Athlete Development Quotes

I'm a football coach. I'm not a doctor ... They don't call plays, I don't do surgeries. We have a great deal here.

It is the inspiration of the Olympic Games that drives people not only to compete but to improve, and to bring lasting spiritual and moral benefits to the athlete and inspiration to those lucky enough to witness the athletic dedication.

In the World Cup, people of many nations come together for a fierce competition. To field the best team, all the competitor nations know that they need to train their athletes for many years, starting as early as the first moments a child can recognize a soccer ball. No shortcuts. No late starts.

I remember when I was a kid rugby players were some big guys that drunk a lot of beer but now they have proper training programs and diets and all that. And the pioneers of all that is bodybuilding.

Football develops, it becomes quicker, players develop as athletes.

We have got to go out there and deliver, go on the streets and find athletes, improve facilities around the country and find coaches. We have got to go out there and search for a star.

I think now what you're seeing is guys that are in the peaks of their careers anywhere from 27 to 35 years old, seems to be when they play their best hockey.

After one Olympics, if we invest in sports and say we will get a gold medal in the next Olympic, it doesn't work like that in sports. How it works is that you provide the infrastructure, provide education about nutrition and health.

When I was a freshman and sophomore, I got booed every time I was put in the game. Then, in my junior and senior years, my dad got booed every time he took me out.

If someone thinks, 'I'll spend the off season working on my fitness and I'll come back a better cricketer,' I don't think that's enough. You need to spend a lot of time working on your skills and honing your skills.

And at the end of the day as an athlete you have to be coachable. And being coachable is a humbling thing.

I'm just looking to learn, grow, stay focused, and become a better fighter and a better athlete.

They thought that athletes that worked out with my system wouldn't be able to throw a ball because they'd be too muscle bound. Those are the misconceptions I had to go through for about 40 years.

I wish football, as a culture, bred more than just a football player. It has the ability to be an incubator and transition players properly.

We've got teams and other countries have teams. Right now, we are going to their countries; we're finding the best athletes; we're bringing them to our team. We're training them, we're making them awesome, and sending them back to beat us. We've got to stop that.

Davis Cup helped me a lot. Being in that great atmosphere and having the chance to hit with top 50 guys everyday, being on the practice courts, that gave me a lot of confidence.

I think, in the U.S., we have such a focus on the physicality, on being the best athlete, that it sort of overshadows the football aspect of it.

A common mistake among those who work in sport is spending a disproportional amount of time on "x's and o's" as compared to time spent learning about people.

I've been coaching the sport for a number of years. And I went through many athletes. Some athletes stay with your program for a long, long period of time. Some athletes, they have a different approach as far as coaching style or your philosophies. I totally respect their own opinions - they have the right to choose their own coach.

The young athletes are supposed to mature, to improve their personality.

When I discovered Special Olympics and saw how it integrates these athletes into programs that change the whole way they see themselves and how they perform, it blew my mind. I wanted to be involved.

You always get better as the season goes on, as far as conditioning and the flow of the season.

Over the last three years, UCLA has helped me grow as an athlete, a scholar, and a member of the community. I have made some mistakes along the way; however, I am grateful that I made those mistakes backed by such a supportive and positive university so that I could learn from them and better myself.

When I was younger I only read sports books. I loved the biographies that told how athletes developed. When I got into coaching, I did start to read more instructional books, but I was always more interested in the people behind the ideas.

Youngsters of Little League can survive undercoaching a lot better than overcoaching.