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FINANCIAL MISCONDUCT: Is the answer to frivolous Wall Street bonuses, The Participation Trophy Syndrome

By Steve Lombardi

The Participation Trophy Syndrome

Wall Street executives who take frivolous bonuses have to have learned some where in life that their showing up is somehow all they have to do. Bernard Madoff had to have learned somewhere in his lifetime that he was entitled just because he showed up for the investment game. Why do these grown men lack the necessary character and backbone to do the right thing and to expect bonuses only after they earn them? What is wrong with our American culture?

Allow me to be bold, only losers want a participation trophy. If you disagree with this premise then you don't appreciate why we have youth sports. Sports aren't just about learning a 'game.' Youth sports is about building character they'll need later on in life to meet tougher challenges.

I coached for ten years of soccer and raised four children through participation in organized sports. As part of a team they played baseball, basketball, swimming, soccer and danced. As part of their training each received instruction on how to hit the speed bag. My youngest son and I enjoyed 10 years of being father-coach and player-son at each level of youth soccer. By the time he reached the eleventh grade his skills exceeded my coaching abilities so I stepped aside.

Growing up in New England I was raised on the Red Sox, The Celtics, The Friars, High School Wrestling and the Portuguese league soccer. Pretty much self taught on the speed bag I credit my grandma then who taught me what her brothers taught her, how to strike it with fists in combination with elbows. Still I can see her standing in our unfinished basement below the wood support beam to which the backboard was nailed. Her frail frame and silvery head bobbing side to side as she demonstrated me what her brothers' taught her. She was probably no more than eighty pounds, with skinny arms that never held a steering wheel and quick hands that hadn't ever signed a check; Grandma Lombardi rocked like a street fighter as she slowly demonstrated the art of the elbow-fist combinations. 'Grandma!' was all I could say.

There I stood to her side, fit as a fiddle from hours and hours of singles, doubles, combinations and rolls, absolutely awed by this never before seen skill by a woman whose character had been hidden behind making mashed potatoes for grandpa's supper and for our Sunday family dinners. And then there's my mother, her husband died when she was thirty-eight, leaving her to raise five children on nothing, but what she could earn altering other people's clothes. Mom encouraged me to play sports; she still loves the Red Sox. I would walk into the kitchen where Mom sewed at the table while 'watching the game.' 'Who are they playing', I would ask. 'The Bums' was always her reply; she could never bring herself to call them the Yankees. That was the 1960's. Let's speed up to the night of October 27, 2004, she was 76 years old and we were yelling into our phones; me in Iowa and she in Florida. Talking we ran the gamut of emotions, as, the Red Sox ended 86 years of losing. Still today I can't watch HBO's, The Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino, without crying. Think about what it takes to survive eighty-six years of losing and yet the fans still loved them enough to support the team. What made us stick with them?

As a little leaguer I played for the Red Sox. I couldn't imagine playing for any other team. It would have been a sin. As a team we didn't always win. The years my father suffered through chemotherapy, radiation treatment and surgery to remove a lung, somehow he drug himself down to the park to see me catch the All-Star game. Taking the plate to hit, I can still look back along the third base line and see him waving to me. I so much wanted to hit a homerun for him that day. There he was sitting in a lawn chair, my mother holding an umbrella to protect his hairless head and body weakened by chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He sat me watching me with pride. I was never the most skilled player. I was always small, of slight frame, but with a quick smile and a willingness to work hard. I think Mom liked that about me. 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall.' she'd tell me in all earnestness. 'Big things come in small packages.' she'd remind me.

But as much as I loved to play the game and catch I hated losing more. There is symmetry to you pitch and I catch. Together we control the tempo of the game. 'Let's go!', 'Get on your toes!' I'd yell as we went around the horn after every out. In my entire little league career I never did hit a home run although my batting average was one of the best in the league. And that's how I live life hitting singles, just getting on base, never giving up, stealing bases and constantly moving. Maybe that's why I love 'The Inches Speech' spoken by Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday. As my mother taught me, earning every inch was more important than any trophy; after all she was the one who dusted and trophies were dust collectors, dust magnets of the worst kind.

That day dad came to the game was I believe the only game mom and dad ever attended. It was their first and his last. On March 28, 1968 dad died from lung cancer. He was thirty-seven. Mom's team lost that day, but Mom was never a loser.

Dolly's team lost that day, but Mom was not in any way a loser. Mom was a winner who understood that life was all about those inches. She was still willing to fight and die for that inch. And Mom refused to just give us the trophy, because she knew we had to earn it.

Do all parents understand what Dolly did about developing a winner?

Today at eighty she works several jobs, refusing any financial assistance from her kids. Mom has pride. Mom has character, Mom is a winner.

Like my mother, I hate to lose. And why is that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFx6OFooCs

Game day I dressed early, rode to the park, warmed up with whoever showed up early or if no one I simply ran the bases. After the game I'd walk in the kitchen door to one question. Mom sitting altering clothes would ask: 'How did the game go?' If we lost she may have made chocolate cupcakes but she offered no excuses to make me feel better about myself. 'So, what are you going to do different this next game?' She'd discuss strategy with me and listen but nothing else. I loved those conversations with Mom.

So what is the point of this? The point is Mom never ever considered encouraging the team to give me, a participation trophy. And that's because my mother knew I had to learn to lose in order to negotiate along the rough road to building character.

Yes, to develop character, a young boy and girl have to at times be losers and to deal with how winners win.

When we as parent's force coaches to provide every team member with a participation trophy we as parents may feel better, but the road to character building for our children is interrupted. A kid who believes losing is somewhat a trophied event soon comes to believe practice is optional; that the right attitude is a joke and the coach's authority is undermined. Why should a kid, when we all get trophies, believe the coach who says we aren't working hard enough as a team?

'Get real man!' 'Your coaching style went out back in the day!'

Parents, moms and dads, do your kids a favor by demanding there be no participation trophies at season's end. Instead; learn about the sport and especially the coaches system. Then talk strategy with your kid. I don't care if you're peeling potatoes and making clam chowder for supper. Pull up a stool for your son or daughter to just talk. Even if you can't attend the game, be at home after the game, to just talk. You see if you want your kid to 'feel good about themselves' then get involved with them. And do it early.

Kids tell your parents; I don't want charity and I don't want favors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHgPJjub790

Participation trophies are a parents' syndrome. No kid asks for one; just guilty-minded parents. And here is how the Participation Trophy Syndrome gets played out. Fast forward to age thirty. Your kids have been unemployed lying on your couch for the past six months. He's yelling to you to bring him another beer. When you get upset with this raw display of a lack of character, he stands up with palms out and says in response, 'What?, I showed up!, Where's my trophy?'

In the end how can a young adult who lacks character and backbone ever, 'feel good about themselves?' They don't and neither will you. So teach your kids how to build character, because only losers want a participation trophy. Remember as Frankie said, 'Tough Ain't Enough'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irDGknOu0uY

Coach Lombardi

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).