SPORTS QUOTES

You are perfect, even in your imperfection."
--Carrie Soto is Back

You tend to forget the good things when caught in an emotional raincloud of defeat anyway. That's why all athletes need a regular reality check, giving them a sense of balance between sports and life. They need to be told again that life is for living and sports are for playing. One you do the whole time you're here on the planet and the other you only do for a few short years. There's a big difference between the two, though the boundary lines are not marked with the same white paint found on the field. Perspective in sports is tantamount to longevity and success. Effectively dealing with tough losses demands that an athlete re-align himself often.

Those of us who love sports don't always love sportsmen and women. Our love for them is conditional on them being on our side, playing on our team, competing in our colors. We can admire an opponent but we never love them, not the way we love the ones who represent us, because when ours win, it feels like we win too. They become symbols of everything we ourselves want to be.

Title IX opened a door fifty years ago that can never be closed again, but equality doesn’t end at the equal right to play. True equality in sports, like any other industry, requires rebuilding the systems so there’s an equal chance to thrive. I’m just one person telling a story to bring an embodied experience of the female athlete to life. I can’t create policy or NCAA best practices, or medical guidelines, but I have some ideas of where to start. We need policies like those created around concussions that specifically protect the health of the female body in sport. We need to create a formal certification to work with female athletes that mandates education on female physiology, puberty, breast development, menstrual health, and the female performance wave.

It's only a hockey game. An ice rink packed with people, two locker rooms full of players, two teams facing each other. Two men in a basement. Why do we care about that sort of thing?

Perhaps because it clarifies all of our most difficult questions. What makes us shout out loud with joy? What makes us cry? What are our happiest memories, our worst days, our deepest disappointments? Who did we stand alongside? What's a family? What's a team?

How many times in life are we completely happy?

How many chances do we get to love something that's almost pointless entirely unconditionally?

I get naming your sports team gators, but ducks? Ducks are toothless, and they fight like pillows—all feathers and no punch—so what’s the point of them as your mascot, trying to make your opponent go to sleep on you?

But how many people lighted the path for me? That’s the evolution of basketball. There’s no way I could have played the way I played if I didn’t watch David Thompson and guys prior to me. There’s no way Kobe could have played the way he’s played without watching me play. So, you know, that’s the evolution of basketball. You cannot change that.