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Keith Strudler: To The Participant Goes The Spoils

What do Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker James Harrison and the Softball Little League World Series team from Washington State have in common? Well, very little, really. But in this one particular odd moment, they’ve both made strong statements about the state and place of youth sports.

Harrison made his mark on the youth sports landscape this past week via Instagram, where he displayed the sports participation trophies his two sons received, then announced he’d be sending them back, as he wrote, “until they EARN a trophy,” with earn in capital letters to overstate the obvious. Harrison’s sons are, for the record, 6 and 8-years-old.  Harrison continued that you shouldn’t always get rewarded because you tried hard, and that sometimes your best simply isn’t enough, or at least not enough to get a $5 trophy that will eventually end up in a cardboard box in the basement.

Harrison has largely been praised for his tough love. According to fans, or at least fans that post on twitter and Instagram, Harrison is raising his boys the right way, revoking the saccharine positive philosophy of American youth sports, where participation is generally rewarded with some kind of hardware. Now, I’m fairly familiar with Harrison’s experience, since I have a 5 and 8 year old son, the older of whom brought home a nice prize after a recent 0 and however many they played CYO basketball season. The entire league was so rewarded, and to be honest, I don’t know that anyone was recording wins and losses. My younger’s soccer league works the same, only they don’t even keep score during games, so it’s hard to know if he actually earned it or not. It seems this directive changes as they age up, since the older soccer leagues cut the trophies to ribbons for all but tournament champions. That’s unless you’re already joined travel soccer, where they crown one champion across the region. So, to allay James Harrison’s fears, the world does get tougher, as will most kids.

For case in point, see the girls softball team from Snohomish, Washington, who cared very deeply about earning a trophy in the Little League World Series. In fact, they cared so much that they threw a game against North Carolina, which in turn kept Iowa out the semifinals. Apparently, the Iowa squad could cause trouble later on, so getting them out the tourney, even if by playing to lose, would help Washington earn a championship trophy. The plan backfired, as tournament officials caught on and made Washington play a single elimination game against Iowa, which Washington lost 3-2. Some might call it karma, but regardless, Little League softball wants winning to be accompanied by a particular sport ethic, a concept bound to the integrity of each individual game. Washington apparently defied this ideal, even if doing so was only driven by an unending desire to win the whole thing, bring home the top trophy, not some participation thing like in the Harrison dumpster.

So what’s the tie here between James Harrison’s parenting advice and swift justice for Washington softball? In the end, both parties care deeply about the value of winning, something that our society has privileged above all else. Sport teaches us that at a fairly young age – for the Harrison boys, six it seems. According to that logic, simply rewarding effort might make us soft and prevent any incentive to work harder, and, dare I take this to an extreme, end the idea of American exceptionalism. The kids from Washington, or more likely their coaches, wanted that reward, wanted to earn that trophy by any means necessary. They didn’t want to go home empty handed, which is how James Harrison thinks you should be if you don’t win. And throwing a game to get rid of a pesky Iowa team was the best way for Washington to prevent that potential.

See, Harrison’s no-nonsense, common sense parenting applies a singular logic to a far more complex reality, where we constantly search for validation and assurance in a world that views sport as a binomial – winners and everyone else. So perhaps giving trophies to everyone, as unappealing as that may sound, insulates us from the very real outcome like we saw in the girls Little League World Series – and the boys, by the way, where cheating is as common as the chewing gum. And perhaps then kids won’t quit sports in droves in their early teens as they do now, if we can somehow shift the focus from winning to playing, making trophies obsolete altogether through their ubiquity.  Or perhaps even the opposite. Instead of trophies for all, maybe trophies for none. It would end Harrison’s unrest, shorten the end-of-season-picnic, and give me a whole lot more room in my basement.

Keith Strudler is the director of the Marist College Center for Sports Communication and an associate professor of communication. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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