The games of the 31st Olympiad fade into history and the school year of 2016 begins. Parents everywhere are preparing their own little Olympians to charge into the classroom and return with the gold. Or at least a B-plus.
The competitive spirit is alive and well in the classroom just as in the Olympic arena. We don’t always award gold medals, but being top of the class is an honour coveted by kids and parents everywhere.
This is good news for those who despise the awarding of “participation trophies” to children who play on losing pee wee football teams. Do a web search of “hating participation awards” and see what I mean.
My four adult children suffered no such undermining of their competitive spirit. They were all athletes in several sports and every award they received was earned by individual merit. Sure, one swimming ribbon reads “17th place”, but I assume there was a No 18.
Of course, losing is relative. By definition, 90% of all graduates are not in the top 10% of their class. For that matter, about 90% of those Olympic athletes left Rio with no medal. Winning is a rarity, losing an epidemic. 
Did you cheer the amazing Usain Bolt? Well, if he had stopped after his first Olympics – he failed to advance in a 200-metre heat as a 17-year-old in Athens – he’d have ended up smack in the middle of that gaggle of losers.
As the school year commences, these thoughts swirl. Having taught high school, college, and graduate students, I can state unequivocally that they are acutely aware that they are in a system that, throughout their young lives, tests them, compares them, ranks them, and rewards them based on tests, comparisons, and rankings. The Hunger Games trilogy has enjoyed huge popularity among them, and it’s not because the premise is unfamiliar.
My daughter Cari is a highly successful professor with many accomplishments to her name. Yet I recollect with great pride a particular swim meet way back when she was 7. In the 8-and-under age group, Cari anchored one of the two 100-meter relays her team deployed. Hers was the “slow” relay. She was replaced on the “fast” quartet by a swimmer she had routinely beaten, and she was confused and upset at this.
She typically swam her 25 yards face in the water, without taking a single breath after her dive. I once asked her if she thought about breathing during those swims. “No,” she said.
“What do you think about, then?”
“I think,” she said, “about winning.”
She knew she was contributing to a losing cause that evening as her frantically flailing teammate touched the wall, almost a full length behind. Cari propelled a strong child’s body into her lane and swam the 25 yards face down. She had taken no breath in her losing cause. She had thought only about winning.
That loss explains Cari’s successes better than any of her wins, which are many. Her insistence on giving her all no matter the odds is the story of her life. It requires a combination of grit, persistence, courage, and something else, something hard to describe.
I think it’s a kind of outlandishness. A notion that you might just make up a full length and win the race. It’s 17-year-old Bolt looking back at the empty track and saying, “See you in four years.” It’s everyone who has ever been pushed back, knocked down, or counted out regaining their footing, squaring their shoulders, and reentering the field of play.
It is your daughter refusing to be told she’s not college material, your son rebelling against a world of cynical statisticians ever ready to tell him exactly how foolish he is to set that goal, chase that dream. Foolish even to try.
So, here’s my nugget of advice as the school year begins: Whatever the quest sought by your son or daughter, listen with care for the voices that cry: “Outlandish”. Let that be your signal to bend down, grab your child by the shoulders, and whisper: “Go for it. Just go for it.”
That’s the kind of participation deserving of a trophy.

*Orlando R Barone is a writer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Readers may send him e-mail 
at [email protected]
Related Story