Our 200+ team does this too. I’m not sure why any of this is a big deal. They call each kid for their trophies/medals adding the paper plates would be a waste of time. |
|
Is your kid upset?
From the original post, it sounds like you as the parent are upset and not the child. I'm wondering why this summer swim banquet means more to you than the swimmers. I think you should take a moment to figure out why this is so important to you. Why is it so important to you that your child is publicly acknowledged? |
| I think they are stupid but younger kids like them. Even the HS swim team does them. Our summer team has the teen coaches do them, mostly during unpaid time, which is wrong. |
| My kid made four paper plate awards. It was fun and took about an hour. |
My daughter is a teen assistant coach and while she loves everything about summer swim, she and her fellow coaches spent hours and hours making paper plate awards for every kid on her team. A truly massive amount of work. |
I’m still angry about my paper plate award I received in 1986. So embarrassing. Relax, Mom. |
I wonder if we're the same team. Our coaches did a great job on the paper plate awards, which had to be an incredible amount of work, and kept the presentation of them moving. The artwork was really well done, and they were nice or funny. They gave one to each swimmer, and they made one for each coach. And then, after it was finished, a group of 8U and 10U girls passed around the mic and handed out their own handmade paper plate awards to the coaches, but they weren't balanced among the coaches, the messages weren't great (including poking fun at a male coach's height), and it took forever. Maybe their parents thought they were cute, but it was a big chunk of time that would have been better at a practice (or not done at all). |
Parents and swimmers alike have a right to be annoyed at inappropriate paper plates awards. Coaches should know better, but it's often done by team reps who are passive aggressive and are gunning for the swimmer's parents. The family is often gone from the team the next summer (which was the intent). In one case, the kid joined another summer team, started club swim, and ended up becoming a top club swimmer. Adults who act this way towards kids are disgusting. |
Seriously? You think team reps have the time to put together mean paper plate awards just to get at another family. The amount of perceived and/or actual "someone is out to get me (or my kid(s)" drama on summer swim is incredible. |
| Horror would be a child drowning in the pool while guards were busy making paper plate awards. |
Truth. Thanks for injecting some needed perspective into this thread. |
| Kids don't care about this. They had fun all summer. Only Instagram mommies care. |
| Our coaches make very cute individualized paper plates for every swimmer. They are hung up at the banquet for everyone to see, but they aren't handed out individually, that would take forever?! |
Yep, my son was a volunteer coach and 8+ teenagers spent ten hours the day before the party on these. Unpaid. |
|
Huh? All of our kids get a paper plate award.
I'm seriously not sitting through 200+ kids getting paper plate awards! Ours are funny and they're displayed on the wall before kids pick them up so everyone can see. |