The season ends on a Saturday and somebody has to hand out something at the pizza place. Usually that somebody is a team parent who volunteered in March, has not thought about it since, and now has eleven kids and forty minutes.
End of season team party favors get treated as an afterthought right up until the week they are due. They do not have to be complicated, but they do have to be decided early if you are covering more than one team.
The trophy question, answered honestly
Participation trophies have been argued about for twenty years and that argument is not getting settled at your league meeting. Here's the practical read.
A trophy is a shelf object. It sits in a bedroom, then in a box in a garage. A medal is wearable, and kids wear medals out of the restaurant, into the car, and to school on Monday. Olympic Style Gold Medals are a 1.5 inch plastic disc on a 28 inch red, white, and blue cloth ribbon, printed both sides. Winner Medals use the same disc on a 24 inch ribbon with a star on the reverse.
The unpopular opinion: for players roughly under nine, a medal does more than a trophy for less hassle. For older players, drop the award object and put the money toward something they will use. A twelve year old knows exactly what a participation trophy is.
What kids actually keep from team party favors
Watch a table after a team party and the favors sort themselves into three piles.
Kept: anything with a function. Sports Pouch Keychains are 2 inches wide, vinyl, with a working zippered pouch, in all four sport designs. Sport Eraser Pencil Tops, 1 inch wide in baseball, basketball, and soccer, end up in a pencil case and get used all fall. Baseball Pencils and Soccer Pencils are 7 1/2 inch wood with number 2 lead, which sounds boring and is one of the few favors that gets used up instead of lost.
Played with, then kept a while: small sport balls. Sport Balls are 1 3/4 inches of lightweight foam in soccer, tennis, basketball, and baseball. Squeeze Sport Balls are 2 inch molded foam in the same four sports. Mini 2.5 Inch Footballs are foam filled with a vinyl covering. Soccer Player Figures are hand painted, 2 1/2 inches tall, on a base sturdy enough to stand, which makes them a cake topper and a favor at once.
Gone by Monday: anything edible, anything paper, and anything a parent has to assemble.
Doing it for a whole league instead of one team
One team is a shopping trip. Twelve teams is a logistics problem, and the failure mode is always the same: the league buys per team, at different times, from different places, and the last three coaches get whatever is left.
Buy once, centrally, in dozens, and split it. Most of this catalog is packed by the dozen, which maps cleanly onto a roster. A dozen medals covers a team with a spare. Two dozen covers a team plus the siblings who show up.
A workable per team kit:
- A dozen medals, ribbons untangled the night before, not at the table.
- A dozen small sport balls or squeeze balls, matched to the sport if you can.
- A dozen pencils or eraser tops as the item that survives past the weekend.
- Bead necklaces in the team color if your league does colors. The School Spirit Bead Necklace runs 32 inches with 6mm plastic beads, ages 3 and up.
- One spare of everything, labeled, for the coach who forgets.
Assemble by team, label each bag with the team name, and hand the bag to the coach at the last practice. Do not try to distribute at the party. Parties run late, kids leave early, and half your favors go home in a team parent's trunk.
Two things to check before you order
Ages first. Most of the small novelties here carry an ages 3 and up rating, and those small parts are a genuine choking hazard for children under three. Youth sports parties are full of toddler siblings, so keep the small items in the player bags rather than an open bowl on the table.
Timing second. Season end dates move for weather. Order when the schedule is published, not when the last game is played, because a rained out Saturday can compress your window to four days.
For the sport specific pieces, look through sports themed toys and novelties and all sports party supplies, then fill in the rest of the bag from novelties and party supplies. If you're placing the league order this week, TODAY knocks 10 percent off one order. It's single use, so put it on the biggest cart you have.