To give or not to give participation trophies

With a paragraph-long dispatch to Instagram on Sunday, Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker James Harrison launched the latest salvo in the never-ending debate better known to laypeople as the Sociology of What's Wrong With Kids Today.

The matter at hand? Two slick trophies awarded to Harrison's 6- and 8-year-old sons, just for participating.

"I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned," he captioned in a photo of the trophies before returning them to the track club whence they'd come. "And I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best . . . cause sometimes your best is not enough."

Whether Harrison is the Grinch who stole summer league - or a brave parent fostering the grit his kids will need to thrive in a harsh world where one can, say, be summarily cut from the Baltimore Ravens - has been the subject of a great deal of online discussion.

Setting aside the question of whether his hashtag #harrisonfamilyvalues is helpful, given that he admitted to slapping his girlfriend in 2008, many local athletic coordinators think Harrison is on to something.

So do some psychologists and researchers, who have provided data fueling a backlash against the self-esteem movement of the 1980s and '90s - one with surprising political intonations. (One poll released last year found that 57 percent of respondents were against participation trophies, and that wealthier and more politically conservative respondents viewed them least favorably. Glenn Beck has been a vocal detractor.)

Around the Philadelphia suburbs, where mantelpieces have long been burdened by the weight of such hardware, some organizers already have been trying to scale back.

Among them is Biff Sturla, who has been president of the Lower Merion Soccer Club since 1999 and active in Main Line soccer organizations for 34 years.

"We have been giving out end-of-season participation trophies for as long as I can remember. I tried to eliminate that about 20, 25 years ago, but I got a huge backlash from parents, who were extremely upset," said Sturla, who continued giving out trophies for years "to ensure my safety."

Last fall, he made a bold choice: He gave the 9- to 14-year-old players an end-of-year gift of a club scarf instead. For now, the 4- to 8-year-olds still get trophies, but he'd like to expand the "gift" idea to more age groups over time. He anticipates parental resistance but thinks the shift is for the best.

Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before, agrees.

"High self-esteem does not cause better performance," said Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. What does improve performance is perseverance, hard work, and delayed gratification. "All of the research converges on that the best way to motivate kids is to reward them for good performance and, when they're little, for effort as well. The problem with a participation trophy is it doesn't even reward effort. It rewards showing up, and in some leagues, apparently you don't even need to show up. That's really sending the wrong message."

Millennials - the adults who grew up on a steady diet of participation trophies - are anxious and depressed at record levels, she said.

One factor? "There's potential for huge disappointment," she said. "A child who's been told all their life, 'You're special just for being you,' . . . many of them are angry when they get to the real world and find that no one told them it was going to be this difficult."

David Burton, a girls' lacrosse coach and teacher at Cheltenham High School who also runs a summer sports camp called LifeSeeds, worries that such trophies are misleading kids.

"As far as awarding kids for participating, I think we've done that for too long. We've watched a change in the mind-set of kids who are now grown up and expect too much for minimal effort," he said. Instead, he gives out medals at the end of each day to campers who exemplify values like empathy and respect.

Still, participation trophies remain crowd-pleasers at area tournaments, leagues, and sports programs, particularly for the youngest competitors.

Barry Fitzgerald, assistant commissioner of Marlton Soccer, said all 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old players got medals in the Marlton Classic soccer tournament last weekend. (Under New Jersey state soccer rules, you can't keep score for kids younger than 11.)

"It's important for the kids to feel good about themselves," he said. "But as they get older, it's not a bad thing to lose. When I was a kid, we never got a participation trophy."

In Lower Merion Little League, the cutoff for such trophies is now age 7. That's down from age 8 a decade ago, the last time a kerfuffle over them made the news.

"Kids love awards and trophies. My son did when he was very young," said league president Mark Patlove. "But as they get older, they often aren't interested in them unless they are earned."

Still, others see value in the awards - like Brandon Shell, who runs the Infinity Track Club for kids 6 to 18 from around the Philadelphia area.

"I just ordered my participation trophies yesterday," he said with a laugh. They're about four inches high and depict a winged track shoe.

"It's pretty much for a job well done. You made it through the season. Everyone is on different levels, but everyone who goes through the training we put them through should be recognized."

Indeed, perhaps running will become the last bastion of the participation medal.

Anne Harney of Fishtown said her son hadn't received a participation trophy since he was 3, playing T-ball. On the other hand, she's been surprised to find that, since she took up running, each race concludes with a "grown-up" participation medal thrust into her hands. Her fellow runners are, to her, surprisingly enthusiastic about them.

"Everyone gets a medal for finishing the Broad Street Run - whether one does it in 45 minutes or three hours," she said.

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