Persuasive Essay On Trophys

It was overtime. The ball was snapped. The quarterback drops back, looks off the safety and throws the deep ball. The catch is complete! The crowd goes wild! The Alabama Crimson Tide won The National Championship. The Alabama football team got a trophy, but Georgia did not. The National Championship football game clearly finished with a winner and a loser. However, in youth sports, kids get a trophy for participation, blurring the line between winning and losing. Should these players get a trophy for doing what is required? Youth athletes should not receive a trophy for participation because earning a reward for completing what is required lessens the value of the trophy, it encourages narcissism, and they can be quite expensive.

First, participation trophies decrease the value of the award by showing that if everybody gets a trophy than kids don’t have to work hard to get one. Therefore, the value is decreased. The article,” Should Everyone Get a Prize?” written by” Brenda Iasevoli” states,” If we give a trophy to everyone, then the award has no value.” says Carol Dweck who is a psychology professor at Stanford University. This quote expresses that the more trophies there are, the less they mean to the athletes receiving them.

The article,”Losing Is Good for You” written by,” Ashley Merryman” states,”That’s exactly the problem, says Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me. Having studied recent increases in narcissism (having an excessive interest in oneself; an over-inflated ego often due to parents’ overvaluation) and entitlement among college students, she warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up.” This quote explains that participation trophies which are only meant to make kids feel better, can lead to much more severe