I went to a small private boarding school that did no awards. I think the class president talked at the graduation. It didn’t seem to stop us from working hard.
The math award just was funny, because of course the high school wouldn’t give him an award since he wasn’t really a high school student. He got the AMC8 award - including in 6th grade, which was amusing since they had fought me tooth and nail to get him accelerated out of 6th grade math. (There were precedents, but not many.)
I long ago made peace with how rankings are caluculated. My oldest lost places because he took Latin (which had no honors sections because it was so small), because he took chem in the summer and because a schedule conflict meant he took regular physics instead of honors or Physics B. Youngest got an unfair (IMO) boost from getting A+s (unweighted, but they still improved his GPA) in two different orchestras every single year.
Our high school had two awards ceremonies - one during the day for the less important awards including all the junior year ___College book awards, and one in the evening for the more important ones - all senior awards except for the one junior who gets the RPI medal.