Understanding Participation and Winning

  After a summer off from running youth chess tournaments the school year has started and I am slowly getting my fall schedule of tournaments set up. I didn’t run summer tournaments for a number of reasons. There was the (unfulfilled) possibility that I would have to make trips to California for the project I was working on, the ever increasing cost of renting the outdoor shelter I had been using for my summer tournaments, and the poor attendance of my summer tournaments last year at a church on the south side of Des Moines.

  I was talking with a sponsor about my lack of summer tournaments and they offered me the use of their company board room. The board room was a great playing site with leather chairs and rectangular wood tables that were perfect for chess boards. There was only room for about a dozen players and parents so I had a free invitational tournament that gave eight former champions of my youth tournaments the chance to play a one day tournament in really nice conditions.

  The tournament was a success. The players and their parents all appreciated the great playing conditions and everyone got along before, during, and after the games. As a bonus the company bought Subway sandwiches for all the players and parents. I didn’t offer any prizes for this tournament – not even the participation medals I give to everyone who attends my regular youth tournaments. Before the tournament started one of the players asked about prizes and I told them that the Subway sandwich was their prize which got a good laugh from the players.

  I didn’t give too much thought to not having prizes for the invitational tournament and I didn’t give too much thought to having trophy prizes and participation medals for my fall tournaments until I saw this story in USA Today sports section about how NFL football player James Harrison is returning the participation trophies his 6 and 8 year old sons received for a summer youth activity.

  Harrison wrote "I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best...cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better...not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy. #harrisonfamilyvalues".

  I especially liked the reference to ‘#harrisonfamilyvalues’ which I hope doesn’t include his 2008 arrest for domestic violence. It probably doesn’t since the charges were reduced to simple assault and criminal mischief after Harrison agreed to undergo domestic abuse counseling. What Harrison does in his spare time is no business of mine – I was just letting my mind wander and wouldn’t have brought it up until I saw the ‘family values’ phrase.

  Two years ago I wrote about the Keller Youth Association Football League’s decision to do away with their participation trophies and the reaction to that decision. The decision didn’t bother me as much as the derision that accompanied the entire concept of participation trophies. This year’s reactions were no exception. USA Today columnist Nancy Armour wrote about Harrison’s decision this week and came down hard against giving out participation awards saying “If we're honest with ourselves, the trophies, ribbons and medals we hand out so willingly are more about us than the children getting them. It's affirmation that our kids are as wonderful as we think they are. It's also a way to fool ourselves into thinking that we're sheltering them, at least temporarily, from the cold, cruel world.” The accompanying rebuttal piece quoted trophy manufacturers asking that they not be blamed for fostering an 'entitlement mentality' along with a HBO Real Sports video showcasing how much money is in the trophy business.

  Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to compare participation trophies to 'Political Correctness', saying “There are no starters and there are no bench players because everybody plays. You get trophies for simply showing up. We are never allowed to crown champions because not everybody can be one and to do so humiliates those who lose, and we will not do that… Look! It's a perfect example of what I'm saying! Here you have a series of leftists all over the media agreeing? You would think they would back up the PC version. You would think these are the people that would rake Harrison over the coals for being insensitive and not understanding the plight of children, how they all can't be champions and so forth, and yet everybody falls in line.”

  I have to admit the trophies Harrison’s kids received were pretty nice and far beyond what I would expect of a participation award. Its even called a 'student-athlete award' which sounds like more than a participation award. Since Harrison references that kids shouldn’t ‘cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy’ I wonder if his kids cried and whined until someone gave them these trophies to shut them up. If that’s the case then I’m with Harrison – he should have taken those trophies away. But perhaps these are merely participation trophies which were earned by participating. They don’t say ‘WINNER’ or ‘CHAMPION’ or ‘FIRST PLACE’.

  When I first wrote about this topic I saw no reason to stop giving out participation medals at my tournaments and two years later I still see no reason to stop. I don’t know if Nancy Armour has ever given anyone anything but I have given out almost two thousand participation medals at my youth chess tournaments over the past five years and I am not trying to fool myself or shelter children from the cold cruel world – I’m just giving participants a memento of a tournament. A chess tournament where winning and losing can turn on the smallest of oversights or a tiny lapse of attention is plenty cold and cruel with or without a participation medal or trophy. I admit that Armour is a little right when she says the participation medals I give out are about me. They are about me in the sense that I design a different medal for each tournament and assemble them myself. It is my way of thanking the participants for participating.

  Rush Limbaugh equates participation awards with not being allowed to crown champions because the losers are humiliated. I still crown champions and kids know who the best and worst of them are at any activity before any championship awards are given out, The kids that are going to get upset by losing are not going to feel better by receiving a participation award and the kids that don’t worry about losing aren’t going to get upset because they don’t receive an award. They are just kids playing a game and recognizing their participation is not a life changing event one way or the other.

  I believe that you should get what you earn and if a participation trophy or medal is earned by participating that sounds reasonable to me. The South Snohomish, Washington softball team earned a playoff spot in the softball Little League World Series by winning their first three games in pool play, including a win over the Central Iowa Little League team. The South Snohomish team then lost 8-0 in the final pool play game to North Carolina. The win created a three way tie between North Carolina, South Snohomish, and Iowa with Iowa losing out on one of the two playoff spots by tiebreak.

  The Iowa team filed a protest, saying the South Snohomish team did not use their best players and bunted on every at bat in order to lose the game and deny Iowa a playoff spot because they did not want to meet Iowa in the playoffs. The protest was upheld and a playoff game was ordered between South Snohomish and Iowa. Iowa won the playoff game to get into the Little League World Series in which they were promptly eliminated.

  The same USA Today newspapers and other media pundits that lauded James Harrison’s decision to return his children’s participation trophies with proclamations that you must earn what you get in life and only winners should be rewarded are silent when it comes to the losing Iowa softball team getting another crack at the Little League World Series by complaining and protesting about a game that they weren’t even competing in. Silence also accompanied the South Snohomish softball team being penalized for clinching their spot in the playoffs so early that they could choose to not compete in their last game and influence the competition they had to play.

  I don’t understand South Snohomish purposely losing a game because I think it’s better to maintain momentum just like I don’t understand NFL teams with 13-0 records resting their players instead of trying to go undefeated but I believe they earned the right to conduct their final pool play game however they wanted by virtue of their dominant play in the first three games. I don’t understand why James Harrison would have his children participate in an activity that gives out participation trophies if he doesn’t want his children to get participation trophies. And the thing I really don’t understand is why so many feel so much anger towards participation awards.

How can I be a WINNER if YOU have a PRIZE?

These participation medals are EARNED by participation in my youth chess tournaments. They are not meant as 'non stop recognition' or to make sure that players are ‘constantly assured that they are winners’ and they are not meant to demean the achievements of the players that win the tournaments or earn a trophy or ribbon. They are participation medals - nothing more and nothing less. I apologize in advance to anyone that feels their child is being softened up, 'wussified', or being taught the 'wrong life lessons' from getting a participation medal at one of my youth tournaments. Now on to this week's topic:

  Last week Yahoo News headlined this ABC News video article about the Keller Youth Association Football League in north Texas decision to stop giving out participation trophies to their 7,000 players. The organizations Facebook website says ‘Going forward participation medals or trophies will be going away. KYA Football board feels that giving participation medals or trophies isn't sending our children the right message. Trophies are something you should strive for and earn. Life does not give you a participation job or medal, life makes you earn everything you get. We know not everyone will agree but we feel this is the right direction for KYA Football to go in.... ‘. The video was especially smarmy with reporter Matthew Forster's first line being ‘Sorry Kids…you’re going to have do a little more than just show up’. When interviewed for the piece, the KYA program director said ‘You have to go above and beyond in order to get those rewards. In order to succeed at life you have to give 110% all the time…not just sometimes…all the time”. Forster's statement saying ‘most of the parents are just fine with the decision’ is followed with a sound bite of a parent saying his son ‘has 10 or 12 trophies that don’t mean anything to him right now. The championship trophy from last year means something.’

What we all want...

  While I think 7,000 participation trophies may be a little much, I don’t get why the idea of an award for participation is the ‘wrong message’. I coached four little league teams and at the end of each season I pulled money out of my pocket to get the team trophies or medals engraved with their names. They were not only awards but also a token to remember a shared baseball season. Coaches that didn’t give their players even a slice of pizza weren’t happy with me but none of the parents ever seemed upset. Except one. There was a parent whose son stopped coming to the games halfway through the season but called me a month after the season ended looking for her son’s trophy after she found out from another mom about the trophies. I told her that since her son stopped coming to the games, I didn’t order a trophy for him. I got called a couple of names but I haven’t seen the young man’s name on the police reports in the paper over the past ten years so I don’t think he was permanently scarred and turned into a serial whatever unless they moved and changed their name due to the trauma. If that is the case and this grown-up child is stalking me I want to publicly state that I really did have the trophy made and sent by UPS to your house but your next door neighbors stole it so you should be stalking them and not me.

  I get the dad whose kid’s 10 or 12 participation trophies don’t mean anything but whose championship trophy does mean something. A common complaint I hear from some chess parents is how many chess trophies their kids have and these are all parents of kids that have a lot of chess trophies. I’ve never heard this particular complaint from a parent whose child has won one trophy or maybe never won a trophy. My kids have over a hundred trophies and medals (mostly chess) in the house. Their favorites were a) the latest one, b) the most unique one, and c) the one their brother didn’t have. I see the kids at my youth chess tournaments give up when they can’t win a trophy but I’ve never seen one quit because they’ve won too many. I wonder if football dad’s kid would feel different about the participation trophies if he wasn’t on the championship team last year.

  I’ve never seen a player or parent confuse receiving a participation medal or trophy with winning a chess tournament or baseball league and I’m sure the KYA football players weren’t throwing Gatorade on their coaches after receiving their participation trophies. I checked out the Keller Youth Association Facebook page looking for the parents' reaction to the decision and from the comments I saw it appeared that there is more to the issue than participation awards. There were a lot of complaints about the teams being separated into playoff divisions after the season and then the winning team players’ of each playoff bracket getting the same size trophy. This means the second best team in the top bracket doesn’t get a playoff trophies while the team that wins the lowest playoff bracket does and tells me that the participation trophies are part of a larger trophy issue with KYA-Football.

But when we get it...?

  Three months ago I shared my observations on winning when I wrote about my experiences at a Time Odds Blitz chess tournament, Vince and Bill’s arguments over counting change on an early Sunday morning at the Jiffy, and the bughouse tournament at my chess camp. In that piece I noted that while winning the bughouse tournament and Jiffy argument was very important to the combatants, I didn’t have the same need to win my Time Odds Blitz games and readily offered and accepted draws. At the time I said my actions didn’t mean I was a good sport but that winning the Time Odds Blitz games weren’t that important to me. A few weeks later I wrote that playing on in a hopelessly drawn position at the State Fair speed chess tournament didn’t make me a bad sport – it just meant that winning that game was very important to me. When I do give out trophy prizes at my youth chess tournaments the top 5 places get the same size trophy. Two years ago I had a parent of one of the top players complaining and questioning why the first place trophy was the same size as the fifth place trophy. He had a hard time accepting my explanation that I ordered 20 of the same trophy to get a discount and that in my experience there was plenty of competition to finish first even if they were over the exact same trophies except that one says first and one says second, etc… Eventually, I offered to place a piece of Scotch tape under the first place trophy if his son won it so HIS SON's trophy would be taller than the others and everyone would know that HIS SON was a better player than the rest and I also mentioned that everyone would know that HE WAS a better parent than the rest of the parents because HIS SON's trophy was taller than the everyone else's trophy because of the piece of Scotch tape I was going to place underneath it (YES I really said it and I really said it in front of other parents). The parent declined the offer and I haven’t seen him at my tournaments since and while I miss his child I don’t miss him. It wasn’t enough for his son to win the tournament – he had to have a bigger trophy so everyone else would know at a glance. Maybe it isn’t enough for the KYA ‘championship parents’ to have their children be champions – they have to make sure everyone else knows it also and having all these trophies around blurs the lines too much.

  The internet is full of pundits proclaiming the virtues of the KYA not giving out their participation trophies. I did a search on Google of the term ‘kya football participation trophies’ and found articles titled ‘Everyone No Longer a Winner in Texas Youth Football League’ and ‘Youth Football League Will Stop Giving Trophies to Losing Kids’. I’d like to think that the kids and their parents are smart enough to understand that getting a participation trophy is not the same as a championship trophy or winning a championship or winning a game and only in the Wizard of Oz would anyone think conferring a trophy makes one a winner. If every player were to get a team picture or a football for participating would the pundits still be as upset or is it the trophy that gets them so nuts because a trophy or a medal is associated with winners? I think that it takes a certain amount of courage to compete in a chess tournament or be on a sports team and all the participants should be recognized for being willing to compete. I don’t think it makes them soft or unwilling to work later in life or gives them a head start towards an entitlement mentality or being a minion of the nanny government if being willing to compete gets some recognition.

  The video and article don’t show the size of the participation trophies but since the KYA Facebook page had no complaints about the size of them I’ll estimate that the participation trophies are of a modest variety and cost $2 apiece when purchased in a quantity of 7,000. The minimum registration fee is $140 to participate in the KYA football program. Could this be nothing more than a large company with a budget of over a million dollars ($140 * 7,000 + fundraisers) finding at least a $14,000 savings under the guise of life lessons learned?

  I’ve been running monthly youth chess tournaments in the Des Moines area for the last 3 years and for the last 3 years I’ve given each participant a participation medal or button. I had custom made buttons for the first 10 tournaments and for the last 24 tournaments custom-made medals. I’ve always rewarded the top finishers at these tournaments with medals (when I was giving out participation buttons), ribbons, or trophies. The participation buttons and medals are my way of a) thanking them for coming to the tournament and b) making sure no player leaves my tournament empty handed. Except for a very few gifted players, the first few chess tournaments playing against experienced competition with unfamiliar rules can be so frustrating that it is easy for a player and their parents to give up on tournaments but if I can keep that player going to three or four tournaments they start to show the improvement that most young players do and find themselves able to compete. My participation medals are not to make everyone feel like a winner – it is to reward their participation. I imagine similar reasoning led the KYA to give out participation trophies in the first place.

  I’m not used to having a lot handed to me and I’m no social psychologist like the author of this New York Times piece that equates participation awards with ‘non-stop recognition’ and ‘children constantly assured that they are winners’. If these awards were to show the children they were winners, wouldn’t they say ‘WINNER’ on them? These awards are handouts or keepsakes not much different than a program from a play or goodie bags from a birthday party or business conference. The only people I’ve ever seen get their nose bent out of shape over participation awards are the parents of achievement award winners who can’t be happy with their child’s achievement unless it is accompanied by the adulation or jealously of all the non-winners.

  If the KYA doesn’t want to give out participation awards that’s their business and their customers will show them whether it is a sound business decision or not but their comments justifying the decision just seem silly to me. On the video the director said “In order to succeed at life you have to give 110% all the time…not just sometimes…all the time.” How can you ‘give 110% all the time’? Or any of the time? Or even once? Is 100% some sort of halfway mark or ¾ post that is readily surpassed? Is the person giving 110% all the time doomed to failure if everyone else gave 111% all the time or 220 percent 51% of the time? Sure makes that guy giving 100% look like a real slacker.

Earned income???

  As for the Facebook page saying “Life does not give you a participation job or medal, life makes you earn everything you get”, there is at least a kernel of truth to that saying although it wasn’t readily apparent when I was at the Wal-Mart Saturday waiting behind the family with 2 pot roasts, 8 chickens, 2 cabbages, assorted seasonings and paying with an EBT card and then getting 2 gallons of milk free with a WIC coupon. I’m not knocking the family – I’m just saying they probably didn’t earn the EBT card or WIC coupons. And speaking of participation jobs, check out the road crew personnel from my 2011 blog post. How else would one earn a participation award except by PARTICIPATING? And at the risk of offending my atheist readers as long as I’m on the topic of what is and is not earned I’ll close with this quote concerning at least one thing that life does not make you earn… salvation!
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9

Wrestling with a conscience

  Iowa high school wrestler Joel Northrup made the national headlines this week when, having made it to the state championship tournament, he defaulted his round 1 match when he was scheduled to face female wrestler Cassy Herkleman. There are 8 district tournaments and the top 2 wrestlers in each of Iowa’s 14 weight classes in each district are allowed to compete in the state tournament. Northrup cited religious reasons for his refusal to compete stating “Wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times," ...As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most other high school sports in Iowa.”

  Herkleman and Megan Black both made the state championship tournament this year and are the first 2 females to make Iowa’s championship tournament. Girls have competed in 1979 in Iowa high school wrestling. Montana and Nebraska have had female wrestlers advance as far as the semi finals. There is no rule compelling states to allow girls to compete in boy’s wrestling, and some states have a separate girls’ wrestling program.

  There is a precedent for athletes not competing due to religious reasons. Sandy Koufax, Hall of Fame pitcher for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, was Jewish and would not pitch on the holiday of Yom Kipper. This wasn’t very controversial until 1965 when the holiday fell on the same day as game one of the World Series. Fellow Dodger Hall of Famer Don Drysdale pitched and lost game 1 and then Koufax lost game 2, but the Dodgers managed to still beat the Twins in 7 games. On Christmas Day, the NBA plays an entire schedule and the NFL has games when it falls on a Sunday, but so far no player has refused to play on Christmas.

  I think Northrup is being disingenuous when he says he has been “placed in this situation”. In my opinion, he has placed himself in the situation. Wrestling entails a lot of grabbing and holding that could get one labeled as a sex offender if done off of the mat. Northrup has known for years that he may have to compete against a female wrestler and still chose to compete. He should have given his place in the state championship to someone else once he knew that he would be in the same bracket against other regional winners he had no intention of competing against. And since he is also wrestling for the Lin-Mar school wrestling team, his team also pays a penalty in the team standings for his refusal to compete and would have been better served if he had given a teammate the chance to compete in the district tournament for the chance to compete in the state tournament. Northrup’s parents could have satisfied his passion for wresting and their religious beliefs in many other states or one of the many wrestling programs that are outside the dual-gendered regulations of the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA).

  Having made the decision to compete in the IHSAA system, Northrup was obligated to follow through on this decision and compete. I don’t see how the choice he made is any different than the choice facing the 1963 segregated all-white Mississippi State basketball team that was forbidden from playing the mostly black Loyola of Chicgo team in the NCAA tournament in Lansing Michigan by edict of the Governor and a court order. The Mississippi State team defied the orders and snuck across the Mississippi line to travel and compete in the game. One of the Loyola players was Jerry Harkness, who owned a shoe store in Indianapolis and would call the company I worked for help with his retail software. I talked to him after seeing the TV special on the 1963 Loyola team that had won the NCAA championship. He told me how much courage the Mississippi State players showed by breaking the law to play in the game and how much his team appreciated it.

  By choosing to compete, Herkleman and the other female wrestlers are indicating their willingness to compete by the same rules as all the other wrestlers without special treatment and Northrup’s choosing when he will and won’t compete is an insult to the sport he obviously is passionate about. If he really had a religious objection, he should not have competed in an organization that promotes behaviour he finds so objectionable.

  In chess, I’ve never had a problem with a male player refusing to compete against a female. Once in a great while, a player will grumble “if I win, it’s just a girl and if I lose, I lost to a girl” and I try to point out that it is no different than playing someone much older or younger. Age, race, or how money in your pocket doesn’t matter when you sit down at the chessboard and whether you are playing a boy or a girl doesn’t matter either. Interestingly enough, if a tournament allows computers to play a participant may choose in advance not to play the computer. I’ve never had a computer in any tournament I played. If I do and refuse to play it I don’t think I’d get on ESPN, but I might get sued by the Society for Silicon Based Equal Rights.

A Tale of 2 Tournaments

  On Saturday, I helped Bill Broich direct the Drake Chess Festival in Des Moines. Just like the Des Moines Winter Chess Classic that I helped Bill with last November, my main duty was to run the beginner section. There were a lot of Drake students playing for the first time among the 29 players in the beginner section tournament. One of the students finished second, but all of them seemed to be taken aback by how strong the younger players were. The tournament was won by Frank Li, a 4th grader from Ames.

  One thing that I like about running the chess tournaments is that good sportsmanship is prevalent amongst the players. The rare times that a player causes a commotion makes for a good story, but they are by far the exception and not the rule. I introduced a high school player from my club, Chris Johnson to my friend Lee Cole and his son Sam before the tournament. As fate would have it, Chris and Sam played in the last round and Chris won, but there were no hard feelings from Lee or Sam, even though I could see Sam was not happy at losing. Instead they were all just talking after the game as friendly as they were before the tournament. The adult section also went smoothly (except for Bill’s temperamental printer and computer) and it was a pleasant, albeit long day. A bonus was that my son Matt tied for second in the open section and Marshalltown Chess Club player Jaleb Jay tied for second in the reserve section (Class C and below). Their free entry to the tournament was the payment for my help.

  On Sunday, I helped the Optimist Club by being a timer and scorekeeper for the 5th and 6th grade semifinal and final rounds of their annual boy’s invitational basketball tournament. As opposed to the good sportsmanship of the chess players, almost all the young basketball players would make faces, scream, pout or whine when a foul or an out of bounds call would go against them. If the clock wasn’t stopped or started quickly enough, the coach who stood to benefit by the mistake would be quiet while the other coach would start yelling at us to get it right. Some of the coaches would yell at the referee, mostly to see how much they could get away with or if they could sway the next decision one way or the other. And the parents would also do their share of hollering. Two particular incidents stand out in my mind. With 19 seconds left in the game and his team trailing by 9 points, the coach called a time out. Why? Did he have a 10 point play drawn up on his little basketball clipboard. These games had no 3 point shot so they would need to get 4 baskets, be fouled on 3 of the baskets, make all 3 free throws, and stop the other team 3 times. In 19 seconds. Right… In the other situation, the coach called a time out with 8 seconds left and ahead by 5 points. Was his team really going to lose the game? Was this something the coach saw on TV last week? I’ll stick with chess, thank you.