Female Athletes Quotes

I remember the day I met Cammi Granato, a former star on the U.S. women's hockey team. We were at a Women's Sports Foundation dinner in 1996, and she came over to introduce herself. She had watched the U.S. women's soccer team win gold at the Atlanta Olympics and was hopeful the U.S. women's hockey team could do the same.

People will say, 'Who are your role models, and who are your pioneers?' And the first person that comes to my mind is Billie Jean King because we didn't have women that we could watch when I was growing up.

I'm just glad when I was fighting for us to wrestle I would always have people tell me, 'Gail, women's wrestling is for the bathroom breaks, you know they really don't want to see it.' I would get discouraged a little bit but I was very adamant, so I'm glad that we girls proved them wrong.

Can you do inter-gender matches? Ronda Rousey and our match at Wrestlemania - sure, it can be done. Women don't need a man in their match to steal the show. They just need an equal platform and opportunity, and if the women have it, they will work just as hard, if not harder, than anybody else to steal that show.

It's important for girls to feel strong and powerful even when they're playing sports.

Within the girl's game, you have to be motivated to be part of this sport.

The reality is, like, women's basketball players are playing against women. And we're all in the same boat the same way men's sports is.

I remember, even when I started with WWE, it was a different ball game. There were all these restrictions and things we couldn't do, and now, it's really empowering to know we can do anything that we want and what the guys can do. It gives women the opportunity to show why we're more than divas and why we're WWE superstars.

I want soccer to be a stable profession that attracts young female athletes when they graduate from college.

I scouted all the girls at Wimbledon. I wasn't impressed.

The girls are working so hard to put female wrestling on the map and to make it as big as the men. To see it actually happening... I'm so grateful.

When I was in college there was a girls' flag football league. The girls were extremely aggressive.

For me as a mom, not an allocated player, there have been some years that have been a difficult journey because NWSL doesn't really support mothers.

Growing up, I looked up to major league baseball players, and now these young women have amazing, incredible women all across the board, from swimming to gymnastics to softball to basketball. It is incredible how far women have come and women in sports have come.

When I was a kid, the women like Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain were paving the way for female players in the States. Things like that are important so girls realise there is a future for them if they want to play. It is something they can aspire to, to be not just a hobby.

I'd love to have a chance to fight in the World Series Boxing for women, but nothing has been done about that.

A lot has evolved and changed in women's sport in the last 10 years - particularly football and cricket. So, I think my timing, in terms of being able to play both for a while, was fortunate.

Sometimes women get devastated by failing. Athletes don't; they just know that means they've got to practise harder, and they've got to do something else differently.

When the Olympics and World Cups come around, that's when you see the real outpouring of support that there really is for female football.

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.

I love the U.S.A. women's soccer team. I'm really a fan of them, how they play as a team, the spirit they have. They really motivate a lot of people.

Female success stories from sporting events like the Olympic Games have played a role in shifting the Indian perception to see the female athlete as a hero and a role model for young Indian girls.

I feel like when there's so much conversation about women's athletics right now, we need to focus on their performance and their skill.

In recent generations, women's sports have been a blessing. Some of us can remember the bad old days in the '50s, when we would discover in casual schoolyard play that a girl could outrun most of us or hold her own in basketball or hit a softball - but there were no teams, no coaches, for girls.

I'm sick of the media making female sports athletes into supermodels, when they're clearly sixes at best.