INSPIRATIONAL SPORTS QUOTES BY WOMEN
***NEW*** 12/01/02
"If you never lose then you can never appreciate the victories."
---Laura Twitchell
***NEW*** 12/01/02
"The power of the human will to compete and the drive to excel beyond the body's normal capabilities is most beautifully demonstrated in the arena of sport."
---Aimee Mullins
***NEW*** 12/01/02
"I love the game. It's fun to play, period. I love running around and getting sweaty. I love trying to lead my team. I love facing the challenge of another team that's better."
---Jamila Wideman
***NEW*** 12/01/02
"I think a lot of our team commitment is a silent understanding that each one of us has poured our life into what we're doing."
---Claire Carver-Dias
***NEW*** 12/01/02
"Those who truly have the spirit of champions are never wholly happy with an easy win. Half the satisfaction stems from knowing that it was the time and the effort you invested that led to your high achievement."
---Nicole Haislett
09/06/02
"In our lives we will encounter many challenges, and tomorrow we face one together. How we accept the challenge and attack the challenge head on is only about us--no one can touch that. If we win or lose this weekend, it will not make a difference in our lives. But why we play and how we play will make a difference in our lives forever."
---Beth Anders
09/06/02
"Sports remain a great metaphor for life's more difficult lessons. It was through athletics that many of us first came to understand that fear can be tamed; that on a team the whole is more than the sum of its parts; and that the ability to be heroic lies, to a surprising degree, within."
---Susan Casey
09/06/02
"If you are ever going to achieve as much as you can in a sport, you are going to have to be willing to make a leap of faith to learn how much your body can handle."
---Meredith Rainey Valmon
09/06/02
"A race is not well-run unless you've crossed the finish line knowing that you couldn't have kept going for one more step. If you could have, then you didn't give it everything you had."
---Jackie Dugall
07/12/02
"An athlete is a normal person with the gift of an undying passion to be the best and achieve greatness."
---Amanda Ring
07/12/02
"Courage is not the absence of fear. It is being afraid but being able to control that fear so you are able to perform at your highest ability. That's what makes a champion."
---Cory Lester
07/12/02
"When you are out there on the soccer field playing, nothing else matters at the time. It's like the whole world has disappeared, and you and your teammates are all that matters."
---Amber Massey
07/12/02
"One bout doesn't make a champion. One win or one loss isn't reflective of an entire career...Champions aren't made or lost with one battle."
---Kelly Williams
07/12/02
"I'm not a yeller. My theory is that no one goes out there trying to screw up."
---Amy Ruley, head woman's basketball coach, North Dakota State (5-time NCAA D2 champions)
07/12/02
"The difference between a good athlete and a top athlete is the top athlete will do the mundane things when nobody's looking."
---Susan True
07/12/02
"Fishing is worth any amount of effort and any amount of expense to people who love it, because in the end, you get such a large number of dreams per fish."
---Fan Frazier
06/02/02
"Individual glory is insignificant when compared to achieving victory as a team."
---Dot Richardson
06/02/02
"Sportsmanship is not just about being nice. It is much more important than that. It's about realizing that you could not compete without an opponent and that she has the same goals as you."
---Stephanie Deibler
06/02/02
"To achieve in sports you first have to have a dream, and then you must act on that dream. The best athletes are those who truly enjoy what they are doing and display a tremendous amount of work ethic. They continue to persevere in spite of setbacks and never lose sight of their ultimate goal."
---Dianne Holum
03/14/02
"When you talk about an injury and the kind of depression you go through, it's not just because you're out of shape and you can't go out and play. You're missing a part of you. That's what's painful. That's what hurts."
---Jamila Wideman
03/14/02
"Don't be content with average because average is just as close to the bottom as it is to the top."
---Danielle Ballentine
03/14/02
"Luck is not something that happens by chance. Luck is earned through dedication, work and determination."
---Katie Mickley
03/14/02
"The race isn't over until you cross the finish line. You'll be surprised at how much can change in the last twenty strides."
---Jackie Dugall
12/31/01
"Great champions have an enormous sense of pride. The people who excel are those who are driven to show the world and prove to themselves just how good they are."
---Nancy Lopez
12/31/01
"In sport, part of the game is accepting the umpire's call, no matter how hard that might be. Sometimes the calls go your way, and sometimes they don't."
---Dr. Dot Richardson
12/31/01
"Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody gets there unless everybody gets there."
---Virginia Burden
11/30/01
"The values learned on the playing field--how to set goals, endure, take criticism and risks, become team players, use our beliefs, stay healthy and deal with stress--prepare us for life."
---Donna de Varona
11/30/01
"I am the person you'll see everyday training when everyone else has gone home. I live for the one moment of glory when I save that goal or sink that 3-point shot and score the winning basket. I am the sport, I am the glory, nothing can change that. I am an athlete, no one can forget that."
---Alexa Wilkinson
11/30/01
"Ah, the glories of women's sports: the camaraderie. The quiet dignity. The proud refusal to buy into traditional stereotypes of beauty."
---Sports Illustrated For Women
11/30/01
"In every sport there comes a moment when a spell of bitter weeping seems like a fair recess from whatever tough work is going on. It's only the steeliest among us who can fight the urge to turn negative--who instead will make contact and redouble her efforts. Call it grace under pressure. Call it grit....call it excellence."
---Sports Illustrated For Women editor, Susan Casey
10/31/01
"You run like a girl. You jump like a girl. You serve 165 km/h in their faces. Like a girl."
---Australian Female Volleyball
10/31/01
"For some people it's the end of the rainbow, but for us it is the end of the finish line."
---Larisa Healy
08/31/01
"Nobody's more important than the team."
---Rejean Houle
07/31/01
"I always wanted to be somebody...If I've made it, it's half because I was game to take a wicked amount of punishment along the way, and half because there were an awful lot of people who cared enough to help me."
---Althea Gibson
06/29/01
"Even when you've played the game of your life, it's the feeling of teamwork that you'll remember. You'll forget the plays, the shots, and the scores, but you'll never forget your teammates."
---Deborah Palmore
06/29/01
"Part of being a champ is acting like a champ. You have to learn how to win and not run away when you lose. Everyone has bad stretches and real successes. Either way, you have to be careful not to lose your confidence or get too confident."
---Nancy Kerrigan
05/31/01
"What I've learned in my years as a competitive wheelchair athlete is this--what separates a winner from the rest of the pack is not raw talent or physical ability; instead, it is the drive and dedication to work hard every single day, and the heart to go after your dream, no matter how unattainable others think it is."
---Linda Mastandrea
05/31/01
"The Most Important Thing I Know About the Spirit of Sport... It instills in us the ability to recognize and appreciate the talents of others as well as the gifts we have been given and the ability to work with others as a team. It also allows us to face the challenge of competition, learn from our successes and failures, altogether making us true champions in life."
---Dr. Dot Richardson
04/30/01
"The glory of sport comes from dedication, determination and desire. Achieving success and personal glory in athletics has less to do with wins and losses than it does with learning how to prepare yourself so that at the end of the day, whether on the track or in the office, you know that there was nothing more you could have done to reach your ultimate goal."
---Jackie Joyner-Kersee
04/30/01
"The difference is almost all mental. The top players just hate to lose. I think that's the difference. A champion hates to lose even more than she loves to win."
---Chris Evert
03/30/01
"Playing your favorite sport is like being able to get candy when you're at the store with your mom. Being on the field and having all your problems drift away for the two hours you play is like the most relaxing thing I can think of."
---Danielle Ballentine
03/30/01
"It's really impossible for athletes to grow up. On the one hand, you're still a child, still playing a game. But on the other hand, you're a superhuman hero that everyone dreams of being. No wonder we have such a hard time understanding who we are."
---Billie Jean King
03/30/01
"Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the keys to my destiny."
---Elain Maxwell
02/28/01
"Sports can do so much. They've given me a framework: meeting new people, confidence, self-esteem, discipline, motivation. All these things I learned, whether I knew I was learning them or not, through sports."
---Mia Hamm
02/28/01
"Sport, indeed, is a bare canvas to which we present ourselves...fully, completely, and exquisitely."
---Dr. Carole Oglesby
02/28/01
"An athlete experiences the emotions of pain and elation through triumph and defeat, through teamwork and individuality, as nothing more than a human being...that is the true glory of sport."
---Aimee Mullins
01/30/01
"When anyone tells me I can't do anything...I'm just not listening anymore."
---Florence Griffith-Joyner
01/30/01
"I don't need to be the Number 1 on the team. This is what I train for day in and day out. I am the support player. If I need to hit, pitch, run, whatever, I will do it. If everything was going to be about me, I think I'd quit."
--Michele Smith
01/30/01
"The values learned on the playing field--how to set goals, endure, take criticism and risks, become team players, use our bodies, stay healthy and deal with stress--prepare us for life."
---Donna de Varona
