That eight smart kids could support each other and all get rewarded for it is anathema for anyone who views life as a zero-sum game.
And with that, the judges, in an unprecedented move at the Spelling Bee, declared all eight competitors the champion, gave them each their own trophy, and gave them each the $50,000 first prize (thus rendering all of them ineligible for varsity spelling teams in college).
Co-champions of the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee, from left, Shruthika Padhy, 13, of Cherry Hill, N. J., Erin Howard, 14, of Huntsville, Ala., Rishik Gandhasri, 13, of San Jose, Calif., Christopher Serrao, 13, of Whitehouse Station, N. J., Saketh Sundar, 13, of Clarksville, Md., Sohum Sukhatankar, 13, of Dallas, Texas, Rohan Raja, 13, of Irving, Texas, and Abhijay Kodali, 12, of Flower Mound, Texas, hold the trophy in Oxon Hill, Md., Friday, May 31,2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Now, if you’re like me, you absorb this story and look at the photo above and marvel at the insane preparation these kids undergo to get to this level, with work would make even most baseball travel families wince, work that has been the subject of at least two documentaries: the 2002 hit film Spellbound, which followed competitors through the 1999 tournament, .and 2018’s Breaking the Bee, which focuses on the domination by Indian-American children, who have won the title 13 straight years, including as part of the 2019 gaggle.
Also, if you’re like me, you also marvel at these kids’ humanity. Even as they competed, they treated each other with respect and support, to the point, as the Times noted succinctly about the run-up to the end, and the end itself: « They supported one another with high-fives and hugs, and each placed a hand on a single trophy. » A lot of coaches talk about competing hard but fair, about trying to defeat your opponent but still respecting them, and about the lessons learned in sports coming as a result of what happens during the competition, not necessarily about wins and losses. These kids are living examples of everything, it seems, that is right about sports, even if you don’t consider spelling a sport.
However, I have long had to come to terms with many of you not being like me, which means you suddenly cared about the National Spelling Bee result because they didn’t grind these kids into a fine pulp to narrow it down to one winner. That the trophies they get are, despite all the intense preparation, despite all the kids they did have to beat to narrow things down to a eight-win tie, are, you guessed it, « participation trophies. » This column by the New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski, contains all the greatest hits:
…the Scripps Montessori School, er, National Spelling Bee doesn’t think so highly of its competitors…. Eight champions? What is this, a contest or Menudo?… The media naturally fell over themselves, calling the love-fest “extraordinary” and “unprecedented.” But in modern adolescence, everybody always wins…. how concurrently cutthroat the real world has become as we’ve rendered our youth forever-cherubs…. We don’t need to summon Charles Darwin in a seance to find out that life is competition.
The Menudo boy band example, first, is dated — c’mon, at least throw in One Direction if you can’t get with BTK. Also, it ignores that hundreds of kids tried out for every spot that opened in the five-member lineup, so, really, if you want to invoke Menudo in your participation trophy rant, they’re really an example of how there really IS only one winner in life.
A few other favorite rants:
Not a fan of this “everyone is a winner” thing. I never got a participation trophy when me and Heather Gregory used to get into epic spelling battles in 5th and 6th grade. These kids shouldn’t get one now. All or nothing!
Logan Stepan (@l_stepan6) May 31,2019
I’m tired of these participation trophies…
“Oh everyone is a winner!”
Only 1 can be the W-I-N-N-E-R, the rest are L-O-S-E-R-S, that’s life for ya. https://t.co/20T1GJBjgp
Brett Siegel (@brettsiegel13) May 31,2019
Eight spelling bee champions is absurd.
