt kicked in a controlled environment makes you stronger, more resilient. In dopamine nation, kids also need to access their inner strength.
5. Learning to play well with others — in this computer era where kids yell at computer screens through microphones while wearing headsets, IRL basketball is Wonderland.
6. Getting stronger — basketball requires strength, agility, and speed. Basketball is an excellent antidote to gaming chair nation.
7. Building confidence — learning how to do something well is important for anyone, but particularly small humans on the cusp of adolescence.
8. Getting a medal — wait, why is that important again? Right, we need to stuff our sock drawers.
9. Mastering a sport — mastering anything teaches discipline, repetition, practice. When you master something, it’s yours for life.
10. Having fun — oh yeah! That old tune. Is having fun still acceptable or do we want kids just to have stuff for their college apps?
11. Getting a medal — still? Yes! For the drawers! For the drawers!
12. Health benefits — in this sedentary tech time, when our Apple watches keep telling us to STAND, taking care of one's body is lifesaving.
13. Learning to fight for the ball — learning to fight for anything matters. People don’t just give you things. Sometimes they do, but it means more when you earn it.
14. Dealing with bad referee calls —the lesson that not everything will go your way, you don’t get what you think you deserve, and life isn’t fair.
15. Being coached by different kinds of coaches — good ones, bad ones, ones who see you, ones who ignore you — that’s just people. Welcome to planet Earth.
16. Learning to lose.
17. Learning to win.

A list of seventeen items was a long enough list for me. By the time my son got off the court, I wasn’t remotely medal frothing, which was good because they got their butts kicked.

The next day his team won both games and he got a medal. Yay!

The team posed with their medals, proudly standing in front of a tournament sign. My son wore his medal everywhere for an entire day.

Then he put it in a drawer.

Thanks to Mike Butler and Debre G. Harman for medal-worthy editing. Play ball!