We need more participation trophies!

By now everyone has seen this rant by Louiville women's basketball coach Jeff Walz. And based on the social media reaction to this video I'm in the minority when I say that this coach misses the point completely.

Let's leave aside the part where he is throwing his own team under the bus in a very public manner for a moment. We can come back to that later...

His rant basically boils down to "in my day we had to walk to school barefooted, in the snow, uphill, both ways..." Blah blah blah. Every generation thinks the new generation is lazy and entitled. It has been going on for a hundred years and it is essentially nonsense.

I work on a daily basis with college kids. I see extremely hard working and socially aware individuals. This rant misses the point for two reasons. First, things are just different now. They aren't better or worse. Simply different!

Do some kids work harder than others? Sure. Are there some kids that feel entitled? Absolutely. But no more so than when I was a kid or when my parents were kids.

Personally I don't think we have an entitlement problem. I don't think this generation acts any more or less entitled than the last generation. At worst what we have is a 40 something coach frustrated because he can't motivate 17-22 year old women on any given day therefore they lost problem....so he went on a rant and got a bunch of other 40 somethings all fired up about how this is a big problem.

But even assuming he's correct and there is this entitlement problem the rant still misses the point for a second more important reason.

Participation trophies aren't the problem. The problem is we THINK participation trophies are the problem.

Let me describe what I mean from personal experience...

Last year my 6 year old daughter played soccer for the first time. After her outdoor season, which she enjoyed very much, we put her in indoor soccer. She was by far the worst player on the indoor team. She hated it. She never touched the ball. One practice she came off the field crying and asked me if I was "disappointed in her..." Broke my heart.

Midway through the season, in an attempt to motivate her, I said I would count how many times she touched the ball in the game and each week we could try to break her record. Week 1 she touched the ball 2 times. Her record ended up being around 15. There was no prize for this just a weekly tally to see if she improved.

She struggled the entire season at every game and every practice. But she went to every game and every practice. After the last game each player got a medal. At first I was put off thinking why did they get a medal. They didn't win anything. After she received the medal she came over and showed it to me. She was so proud! I asked her why she got the medal. "Because I tried my best" was her answer.

My thinking about the participation medal changed immediately. The medal was the same. How I thought about it was different. You see the problem wasn't the trophy it was how I was thinking about it.

In fact the real problem is that there aren't enough participation trophies. We don't reward the struggle. The process. In our society we only reward the result! That's where this coach misses the point completely in my opinion!