Remember when trophies meant something?
December 5th, 2007, 12:41 pm · Post a Comment · posted by phayes
Secretary, take a memo, please.
“Dear IHSA; Please read the following closely.”
—
Remember when sports trophies actually meant something? Most folks of my generation can probably count on one hand the number of trophies they own. Maybe there’s one for winning the Little League championship when they were 11 years old, or maybe there’s one for winning the Pop Warner Football playoffs. Perhaps a shiny plaque for winning the 100-yard freestyle in the summer swim league championship meet.
The key word here is winning. You had to actually perform to get an award.
Then came the feel-good generation.
Kids who tried hard started getting trophies too. Youngsters who had trouble chewing gum and walking at the same time got shiny trophies just like the ones the best players received.
Participation replaced winning as the keyword. Put in a pair of shin guards and, voila – a soccer trophy appears! Doff a football helmet and the next thing you know, there’s a shiny football trophy sitting on Junior’s shelf next to his toys.
Slowly, the shine has worn off the trophies until they mean next to nothing to the kids who receive them.
The Illinois High School Association has come up with its own version of [participation trophies, you know. It’s called the new classification system. Many IHSA-sponsored sports – including basketball – have more classes beginning this season.
For basketball, it’s four classes now instead of two. There are so many classes and regional tournaments and sectionals and state finals now that you need a scorecard – and a calculator – to keep everybody straight.
At the risk of sounding like someone of the door of geezerhood, I must say that in the olden days, the basketball playoffs in Illinois meant more.
I go back to the days of the one-class system, when winning a state basketball championship really meant something. The matchups between the Davids like Cobden and the Goliaths like Pekin in the one-class 1964 title game can’t happen anymore. Even the two-class Cinderella story of Staunton’s improbably run to the 1993 state title with its victory over Chicago Hales Franciscan in Class A will never happen again.
Parity has reared its ugly head.
Oh, there will be more teams playing for more state championships. More kids will walk away with smiles on their faces and shiny medals hanging around their necks. Self esteem will be at an all-time high.
The mid-level enrollment schools such as Civic Memorial, East Alton-Wood River and Jersey will have a better shot at advancing in the playoffs in this new system, of course. Those schools of around 800 to 1,000 students have recently been too big to be small and too small to win in Class AA. But when a school of that size has put together a special season, the memories and satisfaction have been immeasurable.
Wining a trophy might boost self esteem for a moment, but lessons can be learned from losing, too. The chance at this generation learning those lessons is taking a hit.
Why don’t we just have all the athletes line up for their participation trophies at the beginning of the season and get it over with?
