I would not have been described as a stellar athlete in my youth. Not only was I dead weight when playing soccer, but I was hopeless at gymnastics, pole vaulting, basketball, tennis, and the litany of other sports I tried out in the hope to be exceptional.

Spoiler alert: I was not.

But if a child from the ‘40, ‘60s or even ‘80s were to gaze upon all my hardware, they would have been blinded by the sheer magnitude of glorious, glowing synthetic chemical made material painted to look like metal. They would depart, perhaps, with the belief that I was a young prodigy destined for the hallowed halls in which those great athletes reside, eternally illuminated by the Olympic torch. And the same would be true if they were to meet the rest of my generation.

Why is it that our parents only got a trophy or medal if they earned it, but we were all given cheap plastic statues to supposedly show our “hard work,” no matter if we never scored a single goal the entire season or showed up to one practice? The kid who carried the entire team and worked harder than anybody else there is apparently equal with Marie, the kid who didn’t score a single goal all season. (I still have that soccer trophy.)

I worked hard at soccer. But that didn’t make me great. Greatness is not achieved simply by trying, or everyone would be a star.

Sports were created to showcase excellence. In Ancient Greece, the Olympics were held to determine the fastest, strongest and biggest among them. The whole point of a sport is that there can only be one winner. Participation awards display manufactured realities and expectations for kids about the real world, where suddenly they might not succeed just by simply “trying.” Their lovely world view swathed in a golden bubble will inevitably pop, leaving behind a big mess.

There is a degree of irony in the entire concept of a participation award. An award is a symbol of excellence, but participation gives everyone one. It’s essentially an oxymoron. Both sides contradict each other.

We can take a lesson from economics. When there is more of an object in circulation, the value goes down. How valuable is a trophy that everyone in the game automatically receives, regardless of talent or dedication? It dilutes the meaning.

Some might protest that it’s just a game, and they’re just kids, and it has no real consequences, as if childhood is not the most formative and impressionable time of their lives. It makes the child feel happy, they might say. They can feel good about themselves and all their hard work.

There is a lot of concern these days about how the child might feel. Won’t they be sad if they worked really hard and they didn’t get anything to show for it?

Well, every other generation in human history didn’t get participation awards, and they turned out fine. Besides, do we really want to teach children that something is only worthwhile if they get something out of it? Instead of appreciating the memories and progress they’ve made, they look for the physical things they’ve received. And if they haven’t gotten a material reward, they haven’t gotten anything.

And so, we have learned to approach life expecting rewards, like we deserve them, when all we’ve done is play our part. The warm embrace of the Everybody Wins mentality is beginning to feel more like a furnace.

I hope that when we have children of our own, we will not make the same mistakes. I hope that we will reward those who succeed and encourage those who lose to keep persevering.