Why Do Kids Get Participation Odds Essay

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All of my participation trophies, certificates, and medals for soccer, track, basketball, and swimming now sit in a large box that can be found in my attic, but should have all these awards been given to me for simply just showing up to competitions from preschool to elementary school? Despite mine being left unattended we do not give children too many trophies, due to advantages in regards to personal confidence, inclusion, and the discouragement of immediate results measuring success the giving of many trophies causes. Despite a wide variety of sports and activities giving children participation trophies, youth Basketball will be used as the primary example for this essay due to it’s popularity and similarity with other popular youth competitions. …show more content…

Imagine one kid coming into a championship Basketball game and making many errors while playing, to the other players effectively “losing them the game.” After the game the other players could be mad at that one player, because now they’re not getting awarded. This could potentially cause that one kid to stop playing Basketball, due to not feeling wanted by the rest of the team. However, if the kids lose the game but still get rewarded, they’ll be much more inclusive to the underperforming player, leaving a much higher chance of the one kid to continue playing Basketball. This is important because the encouraging of athletic participation is much more important than possibly compromising the “legitimacy” of youth trophies due to them not only representing …show more content…

Participation trophies in one Basketball youth league actually encourages the competition of leagues for “elite” players, which benefit both those who join the elite league and those who don’t. This is due to Basketball games being more competitive and fun because players have similar levels of skill within the Basketball leagues. This allows all kids to feel that they are at least “on-par” with other children they play with and leads to less “overly skilled” Basketball teams within individual leagues, something degrading to both those on the “super teams” and those who’re not due to a lack of competition in the games they

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