Kids Sports Quotes & Sayings

There they were, the movers and shakers of Benjamin Franklin Hight - the sports stars, the cheerleaders, the good, the great, the gorgeous - bent over their pizzas.
Trish sensed my angst and said, "My mother says girls like Lisa Shooty get the ultimate curse known to man."
"What's that?"
"Too much too soon."
I looked at poor, cursed Lisa who had been sprayed with sex appeal at birth. She had gleaming teeth and long, raven-black curls. She threw back her head and laughed with diamond-studded joy.
"When do you think the curse takes effect?" I asked.
"Not in our lifetime," Trish answered. — Joan Bauer

If I was the Jackie Robinson of golf, I sure didn't do a very good job of it. Jackie was followed by hundreds of great black ballplayers who have transformed their sport ... But there are hardly any black kids coming up through the ranks of golf today. — Charlie Sifford

Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports. Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sister's head using alginating plaster. — J.J. Abrams

When it comes to women, there has been a tendency to define women in sports in the context of their relationships - they watch games because their husbands watch. They're interested because their kids play a sport. They buy tickets to a sporting event because it's a way to spend time with family. — Indra Nooyi

I'll take photographs with kids. People who want to take photographs with me. People who like the movies. People who supported me. I'll do that all day, all night, that's fine. But the bombardment of the paparazzi is just ... I truly don't understand. It just feels like this kind of gluttonous, horrific sport. It's like sport. — Johnny Depp

Athletes are born winners, there not born loosers, and the sooner you understand this, the faster you can take on a winning attitude and become sucessful in life. — Charles R. Sledge Jr.

I still get a lot of letters from kids and parents who face different challenges and disabilities. I share some of the lessons that I learned through sports and baseball, which makes me feel good. It's incredible to have an impact that way. — Jim Abbott

The best kids are going to become the best. But the best thing about it is that you're going to learn lessons in playing those sports about winning and losing and teamwork and teammates and arguments and everything else that are going to affect you positively for the rest of your life. — Carl Lewis

I've always been interested in the sport even as a young kid. I liked the sport of martial arts because I loved anything that involved contact, conflict or collision. — Brad Tavares

I really enjoy playing 'Tiger Woods' on the Wii, and you can set the levels to easy, medium, or hard, so I think it's definitely a good way for kids to learn the motion of a golf swing if they want to get into the sport. It makes it more fun for them as well. — Rory McIlroy

I think that kids aren't even exploring the option of sports anymore, and they don't even know what they could do. — Allyson Felix

When I was a kid I used to hate getting picked for team sports. It would be the fit and sporty guys over there. And me and the fat kids over here. Those kids were fat! One girl had to be cut out a hula hoop. — Alan Carr

I am so grateful to everybody that supports the Sheckler Foundation, and gives us the ability to continue to help kids and injured action sports athletes. — Ryan Sheckler

We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport. — Boris Johnson

I think we need to be a bit more proactive. Let's not just talk about availability of sports, let's make the facilities more accessible to kids and make them want to come along. — Hope Powell

When I'm not writing or working on books as a publisher, I'm doing things that make me happy. One is skiing with my kids and husband. I love sports. — Andrea Davis Pinkney

We hear about Tiger Woods as a prodigy at three years old. For every Tiger Woods, there are thousands of kids who never want to touch a golf club again. — Michael Sokolove

My kids have played sports all their life, and one thing I've tried to teach them when you lose, you try to be a gentleman about it. — Vern Buchanan

In the culture of America, in a free culture, you get what you celebrate. And in this culture, we have two obsessions, become a group that becomes a group that celebrates sports heroes and entertainment heroes. There's no room left for kids to see even a little bit of the opportunities to really, really get excited about becoming an inventor, an engineer, or a scientist, a problem solver. — Dean Kamen

I used to be an angry, lonely prick. Then I met a guy with four amazing kids and more issues than the Sports Illustrated back catalog and boom - happiness."
"Boom, happiness?"
"Okay, boom. Boom. More booms. A mushroom cloud. Then happiness. — Tere Michaels

If the players aren't getting paid, there's something terribly, terribly wrong, and that's true only in the United States. Everywhere else, where money is involved with sport, the players get paid. But these poor kids in college, they're doing it for free, and that's just disgraceful. — Frank Deford

The question then was not what other countries were doing, but why. Why did these countries have this consensus around rigor? In the education superpowers, every child knew the importance of an education. These countries had experienced national failure in recent memory; they knew what an existential crisis felt like. In many U.S. schools, however, the priorities were muddled beyond recognition. Sports were central to American students' lives and school cultures in a way in which they were not in most education superpowers. Exchange students agreed almost universally on this point. Nine out of ten international students I surveyed said that U.S. kids placed a higher priority on sports, and six out of ten American exchange students agreed with them. Even in middle school, other researchers had found, American students spent double the amount of time playing sports as Koreans. — Amanda Ripley

Developing better people should be the number one goal for any coach when dealing with kids. In trying to develop better people, we are going to develop more and better pros. — Bobby Orr

I have a 16 year-old son, so I'm now a soccer mom. I stand on the sidelines and I hear the things parents are saying, so I want them to understand what it is their kids are feeling in any sports environment. — Brandi Chastain

The question is, 'how bad at sports were you as a kid?' I grew up near where they film Jersey Shore. If you weren't tan, muscular, and book-averse, you were a dork and a nerd and a geek and stuff. I remember being into Gary Larsen, Stephen Wright, Peter Sellers ... — Demetri Martin

Kids can have great passion and great ability but if you have the facilities for your particular sport that can give you the inspiration to become a sportsman. — David Beckham

I had good skills, but my lack of size and speed kept me a little behind the best kids in the other sports. Golf offered a more level field. I would have rather played other sports, but golf picked me. — Zach Johnson

Football was really my least favorite sport and the last sport that I ended up picking up as a kid. My dad started me off with baseball, which most kids did at that time. I really enjoyed basketball. That was my favorite sport. — Tony Dungy

I liked baseball and sports and Garbage Pail Kids and comic books. I know what it's like to really adore something. — Todd Lowe

At school I fought sometimes. Kids were saying that figure skating is sport for the girls. Then I had to prove them wrong. — Evgeni Plushenko

Everyone has to try to give back as much as possible because I think in all sports it helps kids to have role models or people to look up to. Someone like Jess Ennis, I know a lot of young girls have started to get into athletics stuff because of her, because of her success. — Andy Murray

Every NBA player, every athlete, I think once you get to this level in life, whether you have kids or you're about to have kids, understands that this is so much bigger than this sport. — Allan Houston

Can you be a nicer gentleman, or a better man for your sport or your kids than Joe Paterno? — Pete Rose

Soccer's appeal lay in its opposition to the other popular sports. For children of the sixties, there was something abhorrent about enrolling kids in American football, a game where violence wasn't just incidental but inherent. They didn't want to teach the acceptability of violence, let alone subject their precious children to the risk of physical maiming. Baseball, where each batter must stand center stage four or five times a game, entailed too many stressful, potentially ego-deflating encounters. Basketball, before Larry Bird's prime, still had the taint of the ghetto.
But soccer represented something very different. It was a tabula rasa, a sport onto which a generation of parents could project their values. Quickly, soccer came to represent the fundamental tenets of yuppie parenting, the spirit of Sesame Street and Dr. Benjamin Spock. — Franklin Foer

Parents are told to turn off the TV and restrict video game time, but we hear little about what the kids should do physically during their non-electronic time. The usual suggestion is organized sports. But consider this: The obesity epidemic coincides with the greatest increase in organized children's sports in history. — Richard Louv

I think it is that parents just don't kick their kids out the door as much as they used to. I think the demise of sandlot sports has had a lot to do with it. — Frank Shorter

I know many people who are actually queasy about the idea that their kids may harbour sporting ambitions. — Sebastian Coe

Wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?'
As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The world of extreme sports is also one of big business. Kids might think that snowboarding is the ultimate freedom, but this freedom is being marketed to them by commercial sponsors. — Lucy Walker

Nothing about us is right. We're the wrongest kids you've ever seen. Our faces are wrong with zits, we have the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, and I think we might be ugly. Our families are wrong because none of us are rich, our bodies are wrong because we suck at sports, and there's something really wrong with all of our personalities, because nobody likes us, not even the teachers. Teachers make fun of us too, and think we don't notice. — Adrienne Maria Vrettos

Just getting young kids excited about hockey, then they'll want to skate, they'll want to start joining junior leagues, they'll want to play in high school, etc., so we're trying to expand at all levels. That's good for the sport, and it's good for the Ducks long term. — Henry Samueli

Team sports are very important for shaping personalities. It's important that kids understand the mentality behind playing team sports and playing for one another and playing with friends. — Brian O'Driscoll

It's very warm there, so we were outdoors all the time. The local people had programs for us year-round, where as kids we had the opportunity to play football, basketball, baseball, track and field - we just went from one sport to the next, year-round. — Rafer Johnson

I know when I have kids, when I'm older, I'm going to encourage them to play sports because I think it teaches you a lot. It teaches you discipline, teamwork, and that there's really no 'I' in team. — Gregg Sulkin

I want to support kids that not a lot of people believe in. Give them an opportunity to do good in school, play sports and get scholarships. — Tim Tebow

The idea that so many kids eat rubbish and sit on computers all day long appals me and getting them into sport is a major way of getting them off computers and leading healthier lives. — Kirsty Gallacher

Don't force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters, not the parent's desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun. — Tiger Woods

Kids on a team are like flowers in a bouquet, there is always one that wants to face a different way than the arranger desires. — John Kessel

I feel kind of sorry for those kids who just play one sport growing up. — Darin Erstad

I love kids, outings, camping, sports, Legoland, all the Daddy stuff. I love it. I wish I could just do that, but I have to work, too. — Mekhi Phifer

Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day. — John Bishop

On Sundays, I'm up at five and in the office by six. After the show, around midday, I flip the switch, and it's all family. Our kids play sports, so we're running around. — David Gregory

When I was a kid, I wanted to make my parents happy. I'd always say to them, "What do you want me to do? Do sports? Be rich? Be funny?" My mother would say, "Whatever we want from you, you already gave us - we wanted you to be alive, and you made it." — Etgar Keret

My parents put me in the water very early, and also had me skiing at a very early age. They put me on skis when I was one and a half. I was fortunate to have parents who understood the importance of exposing their kids to different sports, different cultures and different activities in order to discover what we liked and what we didn't like. They didn't push us, they just gave us many things to choose from. — Benoit Lecomte

We're taking sports too far and starting kids too early. — Darell Hammond

Children do not need half a dozen sports, music, art, or theater activities. Kids actually need more free playtime without adult instruction. — Laura Schlessinger

A lot of people think that you have to specialize in one sport from an early age in order to turn pro. Most of my teammates played a lot of different sports when we were kids. I liked to golf, water ski and play baseball. That helped me develop other aspects of my game and made me WANT to be on the ice even more once hockey season started. — Pat LaFontaine

I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.
I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived. — Marjorie Pay Hinckley

I was fortunate to start the sport at a young age. I was 6 years old when my dad started teaching me. We started playing tournaments together when I was 11, in the lower ranking of beach volleyball in California. We weren't playing against kids; we played against grown men, so immediately, I had to raise my game to compete. — Karch Kiraly

My priority is to turn people - especially kids - on to sports and being active so they don't even have to think about it being good for their health. If people participate for the fun of it, and believe me - it is fun, then fitness programs will be much more successful. — Alan Thicke

The lacrosse game took place in the optimistically dubbed SuperDome, an air-inflated sports facility made from some sort of pliable material. Thomas was playing in an indoor league for the winter season. Ryan had come along too. He half watched his brother, half played catch in the corner with a couple of other kids. Ryan also kept looking over at his father. He did that a lot now, looked for his father, as though Adam might suddenly vanish into thin air. Adam got it, of course. He tried to reassure him, but what could he really say? — Harlan Coben

Everyone thinks I'm this jock of a woman, but I didn't play any sports. I didn't even let my kids play baseball because I was afraid they were going to get hit by balls. — Patti Hansen

I am trying to encourage kids to do something that isn't yet on their mind because it is not in popular culture. Popular culture tells you 'music, music, sports, sports.' It neglects the importance of a STEM education. — Will.i.am

The goal for the Laureus Sport For Good Foundation is to give kids an opportunity to be involved in sports and hopefully learn some lessons along the way. We want to put them in a safe environment, help them if they need it and maybe they will get a scholarship to a school because of the skills that they learn. Sport is just a starting point. — Martina Navratilova

Now, everybody knows my music. So that's really cool. A lot of kids know it. Now, when I go to a sports game, everybody knows my name. — Nat Wolff

Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately ten times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams. This — Amy Chua

Sport is an important part of the development of kids, and hence, it should be made a part of their curriculum. — Gagan Narang

Despite the amazing diversity we're blessed with in this country, schools are still in large part segregated because of economic disparity. Sports are one of the few areas where kids are really given the opportunity to interact with those of different races and religions. — Steve Kerr

That's exactly the reason I'm leaving RCR because you've got those punk-ass kids coming up. They've got no respect for what they do in this sport and they've had everything fed to them with a spoon. — Kevin Harvick

We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that their kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports. — Amanda Ripley

I'd like to try to inspire the youth, that's obviously where our future is and the kids are the ones you can mould and you can give them ideas and opportunities and I'd like to try to inspire all the young kids because I had a dream when I was young, that was to play for Australia. — Steve Waugh

The doors had a peephole, and periodically an Iranian guard would look through and choose who he would let in. It was a bit like waiting to be picked for a sports team at school. You stand there trying to look as useful as possible to the two kids lucky enough to have been chosen as captains. If they were picking you for footy you tried to look as tough as possible. For basketball, you tried to look as tall as possible. For cricket, as long-suffering and patient as possible. That day, every time the guard looked through the peephole, I tried to look as un-Great Satan-like as I could. — Peter Moore

I happened to be in a position in Superior where I could play three sports, and when I came to Minnesota, I had the understanding they would allow me to play three sports. Kids now don't have the same amount of time. You have coaches that think baseball is 10 months a year. Hockey is 11 or 12 months a year. — Bud Grant

I was always very different from the other kids. I have an I.Q. of 156. I didn't play sports. I thought big. I thought I could achieve great things. I don't want to sound megalomaniac, but my whole life is about doing something for the world, from as far back as I can remember. — Chade-Meng Tan

We all wake up at our leisure; the kids know not to wake me up. Then we make breakfast or go out to eat with family. There is usually a sporting event or two to watch! — Josie Bissett

It's nice to be able to support programs like 5 Hole Threads' in our communities to keep more kids involved in sports. The Life lessons that are learned from being a teammate are so valuable. All kids deserve the chance to experience that. — Dan Ellis

I've been fighting for more than 24 years and as I continue my ascendant career I want to be true to myself. I want to try to be the best role model I can be for kids who might look into boxing as a sport and a professional career. I have and will always be a proud Puerto Rican. I have always been and always will be a proud, gay man. — Orlando Cruz

The transition from sports into acting was something I got blindsided by. I had a full scholarship to law school. I had a different life planned. I started a business, and I was all ready to go. I suddenly got in a local movie, just to say to my kids one day, "Yeah, your old man was in a movie," and I caught the bug. — Marc Blucas

When I was little, I guess I was just an ordinary kid. But then things changed when I was in junior high. You know, kids that become geeks become one because of something. Like, they aren't good at sports, or girls don't like them. I, too, for some reason, got into things like science fiction and, well, especially science fiction as an escape. — Takashi Murakami

Beckham is unusual. He was desperate to be a footballer. His mind was made up when he was nine or ten. Many kids think that it's beyond them. But you can't succeed without practising at any sport. — Bobby Charlton

Those extreme-sports kids today are good, but they have it easy. Try falling off of a motorcycle going 70 or 80 miles per hour on asphalt. Believe me, nothing equals it. — Evel Knievel

There's just so much negative media surrounding professional athletes or sports in general, whether it's kids that are pressured too much or professional athletes making mistakes that influence their family. — Kristopher Belman

I assume the only reason we have them is so that white people feel relevant in sports. Because other than that the only thing the winter Olympics show me is which country has more rich white kids. What's it cost to go skiing - $900 a day? I can't believe that's not more popular in the inner cities. — Daniel Tosh

Absolutely the worst thing about this job is the travel and being away from family. I have a wife and three wonderful children, the kids are all active in sports and it's very difficult to up and leave and miss them growing up. — Roy Clark

First off, do everything they can to give their kids the opportunities to play sports; asthma is not a deterrent to playing sports. — Dominique Wilkins

We're going to have more kids playing, and we're going to have a better chance of finding those players Minor sports in a community is for fun and recreation. For everyone. — Bobby Orr

I have a bumper sticker that Bowen created that says Regardless of my kids grades, they have an 'A' in my book'. Without play the child that still lives in all of us will always be incomplete. And not only physically, but creatively, intellectually, and spiritually as well. — George A. Sheehan

I was not one of the popular kids, I was not great at sports, girls didn't pay attention to me.I was just pretty much an average kid, no stand-out abilities, nothing note-worthy. — Jeff Dunham

I wasn't into sports when I was younger. I was one of those kids who always tried to get a note from the doctor to say I had a cold so I didn't have to go play hockey in bad weather and be miserable. — Eliza Doolittle

I'm a father of four so whenever I'm not working my kids have their different sports, or plays, or school performances, so I don't do a whole lot of other stuff besides being a dad. — Christopher Judge

We spend 8 hours a day, for 10 months a year, for nearly 17 years sending our kids to school to prepare them for life.
In all of that time there is never a course in overcoming adversity, goal setting, sacrifice, perseverance, teammates, or family.
I guess that's what wrestling is for. — JohnA Passaro

I think most of my lessons come from sports. That's why I always emphasise to young kids to get involved in sports because it's where you learn about discipline. It's where you learn to keep going, where if you think you can't make it, you can. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Which brings us to a little book that may provide a clue to the cure. My wife got it as a gift from a friend. It is titled Porn for Women. It's a picture book of hunks, photographed in all their chiseled, muscle-bound, testosterone-marinated, PG-rated glory. Lots of naked chests and low-cut jeans, complete with tousled hair and beckoning eyes. And they are ALL doing housework. There's a picture of a well-cut Adonis, and he's loading the washing machine. The caption reads: "As soon as I finish the laundry, I'll do the grocery shopping. And I'll take the kids with me so you can relax." There's another hunk, the cover guy, vacuuming the floor. A particularly athletic-looking man peers up from the sports section and declares, "Ooh, look, the NFL playoffs are today. I bet we'll have no trouble parking at the crafts fair". Porn for Women. Available at a marriage near you. — Anonymous

Sports are the ultimate secular religion. Instead of being worried about whether your kids will be okay or how your job is going, you have your team, and you can focus all of your angst and your hopes and dreams on your team. I am in no way saying it always relieves any of this! — Alex Gibney

Playing athletics, playing a lot of different sports, going to drama school ... I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so I ended up being pretty average at everything. — Matt Bomer

In Los Angeles, parenting is a competitive sport. From Beverly Hills baby boutiques to kids' yoga classes, L.A. fuses high style, industrial-strength materialism, and parental outsourcing into our own unique version of child-rearing. — Shawn Amos

As parents, we need to send our kids back to 'old-fashioned' outdoor summer camps, which have been on the decline as the demand for sports and academics-based camps has risen. We need to fight budget cuts to public parks programs and resist closures of public swimming pools and playgrounds. — Darell Hammond

More kids are finding real sports too demanding. — Leonard Sax

Like so many other office workers of the world, I will obey my master, the clock, and will obediently nod to my co-workers and make small talk about sports, kids and weather - all things I'm not genuinely interested in. — Rob Payne

I think it's really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to
the beauty of playing baseball. — George W. Bush