Quotes & Sayings About Sports Parents

One of the greatest tragedies of growing up is the discovery that your parents- and your teachers, and your sports heroes, and your favorite actors, singers, YouTube sensations- are fallible. Adults don't know all, and what they do know, they often won't tell you- because they've got their own agendas, or because they want to shield you from the hard truths "for your own good." Adults lie, they betray, they screw up in every way possible ... — Robin Wasserman

The problem nowadays is that children have become too much the center of attention. Their parents, their families, everybody around them feels a need to put them on a pedestal. So much effort is invested in boosting their self-esteem that they are made to feel special in and of themselves, without having done anything. — Rafael Nadal

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

One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it. — Tiger Woods

True, we can learn much from observation of the failure of others without having to personally suffer the same pain, but the character and memory of the wisdom gained may be more acute and long-lasting from our own personal failures. Even worse is the generational fear of failure prevalent in our culture, resulting from parents carefully programming their offspring as young as three to participate in activities intended to cultivate intellectual and sports prowess which in their design do not allow for failure. Before children can feel the pain of their mistakes, the parents intervene and deflect the taking of personal responsibility by the child. We pay for it so they do not have to. This is the most dangerous thing we can do for them. — Kevin R. Anderson

I'm the youngest of four, and they were all very into sports. I was the first one to express an interest in the arts. I took piano lessons and singing lessons, acting lessons. So it was all new to them, but my parents were great. — Max Von Essen

Slow parents understand that childrearing should not be a cross between a competitive sport and product-development. It is not a project; it's a journey. Slow parenting is about giving kids lots of love and attention with no conditions attached. — Carl Honore

In skating or any amateur sport, as athletes we share something in common: the cost of training is quite a burden on our parents or on the athletes themselves trying to find a way to pay for their costs. — Patrick Chan

I'm not a team sports person type person, so I probably would have been good at tennis, because I like tennis. But my parents really didn't push me. I think if my parents would have guided me and stay committed, I could have played any sport I wanted to, but I never did. — Laila Ali

It's a fine line of doing what's good for your life and what your parents want you to do, but also following your dreams. With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things along with that. — Kaley Cuoco

I come from great stock. I didn't come from money. My parents both worked really hard to keep food on the table and give my sister and me opportunities to play sports and see what we were good at. — Rickie Fowler

Both my parents were amateur badminton players. My father is a scientist and wanted me to be a doctor. But my mom was very aggressive and loved badminton. She pushed me right from the age of nine to take up the sport. — Saina Nehwal

I've always believed that the desire must come from within, not as a result of being driven by coaches or parents. — Dawn Fraser

To be a well-rounded person and know what's going on in the world around you, to have a perspective outside of your sport, is important for every athlete. I'm blessed that our parents gave us that. — Venus Williams

As a result of Title IX, and a new generation of parents who want their daughters to have the opportunities they never had, women's sports have arrived. — Sheryl Swoopes

Most Indians go into education. Their parents just push them into education like parents in Australia push them into sports. — Mahesh Bhupathi

Do we not see the influence we have when we say we believe in one thing, but our children see us living something else? Do we not realize how little we encourage our children to actually decide what they believe, declare what they believe, and then live by it? Whether it's religion, politics, sports, or societal norms. It is not our place to tell our kids what to think. It is our place to teach our kids to think correctly. If we do this, we need have no fear of what they will decide for themselves and how strongly they'll stand behind it. A man will follow his own convictions to his death, but he'll only follow another man's convictions until he steps in manure. — Dan Pearce

New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi. — Bill Maher

It is a violent sport that we choose as men, and that we as parents allow our children to play. — Troy Vincent

Parents have to understand, that even if their child isn't showing athletic excellence in a certain sport, they still need to be involved. They don't need to be involved in a military type of setting, they just need to get out and play and enjoy themselves and find it themselves. — Allyson Felix

As the proud father of two teens and past Chairman to the Presidents Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, I am committed to educating parents and especially young people on ways to live a long, healthy and active life. — Lee Haney

Teachers, parents, guidance counselors ... all of them are always pushing this crap about how it's okay to be different, just be yourself. Don't give in to peer pressure, blah, blah, blah. The truth is, it's really only okay to be yourself if that self is within an accepted range of "normal." You like soccer instead of basketball, Johnny? Well, okay, I guess, so long as you still like sports. What's that, Susie, you want to wear the blue sweater instead of the red? You know we're all about expressing individuality here ... so long as it's still a sweater. — Stacey Kade

My parents couldn't handle my energy so they enrolled me in every sport the school was offering. I didn't resent it because I loved sports and picked them up easily. — Channing Tatum

My parents wanted me and my siblings to practice some sports outside school. And since we lived next to a tennis club, we decided to play tennis. I didn't have an idol, so to speak, but I always enjoyed watching Pete Sampras and Alex Corretja. — Stanislas Wawrinka

Sometimes parents limit the experiences their kids will have, saying they are going to fail; they can't ride a bike or do sports. — Marla Runyan

Soccer was the first sport that my parents put me in, and ultimately, all the parents kind of came over to my mom and were, 'We think Channing would be better at football ... We love him, he's really great, but he's kind of hurting our children.' I was just a little wild. — Channing Tatum

Hillary Clinton has a $350 billion plan that she says will make college more affordable. Which has to be better than my parents' plan to make college affordable: 'Be good at sports.' — Jimmy Fallon

Faith, family, academics and then sports was the order of priorities in my family. My parents really stuck to these principles when raising me and my two brothers. As long as we took care of everything, they let us play as much basketball as we wanted. — Jeremy Lin

When my parents were paying for my sport, it wasn't just me out on the ice. Pretty much every dollar my mom made teaching went into my skating. — Ashley Wagner

With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things along with that. That way, if one fell apart, I always had something else to fall back on. — Kaley Cuoco

When I was younger, the people making the sacrifice were my parents. It's not a cheap sport. Luckily, I had parents who made a lot of life sacrifices so I could continue in gymnastics. — Jonathan Horton

During the sixties, all the risk-type sports were very popular, because everybody was rebelling against their parents, or rebelling against the whole system. But those days are over. This is the day of conservatism. — Yvon Chouinard

Children are perceptive, and if they see leaders and parents talk with boredom and apathy about faith yet become overtly passionate about sports teams or shopping malls, they will think the sport or the mall is more attractive than Jesus. — Matt Chandler

Middle grade fiction, to me, is really about emergence of self. It's about expressing the idea that the world is going to start affecting you more, and your parents' influence is going to wane. Middle grade is when a lot of kids discover their passions - art, music, sports, what have you. — Greg Van Eekhout

When I was younger, I played sports and went to camp. As I got older, my parents began to instill in us the importance of giving back to the community, especially those places around the world that are less fortunate than my very privileged life growing up in Los Angeles. — Katherine Schwarzenegger

Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it. — Mike Krzyzewski

I hate the cliche of 'just have fun,' but what I've seen in today's sports, especially with parents, is they put so much pressure on the kids. — Hope Solo

Much of the pressure contemporary parents feel with respect to dressing children in designer clothes, teaching young children academics, and giving them instruction in sports derives directly from our need to use our children to impress others with our economic surplus. We find "good" rather than real reasons for letting our children go along with the crowd. — David Elkind

If you look at any superior athlete, you will find a strong parental influence. Parents introduce their children to a sport, and then they support them. — Ivan Lendl

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

The only reason these kids keep score in these games is for the parents and coaches satisfaction. Who cares? They're 10 years old. — Peter Jacobsen

There's nothing I missed out on. I do everything a normal kid does. My parents keep me grounded. I still play sports. I still go to a rec center every day. — Khleo

That's such bullshit, Mythology repeated by parents because it lets them force their kids into sports and push them too hard by pretending that in the end it will pay off with the holy scholarship. You know how many kids get a free ride? Hardly any. Like, maybe fourteen.' -Finn (165) — Laurie Halse Anderson

Part of my growing up was always trying to make my parents proud and always trying to keep them happy. I think part of what held them together was my involvement in sports. — Jeff Garcia

In Romania, of course, gymnastics is among the most popular sports, and my parents had a dream of escaping the Ceausescu regime and giving their child a better life. So they came to the United States and put me in gymnastics. — Dominique Moceanu

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

More African American adults are under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites. — Michelle Alexander

Not infrequently, parents fail to help children grasp their responsibility for a community. Often we as parents don't convey to our children that they have obligations to small communities like a sports team or a school choir or a dance troupe. How many of us ever simply mention to our children that a school is not just a place to learn but a community, or that a neighborhood is a community that carries obligations? — Richard Weissbourd

What did I hope to gain from my game and from putting my parents through all this? The truth is that I loved to play. My body was fit and my mind raring to go. But I also hoped that I would get a government job through the sports quota. — M.C. Mary Kom

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

My parents never forced things on my brother and me: not our faith, not our sports, not our friends. Yet they taught us about surrounding ourselves with the right people: the kind of people we want to be. — Amanda Borden

My parents are hard workers and they showed me what it means to work hard. I would give a lot of the credit to my parents for where I'm at and who I am. They both worked multiple jobs to make sure me and my siblings were able to play sports and have a home. I'll never forget how hard they worked and that always motivates me. — Clay Guida

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

I have my parents to thank for that, they raised me to be active and play all sports. They taught me the importance of staying healthy, being focused and setting goals in whatever I do. — Kiana Tom

Although my parents were kind and loving, I had none of the joys, or the companionship, which small children usually have. From my earliest years my recollection is of my father saying: 'Do no' or 'Thou shall not'. Any form of sport or light entertainment was frowned upon and regarded as not edifying. There was only condemnation and prohibition ... — John George Haigh

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

My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles. — Mike Krzyzewski

Our sports [softball] is a game of failure already so my dad always says to parents who he is a pitching coach and he's been my pitching coach since I was 11 years old is if they can be the best kid on the team, let them experience that and then obviously the challenge has to come later on but you don't get that opportunity very often and confidence is such a huge part of this game and in life in general. — Jennie Finch

Destroyed, that is, were not only men, women and thousands of children but also restaurants and inns, laundries, theater groups, sports clubs, sewing clubs, boys' clubs, girls' clubs, love affairs, trees and gardens, grass, gates, gravestones, temples and shrines, family heirlooms, radios, classmates, books, courts of law, clothes, pets, groceries and markets, telephones, personal letters, automobiles, bicycles, horses - 120 war-horses - musical instruments, medicines and medical equipment, life savings, eyeglasses, city records, sidewalks, family scrapbooks, monuments, engagements, marriages, employees, clocks and watches, public transportation, street signs, parents, works of art. "The whole of society," concludes the Japanese study, "was laid waste to its very foundations."2698 Lifton's history professor saw not even foundations left. "Such a weapon," he told the American psychiatrist, "has the power to make everything into nothing. — Richard Rhodes

I always said that the only team that I would coach would be a team of orphans, and now here we are. The reason for me saying this is that I have found the biggest problem with youth sports has been the parents. I think that it is best to nip this in the bud right off the bat. I think the concept that I am asking all of you to grab is that this experience is ALL about the boys. If there is anything about it that includes you, we need to make a change of plans. My main goals are as follows: (1) to teach these young men how to play the game of baseball the right way, (2) to be a positive impact on them as young men, and (3) do all of this with class. — Rob Rains

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

My uncles and other relatives are against encouraging girls in every aspect, and that includes sports. I hardly interact with them. My parents are more open. They back me all the way. — Saina Nehwal

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

It is never too late to get into tennis! While I started playing at the age of 8 when my parents gave me a tennis racquet for Christmas, tennis is a lifelong sport that can be enjoyed by people of almost any age. It's also something you never forget once you learn. — Samantha Stosur

Growing up as an athlete, I started skating very young. My parents didn't know anything about the sport, so they went with the flow. I had two great coaches who gave great advice and gave guidelines for my parents. My parents let the coaches dictate what was going on on the ice. — Kristi Yamaguchi

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

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

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

Lolly nods. Though when is the right time for that? I asked her for a new sports bra since I outgrew my last one and she looked at me as if I'd just asked her to buy me a pony. — Robin Epstein

I played a million different sports when I was growing up. I started when I was probably five or six, and we'd just go from activity to activity to activity. I think, finally, my parents just realized that we were missing something in our lives. They realized that it was time for us as a family to start going to church. — Sam Bradford

I think any sport needs to be accessible, affordable and practiced within the confines of a safe environment. Parents who have young children want to be able to leave their child somewhere which has good facilities and where they're going to be looked after. — Hope Powell

Kay Cannon was a woman I'd known from the Chicago improv world. A beautiful, strong midwestern gal who had played lots of sports and run track in college, Kay had submitted a good writing sample, but I was more impressed by her athlete's approach to the world. She has a can-do attitude, a willingness to learn through practice, and she was comfortable being coached. Her success at the show is a testament to why all parents should make their daughters pursue team sports instead of pageants. Not that Kay couldn't win a beauty pageant - she could, as long as for the talent competition she could sing a karaoke version of 'Redneck Woman' while shooting a Nerf rifle. — Tina Fey

Did children want sports cars for parents? No. They wanted Hondas. They wanted to know that the car would start in all seasons. — Dave Eggers

My parents are highly evolved worriers ... If worrying were an Olympic sport, my parents' faces would have graced the Wheaties box a long time ago. — Firoozeh Dumas

The water cooler conversation in every job I've had is sports, it's what did you do this weekend, it's 'How are your parents doing?' — Kal Penn

Being a soldier [in the wars of modern power politics] was like being on a team in a sport that drew no crowds, except for the players' own parents and friends. — Dan Wakefield