Advice Needed: Awards for Kids Rec Level Sports

[Pengwin7]

I just reached the end of a season of coaching 8&9 year old girls soccer.
It is rec level, not travel. Some of the girls are good, some are OK, some are awful.
There are two practices a week and a game on weekends.
The games are real & competitive, they keep score of each game but there is no standings.
There is no playoffs.

One of us three coaches wants to hand out some awards to the kids (there are 10), MVP, MIP, Best Spirit, etc - and can extend to make an award for all 10 girls.
One of us three coaches does not want to do any awards.
One of us three coaches is OK either way.



I'm sure we have plenty of people on the forums who have coached their kids or even just remember being a kid.
How do you feel about "individual awards" for kids at end of a season?

I'm trying to collect all viewpoints here.

[Invictus]

Only time I coached a team, was an Atom house league team when I was in grade 11. With University coming in a few years... really didn't have extra cash to think of awards.
Rest of my coaching was goalie coach. Not exactly a hand out rewards type position.

Not sure if as a player I had gotten end of season awards as a kid - If I did don't remember (shows how important that was to me). What I do remember is receiving an award after a game - a new puck or hockey cards. Usually there is enough games to ensure the love is spread around to all the players. I think for kids I'd prefer this route (not that that helps you).

[Feenom]

What I did as part of a coaching team (U12 soccer boys) was get them all $10 gift cards to McDonalds/Dairy Queen and still hand out the MVP etc awards. That way nobody is crusty about getting more than anybody else.

[Daydream Nation]

My 8-year old son just ended a coed soccer league with a very similar schedule as what you described. They did not do any awards. I would lean towards doing no awards but it definitely would not bother me if they did.

[2014olympicgold]

Age dependent with this stuff.

I'd think at 5-10 you do the "everyone wins approach" when you don't track wins in the league. It's for fun and the kids aren't in the league to deal with wins/losses yet. From 11+, or whenever your league has standings, then you dial back the "everyone wins approach".

You have to be prepared for the parents though when you don't do the "everyone wins" approach as I had a parent upset with me when I coached 12yr old hockey when I decided to skip their kids shift as he was on the verge of tears and I felt like he needed an extra second on the bench to work through it. Then the parent freaked out I allowed their kid to cry after I told them this. I pulled him off to the side after the game and talked to him about how we all have bad days it's about how you bounce back and blah blah blah and the parent pulled him from the team and didn't bring him back lol.

So ya, I'm sure if you decide to do limited or no awards, there will be a parent that's upset with you and will voice their decision. If you give everyone an award, the people upset with the decision likely won't be upset enough to approach you since their kid is happy.

I've felt the "everyone wins" approach has effected parents more than anyone. Parents didn't want to help their kids work through problems, so eliminating the problem was easier. A participation trophy validates a child's efforts in something new which can help them stick with the sport/activity. However, if it continues a child can become lazy and never develop a drive to become better at something. And when there's an obstacle, it can lead to a kid shutting down and not pushing through it. It's the whole positive reinforcement vs negative reinforcement and there's positive and negatives for both sides and a lot of it leans on the age and maturity of the kids.

Ages 8 and 9 is at that tipping point though. I think if it was 9 and 10 you don't do the awards and hope the 9yr old's are mature enough to accept the "thirst to outperform" feelings that can happen from not winning an award.

I say give the awards, but with the knowledge of next yr you won't be.

[saucelife90]

You're going to have kids who appreciate the awards, kids who feel slighted, and kids who don't care one way or the other. Regardless of which category they fall into, they'll all have forgotten about it later that night when they're playing Minecraft or whatever 9 year old's do nowadays.

Dealing with the parents is really going to be your issue if you hand out awards. So the question at hand is, do you want to deal with drama or not.

[Pengwin7]

My 8-year old son just ended a coed soccer league with a very similar schedule as what you described. They did not do any awards. I would lean towards doing no awards but it definitely would not bother me if they did.

This is where I am at. Except that it definitely *would* bother me that the (main) coach is considering it.

For me... the girls had a great season learning skills, playing, winning some, losing some, making friendships, building confidence.
I don't see any reason to start "individualizing" at the end of the season by saying "Joleen is our MVP. Darla is our Most Improved. SoNSo is This. BlahBlahBlah is That."
That just gives the kids some differentiating position of value on what is "TEAM".

If kids are in a travel league and there's an end-of-season banquet and maybe there are awards for the top Offense, Defense, Goalie... 3 of 15+ players get awards. Fine.

But age 8 & 9 year old REC girls... I just see more harm (than help) coming from singling them out in ANY way.
Even giving all of them some (different) award.
I know that some kids are like "Why was SoNso the MVP? She doesn't pass. She scores because she doesn't pass." (real kid on our team)



As a further story, my 7th-grade daughter ended up in the counsellor's office last week.
Apparently the gym teacher let a couple boys "pick teams" - and my very sweet and kind and timid and not-athletic daughter... got picked... last.
Crushed. Singled-out.

That shit is archaeic. Can't believe some teachers think it is still acceptable.
As one might be able to tell... this (setting up kids on a stage from BEST-to-WORST) is not something I'm fond of.
It's old and stupid.

The good kids know they're good.
The bad kids know they're bad.
Nobody needs to make an extra announcement about these things.


TEAM should be EVERYTHING in Team Sports within the Team Room:

[finnys_fanatsy]

ive never been a fan of "ribbons for all participants" but, individual awards at this level and age is a slippery slope.

i've coached hockey of all ages, and i made it a point to , as others have said, do a player of the game where everyone gets a something. i also at the end of the year gave out 3 individual awards, Most Improved, Most DEdicated and MOst Sportsmanlike (if you know of the Esso awards you know what these are). these were generally, as far as i could tell, a big hit with the teams and no resentment that i could see as they all cheered and supported the recipients. as coaches, we all had a hand in the recipients, and really played the Sportsmanlike up as the most important reward, rather than MOst Dedicated or Improved.

i would not be in favour of that many awards given out, unless you can stretch it to include the whole team, but instead of different "awards" give them all teh same generic token of teh yearthey had, be it a small plaque of medal or whatever.

[2014olympicgold]

The teacher allowing captains and picking teams is a lazy teacher who never was picked last when they were in school. That's not how it should be in a forced phys-ed class.

It's incredibly quick and easy to put the kids in a randomizer site and have it pick that way. I hope the teacher learns from that, but if they haven't already who knows if they will.

[rataylor22]

I personally would do out awards but leave out skill based ones. Just make them all fun. "best hairdo" and "most energy" and "loudest" that type of stuff. I would also make the award something small that they will enjoy, like $10 at dairy queen or something. Definitely not a ribbon or a trophy or anything.

[Invictus]

As a further story, my 7th-grade daughter ended up in the counsellor's office last week.
Apparently the gym teacher let a couple boys "pick teams" - and my very sweet and kind and timid and not-athletic daughter... got picked... last.
Crushed. Singled-out.

That shit is archaeic. Can't believe some teachers think it is still acceptable.
As one might be able to tell... this (setting up kids on a stage from BEST-to-WORST) is not something I'm fond of.
It's old and stupid.

The good kids know they're good.
The bad kids know they're bad.
Nobody needs to make an extra announcement about these things.

I don't agree with this.
The whole world is based on getting selected out of peers. At some point they need to learn this and build grit.
I mean I doubt your daughter will ever want to pursue sports, but maybe another time she gets rejected in something she is really passionate in.
I think allowing students to pick their own teams is important.

I say this because I think in the past you mentioned something (I also could very well be out to lunch on this) about how you feel like you coddled your daughter a bit too much as a kid. I think this could be another example of that as this team picking sounds like it was a one time event.

If it's the same two guys always being captains then yes I agree with you. Needs to be mixed around. Your daughter should be a captain next. Teacher also picks teams another time. Not really a fan of 2014OG suggestion of a randomizer as it could create two unbalanced teams (I like balance), but I guess you could just randomize it again until you get what looks fair (personal preference here then).

[2014olympicgold]

I don't agree with this.
The whole world is based on getting selected out of peers. At some point they need to learn this and build grit.
I mean I doubt your daughter will ever want to pursue sports, but maybe another time she gets rejected in something she is really passionate in.
I think allowing students to pick their own teams is important.

I say this because I think in the past you mentioned something (I also could very well be out to lunch on this) about how you feel like you coddled your daughter a bit too much as a kid. I think this could be another example of that as this team picking sounds like it was a one time event.

If it's the same two guys always being captains then yes I agree with you. Needs to be mixed around. Your daughter should be a captain next. Teacher also picks teams another time. Not really a fan of 2014OG suggestion of a randomizer as it could create two unbalanced teams (I like balance), but I guess you could just randomize it again until you get what looks fair (personal preference here then).

Then the "learn to lose and handle rejection" still happens which is the talking point of people on the side of team captains picking teams. It's handling the lose and not handling rejection. But ya, if you want to be critical on the fact the game might be lopsided over the singling out a kid then ya, just randomize it until the teacher is satisfied. Or the teacher just makes the teams. I just chose the least amount of effort the teacher could put in that's not other people do the work.

The thing that is more detrimental to a child is public humiliation and rejection and not the lose the game creates (there's thousands of studies out there that backs removing captains picking teams because the humiliation it brings is terrible for a kid). Kids don't go to the school counsellor over losing at dodgeball.

[Invictus]

Well the winning of the game isn't the point my discussion. It was just a point against randomizing, but if you just randomize until teams are fairish that's all in fine. It's basically just creating the teams yourself at that point - all good - personal preference. Fair games are just more fun imo.

[Pengwin7]

We definitely didn't coddle our daughter out of choice. ("Coddle" being a VERY relative & subjective term.)

What we learned, with her personality, is that she doesn't handle criticism well and she's apt to consider dark places.
When she feels alienated by her main support group (her parents, her friends, her school) she can sink into a very bad place (suicidal talk).

For those reasons, we've changed our parenting to a condition where we've eliminated some of the "toughen up kid, the world is a tough place" shit that some parents employ.
What the PE teacher is doing is their own form of that... showing, obviously, that they haven't had a kid like this in their life. Effin meathead instructor.

First thing kids need is to feel safe.
If any teaching or public-event is driving a kid to a point of contemplating ending-their-life... then it's the instructor/instructing that needs to change.

So... you can disagree all you want about "picking teams"... doesn't sound like you have a child.
There are points in life where you might have to hear a hard truth about where you stack up... but I don't think that situation should be thrust upon a child - unexpectedly.
(which is what it happened - she wasn't ready for it - she got blindsided)

The world has passed the point where kids need to be "tough". Those were war-days... boys were being thrust into war. Different era. We're far from that.
As a parent, if you driving my kid anywhere near a situation where she starts about ending her own life... I've got it out for you.

Hard disagree here.
Picking teams is a clear & present "you are the shittiest kid among us" crap.
I can't even...

I'm amazed at some people's lack of being able to put themselves in other people's shoes.
Head.effin.shake.

[Axeman33]

At that age, you either get them the exact same thing (a participation award, be it a McDonalds gift card, or a free sunday at DQ, I dont know) or you get them all nothing. I dont think you should be awarding MVPs, MIP, etc, and singling out kids.

Personally I am on the "get them nothing" train because I hate participation awards but todays society is soft. What can you do.