Anne Donovan Quotes

You're not supposed to have it all figured out in high school. If you knew it all, and it was the best, it's all downhill from there.

When you have a new coach, a couple new guys, and a young team, the frustrating part throughout the year is the up and down.

The second season is always easier than the first one. When you change, it's always more difficult. You have to adapt to the way your team plays; you have to adapt to your team-mates, to the league, to the referees.

Any rookie is going to go through a transition process that's going to be tough.

Sometimes players just take a little while to develop.

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.

First year in the league, it's going to be difficult.

I've definitely grown into the job after that difficult first Test against Pakistan. I'd been captain for the Sri Lanka one-dayers, which hadn't gone well, and all the talk was that I only had that one Test as captain.

I think that for a lot of young quarterbacks, sometimes it's difficult to get thrown into the fire quickly because from my experience, either you learn how to be a professional from the veteran players.

Free got famous fast, and it was a shock. You're working towards it, and when you suddenly get it with bells on, it is a bit much. I don't know how well I dealt with it.

Every player settles into a new league in different ways.

It takes time; you look at what happened with LeBron, Wade, and Bosh. It took them a year or two to get their legs underneath them and figure things out, and even then, that run was relatively short.

Any captain will take some time to settle down. Nobody is an outstanding leader straightaway.

For growth, I need to be challenged and excited about the project. I need to venture out into unknown territories.

When I played for Arsenal, like once per month, you always had this feeling you had to perform.

Things are only daunting if they are very far away from your main skillset.

There are so many things that a goalkeeper coming to the Premier League has not experienced in a different league.

It's normal to have early difficulties when you get a new manager with a new concept.

I learned more in that first year in the NBA than I could have in four years of college.

Antonio Conte helps you to grow because you can never get too comfortable or find a comfort zone.

When you change defenses, it's the same thing a lot of times. But different terminology means different things in that new defense. So you have to get accustomed to that. You have to study. Get in your books and pay attention.

I learned to always take on things I'd never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.

Don't worry about the game you just won or the team that we just blew out... or, um... blown... blowed out... Let's think about what we need to do going forward, and they had, uh... blown out.

The better the opposition put in front of you, the better your team plays.

Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains. And, well, we're feeling those growing pains today. Doing big things is hard. All of us. All of us, myself included, we will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better.