Summer Rae Quotes

With 'Love & Basketball,' I played ball my whole life and did track at UCLA. So, I'm an athlete. And it was very important for me to get it right. I started with casting: As an athlete, there's nothing worse for me than watching a sports movie and the woman that they hire can't run or can't shoot. It sets women's sports back years.

I don't think being an athlete is unfeminine. I think of it as a kind of grace.

I'm a tomboy myself and have always been incredibly athletic.

Let women rather confine herself to the lighters and more graceful forms of gymnastics and athletics, and make herself supreme along these lines as she has already done in aesthetic dancing. Let her know enough about the rougher sports to be the sympathetic admirer of men and boys in their efforts to be strong, vigorous, and heroes.

To see a player dunk in women's college basketball is just amazing. It's great to see that the game has reached that level now.

I've been to strip clubs where the dancers have these whole routines that they create just for the wow factor and to say, 'Look how strong and physically fit I am.' Most women couldn't do it, and it's not necessarily sexual. It's just a performance.

We knew it was going to be the biggest event scheduled in the history of women's sports, but we didn't ever fathom we would be playing before sold-out stadiums all over the country.

Women's sports is still in its infancy. The beginning of women's sports in the United States started in 1972, with the passage of Title 9 for girls to finally get athletic scholarships.

In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.

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 enormously proud that I can do a deal with the National Women's Soccer League to showcase the power and passion of women athletes as positive role models, not only for my daughter but also for my son.

Women's sprinting is something the sport should appreciate more.

Canada definitely has a strong program in women's boxing, and we're showing that women are capable, not just men.

It wasn't until 1999 when my idols Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly took home the women's World Cup trophy at the Rose Bowl in front of 40 million TV viewers that I remember thinking how rare it was to see women play sports on TV.

Even though MMA and pro wrestling are very different, at the end of the day, it's all about entertaining. They are amazing athletes who go out there and give 100 percent.

Sports provide girls with the opportunity to develop a better relationship with their bodies. They can be aggressive on the court, be strong and still be feminine.

Now, if you're an NBA fan, you know what Vince Carter did. I came up with a line about him: 'Half-man, half-amazing.'

In my mind, women's basketball players are an untapped resource.

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

It is not that hard to go out there and put on the performance of your life and beat any guy in the lightweight division on any given night.

I loved DDT for the freedom; I was able to tell the wackiest and wildest of stories but also test myself as an athlete.

I feel like people always thought my sister and I were models. I think it was just because if you went through Diva Search, that's just what you were. We were never models; we were athletes. We were athletes who fell in love with wrestling.

I know I can make plays.

There are women who can play at my standard, if not better, and they can beat men, too, so it would be nice to see them do it as well.

I think because of 'Total Divas,' people have gotten to know who we are and kind of see more of the personality of the divas.