Child Abuse In Sports

Two years ago, I played in my first ever basketball championship. We were going up against my friend, Evan’s basketball team. Since this was my first championship, I was nervous. The game was intense with each team battling back and forth. In the end our team eventually won and we were ecstatic. We anxiously awaited to be awarded our championship trophy but instead, we received standard participation trophies. I believed this was unfair and needed to be changed because I wanted to be rewarded for our team’s success. I didn’t want to be treated the same as the losing team. Throughout my years of sports, I have received numerous participation trophies although they don’t have the same meaning as those that were earned. Participation trophies
If a parent's responsibility is to teach a kid how to deal with the real world, then that is child abuse. Because that's not the real world.” As children grow, so does their eagerness to win. What about the kids who can’t keep up with the competition? Simple. They quit. An article from CNN states, “Seventy percent of children leave organized sports by the age 13, according to research by the National Alliance for Sports. Let's put it this way: If your daughter or son plays on a soccer team, seven out of 10 of the members of that team won't be playing soccer or any organized sport whatsoever by the time they enter their teenage
However, If you reward effort and success, it teaches youth to always put their best effort first and be motivated to succeed. By letting our youth accept defeat by rewarding them, we are sending a message that it’s okay to fail in life and everything is going to be fine and dandy. Well, that’s not how life works. You need to be able to succeed to move forward. For instance, when you interview for a job, you won’t get that job unless you are able to handle the responsibility and are the best candidate. A quote from Men’s Journal states, “Studies have shown that rewarding kids just for participating can have a negative impact, producing a self-obsessed, irresponsible, and an unmotivated generation of false achievers.” Many adults and parents have become aware of the problem and have only signed their children up for sports that don’t give out participation trophies at the end of the year. Here’s a quote from a father telling about his son’s first year of lacrosse: “‘Daddy, do we get trophies for playing lacrosse this spring?’,my son asked me a few months