There are a pair of two-word phrases that should stop you in your tracks any time they cross your path. The first is "mother's boyfriend." The second is "state lawmakers." Chances are, the words that follow in that headline are about to go off-the-rails, and quickly.
In this case, North Carolina's state lawmakers latest attempt to solve the world's problems is Senate Bill DRS45207-MV-17, which attempts to outlaw and/or severely restrict one of the most dangerous trends for today's youth: participation trophies.
Before we go any further, we must add a dash of perspective to this emotional stew. This is just a bill, co-sponsored by three North Carolina Republicans Tim Moffitt, Eddie Settle, and Bobby Hanig. Though the bill is making the news now, it was originally introduced back on March 30. There's no guarantee the bill will go any further; most bills don't.
Furthermore, even if the bill becomes law, it's unclear exactly how many participation trophies would be melted back down into golden-flaked plastic. The text indicates it would outlaw such trophies "operated under the authority of a local government." Maybe that means a youth league or tournament would have to be operated by a city or county recreation department, or maybe it would apply to all events taking place at public parks or public schools. Here's the official text:
Youth sports or other youth recreation activities operated under the authority of a local government shall not include awards for participants based solely on their participation in the sport or other activity. Awards provided in connection with the activity, if any, shall be based on identified performance achievements.
Having said all that, this effort strikes me as a "solution" in search of a "problem." Those words are in quotes for a reason.
I'm 35 years old. I recall receiving a participation trophy as a youth soccer player some 30 years ago. I did not ask for the trophy, and I don't recall any of my teammates requesting one either. The adults in charge of the league decided to give them to us. The North East Youth Soccer Association in San Antonio, Texas did not invent the participation trophy in the early 1990s. In fact, here's a story complaining about handing out participation trophies at the 2022 Ohio high school state basketball tournament. No, wait, sorry. It was the 1922 Ohio state tournament. Chances are, someone involved in making that decision knew what the world was like in the days following Abraham Lincoln's assassination, or knew someone who did.
As an adult who now spends a truly embarrassing amount of time coaching youth sports team and talking to other adult men who coach youth sports, I've coached average teams that were given trophies after the season and championship teams that were given nothing. A $10 plastic monument did not fool the kids on the average teams into believing they were champions. Kids want to win. They're elated when they do, and bummed/angry/devastated when they don't. Just last month, the 7-on-7 team I help coach played a series of preseason scrimmages. My reminders of It's just a scrimmage and The result doesn't matter were ignored; the kids kept score on their own.
Humans are naturally competitive, and a participation trophy isn't going to lull that innate behavior out of them. To borrow an immortal line from Homer Simpson, mankind's innate competitiveness is the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
I'm not here to defend Trophy Culture. As explained above, I'm ambivalent about it. What bothers me most is the conversation around Trophy Culture. As adults, we create the world that we raise our kids in, and then too many of us turn around and blame the kids for being a product of the environment we created for them. (The inverse of this is also a pet peeve of mine, when adults give themselves credit for "resisting" a technology that was not available to them at the time. You don't get to pat yourself on the back for not owning a gaming system as a kid if you were a kid in the 1960s. For all we know, Lincoln would've been active Twitch streamer if given the opportunity.)
As someone at a practice or a game almost every single day, the problem with youth sports culture isn't that they're not competitive enough. It's much closer to the opposite.