Summer Sanders Quotes

From the time I started playing... When I tried out for a team in sixth grade and on - I was always starting through high school.

When I was five, I joined a club, 'Excelsior', the club of Kralingen, in the first division. I was always training. On a free afternoon, I did individual work with Aad Putters, my youth trainer. Not with the idea growing to be a star, but for fun.

I was eight years old and I was playing rugby for my local club.

I had never played a team sport when I was younger.

My kids are little athletes.

I was a huge athlete as a kid. I was on every sports team.

If you look at any superior athlete, you will find a strong parental influence. Parents introduce their children to a sport, and then they support them.

I want to do what I can to give the next generation of athletes added advantages in the game.

Well, first I have to make the team, of course.

My father was a really good athlete, so his pop-ups really were sky high. Eventually I learned how to judge them properly and catch them well. It was great training for when I started to play on teams, which I did all through school.

I went to football training when I was five because I think my father thought he had two boys.

Honestly, I was a troublemaker. The environment I grew up in, my mom and my sister, they decided they were going to sign me up in every single thing to keep me busy. I played football, basketball, baseball. Anything, whatever was in season, I was signed up for it. Basketball was one of the things that just stuck.

I grew up playing defense all the time with my older brothers and the older players.

When I was 6 years old, I played on a coed indoor team. We were called the Cosmos. And then, after that, when I was 7, I played on an all-girls club team.

I think the first team I ever played for was a YMCA team, probably around when I was seven years old. And really I have vague memories of it. I think, at that age, you're just trying to make sure the ball stays in bounds.

My first club was FT Gern. I joined through my parents and friends. My father played for them and a friend from nursery school took me to training once. I was five at the time.

I was in an academy from the age of eight. I couldn't play for my grassroots team then.

I remember my first camps when I was in high school, freshman year. I did a LeBron James camp, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

I grew up in Brixton as a young teenager playing basketball for the Brixton Topcats, which marked the beginning of my career.

I think that's vitally important, that we get players playing at a younger age group.

My dad coached pretty much my whole life. I think he stopped coaching me when I got to the seventh, eighth grade, serious AAU, when I started getting recruited and stuff like that.

When a child signs up for tennis, he or she is put on a team. I put them in a circle and then I make sure they name their own team. I would have them do their skill drills as a team and their fun drills together as a team, then they have to have a match at the end of every week. They can't just have what they call a lesson today every week.

If this validates anything, it's that learning how to bunt and hit and run and turning two is more important than knowing where to find the little red light at the dug out camera.

My father got me involved in the game when I was four years old.

In the summertime, I played Little League baseball; football in the fall; basketball in the winter.