Have we really come to the point where this is necessary? I couldn't help but laugh at the fact that this is something that has actually made it to the NC State Congress. Tim Moffitt, Bobby Hanig and Eddie Settle of the NC Senate introduced the legislature in an upcoming bill that would make it illegal to give participation awards in youth sports.
I played a few sports when I was young and you had to earn awards. Some of the teams I was on everyone got a jacket letter for varsity sports and a graduation year for junior varsity sports and in a way those were participation trophies but you still had to be good enough to make it on to the team in the first place and complete an entire season with the team in order to get them. I had both numbers and letters for my jacket.... I never purchased said jacket because I felt like it was an overpriced scam and it makes you look like the jocks in every bad teen movie ever made.
I don't think this bill will pass because there are some benefits to participation trophies such as encouraging very young children to continue to strive for excellence. I think that a better way for this bill to pass would be to put an age limit on it. Ideally, I would like for the law not to need to exist at all. When you get a participation trophy, do you really feel as though you accomplished anything if you are not insane or over the age of 5 or 6?
I think the fact that this bill is being proposed is a rather humorous sign of the times and how far we have sunk that we are going to go so far as to ban giving out trophies unless the person achieved athletic excellence. To me this is kind of a no-brainer and it would kind of sort itself out.
I do not know the politics of the people involved in this but I would imagine they are conservative. As a Libertarian, I don't want the government telling ANYONE what they can or cannot do. To me, the banning of participation trophies is stupid, almost as stupid as participation trophies are. Sure, you can trick your kid into thinking they are great at soccer or whatever with a trophy, but at a certain age they are going to look around and realize that they suck at it and no trophy is going to change that.
Politicians are wasting our time with crap like this and this is just another reason why I would like to see just about everyone who is currently in office voted out, regardless of party. A great reset is necessary in government or a changing of the guard, so to speak. When I vote, I vote for a Libertarian candidate if there is one, and sadly, they almost never win or even make a dent in the other two because everyone is so dedicated to red or blue.
I can understand the banning of transgenders in sports but meddling in what organizations are allowed to award to their participants? This is just stupid and if the guys pushing for it are in fact conservative, someone needs to remind them that one of the main tenets of being a conservative is to limit government interference in people's lives.
Participation trophies are dumb, and only seriously delusional parents would actually be proud if their kid got one. They might pretend for a little while and hope little Jimmy gets better but at the end of the day I don't think anyone including little Jimmy is actually going to think that these awards actually mean anything once he becomes a teenager.
Let people award what they want to award. The government has no business being involved in this.