Quotes & Sayings About Young Athletes

At the other end of the scale I was there with a whole lot of young British athletes so I was getting to see them take their first steps on the international ladder. I'd like to think maybe in five years time I'll look back and I'll forget all about the lost luggage and I'll forget about the horrible hotel, but I'll remember these wonderful athletes stepping onto the track for the first time. — Jill Douglas

I'm sorry that the young athletes in basketball will not get the chance to play (in the Olympics) anymore, and live that dream. — Oscar Robertson

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? "She drove me to my practice at four in the morning," etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home. — Paul Theroux

Of course, women are capable of all sorts of major unpleasantness, and there are violent crimes by women, but the so-called war of the sexes is extraordinarily lopsided when it comes to actual violence. Unlike the last (male) head of the International Monetary Fund, the current (female) head is not going to assault an employee at a luxury hotel; top-ranking female officers in the US military, unlike their male counterparts, are not accused of any sexual assaults; and young female athletes, unlike those male football players in Steubenville, aren't likely to urinate on unconscious boys, let alone violate them and boast about it in YouTube videos and Twitter feeds. No female bus riders in India have ganged up to sexually assault a man so badly he dies of his injuries, nor are marauding packs of women terrorizing men in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and there's no maternal equivalent to the 11 percent of rapes that are by fathers or stepfathers. — Rebecca Solnit

We tend to look at successful athletes and make them almost bigger than life. I have seen many young men who have achieved greatness. I have also seen those who have come up a little short of their potential. I do know that those who succeed have been able to recognize within themselves the potential to do something well and then work hard to prepare themselves for that eventual opportunity. Others wait for the opportunity to come and then start to work, thus coming up a little short. — LaVell Edwards

Our children, our grandchildren, our students, our young athletes. We need to be pouring leadership principles into them constantly, and teaching, and instructing them how to become good leaders in the future. — Pat Williams

The road of life is strewn with the bodies of promising people. People who show promise, yet lack the confidence to act. People who make promises they are unable to keep. People who promise to do tomorrow what they could do today. Promising young stars, athletes, entrepreneurs who wait for promises to come true. Promise without a goal and a plan is like a barren cow. You know what she could do if she could do it, but she can't. Turn your promise into a plan. Make no promise for tomorrow if you are able to keep it today. And if someone calls you promising, know that you are not doing enough today. — Iyanla Vanzant

I think when young kids can see Jason Collins, myself and Michael Sam, and Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe and different athletes come out, it will definitely change and encourage younger gay men and women to play the sport. — Robbie Rogers

Unfortunately, I think there's not enough education about hydration. When I was young, we knew nothing about it. We all know that there's cases of athletes having serious issues because of dehydration and even dying. — Landon Donovan

When I was growing up, softball had stereotypes along with other female sports. But society is definitely changing since the WNBA and WUSA. Muscles on female athletes are OK now. Young
girls can look up to beautiful, athletic, fit women. — Jennie Finch

I've seen young men in college going into the NFL and then bite the cheese that's in the trap. They'll throw you a pair of Jordans or a moneybag for their services. It's in that moment where most compromise. This business is unforgivable, and you got a bunch of sharks out there. It's mind boggling that universities don't prepare athletes for what they're going to experience. — Eddie George

I still love to find and develop the young athletes in traditional ways. I like to watch the physical and mental growth. That has always been very exciting. — Bela Karolyi

My heritage is something that I have always been aware of, however, some would say that there is a disproportionately low number of Asians as professional athletes. I take pride in trying my best to be a role model to show young Asian American boys and girls that they are only limited by the size of their dreams. — Nathan Adrian

Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct? — Joyce Carol Oates

What I'm interested in is the fascinating image of young leaders ... you know, young people leading in different fields. You see athletes and people in gymnastics, where the requirement is that you are supple and very, very young ... 11 ... and by the time you're 14, you're already over the hill. — Salman Khurshid

One of these days I'm going to be surrounded by so many young gifted athletes. There must be something in the water, because everyone's kid is a prodigy of some kind, except for mine. Gomer is a bit of a lumberer on the soccer field, and when Adolpha practices her ballet, she has the grace of a baby giraffe. They're so like their mother. I couldn't be prouder of my little underachievers. — Jen Mann

The primary purpose of coaching young athletes is to use sport to teach them to become better people. — Bruce Brown

After I suffered a labral tear in my hip while playing soccer, I realized that many sports-related injuries can be prevented and I dedicated myself to helping young athletes learn more about injury prevention. — Cobi Jones

Sports in Indonesia aren't being supported by the government. The rewards you get as a young player don't match the effort you put in. I want to be different from other athletes, if not better, and I want to make something good out of my profile and help the younger players have opportunities. — Taufik Hidayat

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing. — Wladimir Klitschko

There are a lot of young great athletes out there; they're much better athletes than what we were. They're bigger, faster, stronger, unfortunately, there're fewer places to go. — George Steele

I hope young athletes can imitate my good side only, not the bad side. — Taufik Hidayat

I feel that my advances in the business world will shatter a lot of white myths about black athletes-and give some pride and hope to a lot of young blacks. — O.J. Simpson

One of the most painful parts of teaching mathematics is seeing students damaged by the cult of the genius. The genius cult tells students it's not worth doing mathematics unless you're the best at mathematics, because those special few are the only ones whose contributions matter. We don't treat any other subject that way! I've never heard a student say, "I like Hamlet, but I don't really belong in AP English - that kid who sits in the front row knows all the plays, and he started reading Shakespeare when he was nine!" Athletes don't quit their sport just because one of their teammates outshines them. And yet I see promising young mathematicians quit every year, even though they love mathematics, because someone in their range of vision was "ahead" of them. — Jordan Ellenberg

These days the temptation to use steroids in sports has become too great for many young athletes. — Jim Sensenbrenner

When you're young, you develop ways to win, and you think they will always work, but then you get to the top, competing against the other top athletes, and sometimes things don't work. — Lindsey Vonn

Young people and Indian people need to know that we existed in the 20th Century. We need to know who our heroes are and to know what we have done and accomplished in this century other than what Olympic athletes Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills have done. — Russell Means

As inherently franchise-altering as drafts are, as monumental as they can be in the sport's history, you still can't get past the fact that this is several hours of people wearing suits and reading names off a sheet of paper. The athletes' clothes are entertaining - though not as much as they once were - and there's a warmth you get from watching young men and their families have their dreams come true. But it's still just a televised committee meeting. — Will Leitch

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out. — Arthur Lydiard

Several professional athletes have wrongly taught many young Americans by example that the only way to succeed in sports is to take steroids. — Jim Sensenbrenner

My overwhelming concern will always be the well-being of the athletes. In Olympic sport, it is rare for competitors not to devote half their young life to this. Their families will have given up all sorts of things to allow them to do that. — Sebastian Coe

For years I've been seeing my young brothers wearing Scarface T-shirts, John Gotti T-shirts, Rick James T-shirts. We don't have any icons or idols to look up to, just rappers and professional athletes. — Lamar Odom

I always tell young athletes the same thing, 'Wherever you go, whatever you do, what must your top priority be? Running.' — Haile Gebrselassie

We must endure, Alyosha. That was the only thing she could say in response to my accounts of the ugliness and dreariness of life, of the suffering of the people - of everything against which I protested so vehemently. I was not made for endurance, and if occasionally I exhibited this virtue of cattle, wood, and stone, I did so only to test myself, to try my strength and my stability. Sometimes young people, in the foolishness of immaturity, or in envy of the strength of their elders, strive, even successfully, to lift weights that overtax their bones and muscles; in their vanity they attempt to cross themselves with two-pood weights, like mature athletes. I too did this, in the literal and figurative sense, physically and spiritually, and only good fortune kept me from injuring myself fatally or crippling myself for life.
For nothing cripples a person so dreadfully as endurance, as a humble submission to the forces of circumstance. — Maxim Gorky

It is essential that we put an end to steroid abuse and set a better example for aspiring young athletes to follow, so that some day, when they make it in the All Star Game, it will be because of their own natural talents, and not because of a performance enhancing product. — Jim Sensenbrenner