Crystal Dunn Quotes

We want the N.W.S.L. to grow. It is growing; it's continuously growing every year. We want it to be sustainable. It's separate in the sense that this is a U.S. Soccer thing, but the idea is to grow soccer in general, and we want to do that any way we can.

For the average person walking down the street, they don't even know a women's soccer league exists in this country.

When people say 'American soccer,' they think of the U.S. national team. But American soccer also includes Major League Soccer, and until we have a league that produces players at the rate other leagues around the world do, I don't believe we'll ever get to where we want to be.

Norway has a great history of women's football, but it's harder now. We've stopped talking about development, and other countries have overtaken us.

It's not so long ago I was paying £250 a season to play. I don't think in my lifetime it will ever get to wage parity with the men, but we have made so many great strides already.

The Women's World Cup gives FIFA a chance, once every four years, to showcase the growth of women's soccer. It gives FIFA a highly visible opportunity to encourage countries around the globe to also support their women's programs. It gives FIFA the forum to show countries the potential of women's soccer if only you support it.

I'm very privileged to be a professional footballer, and I want to encourage more young girls to play.

Going to Cardiff was a really good experience for me. I managed to get quite a few games under my belt at Premier League level, which was good, and I feel like I've come back a better player.

A lot of parents today come forward to encourage their daughters to take up sport because they feel women's cricket is growing in India and they can make a profession out of it.

It just goes to show how much the women's game has improved over the years: there are some outstanding goalkeepers capable of fantastic reaction saves.

Everyone looks at MLS in a different way, of course. Because of the players coming in, it's a better league than before, of course. Everyone can see that there is potential to improve.

The NWSL is a great league. It's so competitive from every single team and every single game. They have the right people and they are invested in it.

Cricket is semi-pro for women in Australia, but the girls work damn hard, and it's credit to them to try and grow the sport.

As far as my sport is concerned, my mission is to make it as big as it deserves to be. We've been growing, it's just not as noticeable. The NCAA picked beach volleyball up to be a championship sport, and it was the fastest test sport that's been adopted. That's a really big deal for our sport because that just means the USA system is going to have a feeder system from the college system.

Women's sport is growing, becoming powerful, and we want to continue to raise that platform for the young girls at home.

It's all well and good having a women's Tour de France - which I think we need and I think we should have. But I think we should slowly build it in and not just go 'Bam!' with three weeks over the same course and same length of time as the men's.

The WNBA changed everything. It started in 1997, and I graduated from high school in 1998.

I've always wanted to become a professional soccer player.

I think obviously the media need to help promote the game and make it bigger so the younger girls have women role models to look up to and try and aspire to instead of just male footballers.

When I started out there weren't even contracts for players and now all the girls on the team are full-time professional athletes, I guess seeing that evolve over a period of time has been incredible.

We're doing a lot of work in schools getting girls to play football, breaking down any taboos there might be, and we're seeing them get interested and bring their families along, where they have such a good match day experience that they're coming back.

I kind of had to convince myself when I was playing for the Washington Freedom that this was the highest level that I'm going to reach. 'I'm going to be a professional player, and I'm going to try and be the best one I can be, but it's maybe just not in my cards to be an international player. I won't play in a World Cup.' That was hard for me.

It's always in our mind-set to encourage young girls to get playing. The only way we can do that is being positive off the pitch, trying to engage as much as possible.

In my mind, women's basketball players are an untapped resource.

It's funny: one of the strongest parts of my game today is heading, and that only really developed when I started playing at the professional level. In the youth teams, all we did was passing.