Fri, 10/14/2022 - 4:39pm

Editorial: October 14, 2022

The dreaded participation trophy

In the past these pages have questioned the introduction of some achievement awards that seem to fly in the face of earned achievement. Watching a recent episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made a very interesting observation. He stated that starting with Little League, parents want their children to be rewarded just for being on the team so they don’t feel disappointed by the team’s other, more gifted athletic children. Another guest, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) anchor Katty Kay, said that some parents of college-age children feel that if their children are failing, they should pass whatever course they are taking and then move on to the next level. She thought that if you fail, you fail, and should not be rewarded for failing. Chris Christie called this practice of rewarding a “participation trophy.”

These pages have found a parallel in the sport of showing purebred dogs. The sport always prided itself on not dividing professionals from amateurs; it was a family sport open to all. If you were new to the sport, you sometimes questioned why the professional handlers and owner-handlers did so well in the ring. But if you stayed in the sport for any length of time, you realized that they deserved the recognition because their dogs were trained, trimmed and properly presented. And you know that old adage: If you can’t beat them, join them. So that’s what we did: We watched, we asked, we learned, and we started to enjoy the same success that we saw others achieve.

Somewhere down the line, the tradition was pushed aside by those in the boardroom who started rewarding those not on that level. Slowly, deliberately or not, we are evolving the sport from a pro/am event to areas of separation. We started with the accomplishment of the dogs being exhibited, and so the grand championship was created. What’s so grand about grand? But the AKC pushed its judges to award grand-champion points, and now it has morphed into a never-ending competition that includes Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum levels 1 through 5. Now Best of Breed classes have grown and are full because these older dogs are still in play, and class dogs are becoming a rarity. So we tackle that problem with Reserve Winners getting majors at specialties, and a single entry of either sex in the classes gets a championship point.

Starting next year, we will have class dogs that place second, third and fourth in a variety group obtaining championship points. All this without addressing the National Owner Handled Series, which bars professional handlers from entering, while in this day and age many professional handlers breed their own dogs and then find clients to help with expenses. Talk about participation trophies.

We go back to the aforementioned Chris Christie, who as a father of seven said that he made all his children fans of the Mets baseball team so they could feel pain and disappointment from the very beginning. So what we are saying is it’s OK to lose and then learn, because the wins are so much sweeter and deserved.

 

 

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