The "everybody gets a trophy" complainers are annoying. It's pretty simple to differentiate a trophy that has been given for winning and for participation. It's not ruining anyone's life and at most it goes into a memory book or something. They act like its new or that it's unique to this generation. We got participation trophies in soccer in the early 80's...this isn't a new thing Yeah, they've been around forever. No kid is thinking, "gee, I'm just as good as the kid/team that won the BIG trophy;" they all know what a participation trophy is. For the most part I sucked at playing sports and had a huge collection of participation trophies. All I ever thought was, "hey, it's kinda cool I got a little trophy I can put on my dresser" and they would remind of the teams I actually enjoyed being on.